I’ve never paid much attention to the gods, which may be why I foolishly agreed to steal Pardeem’s reel. It seemed a straightforward enough challenge for a master trickster like me, but with things like this you never know.
Leaving my cosy retirement isn’t difficult. Wearing the Harlequin’s hat again feels right. However returning to Emor holds challenges. Old friends and enemies wait in the shadows; maybe I can turn that to my advantage. But now my own god seems to be paying me far too much attention. This isn’t going to be straightforward.
But that’s the thrill, isn’t it? To dance with peril, to spin with the twists, to confound expectations and to embrace the trick for its own sake. The Harlequin doesn’t give up at the first hurdle.
If I can carry this off, it will be the heist of a lifetime.
The living and undead alike fall like autumn leaves as a supernatural war ignites in Glasgow. The reclusive vampyre lord, Niall Fisher, rules the city from his crypt through his undead regent, Margot Guillam, and the secret society known as the Sooty Feathers. That rule is now challenged by the city’s former master, Arakiel, a demon overthrown by Fisher two centuries prior.
As deaths and disappearances rise, Lady Delaney and her apprentice Kerry Knox gather allies to free Glasgow from the demons and undead alike. Body snatcher Wilton Hunt is one such ally, thanks to the machinations of the corrupt Bishop Redfort who plays his own game. Another is the uncompromising Wolfgang Steiner, a Templar Inquisitor as ruthless as the foe he fights.
But one among this band is Lucifer’s son, vengeance drawing him and his father back into the war, risking the revelation of his diabolical paternity. For Lady Delaney and the others, is the hour desperate enough to make common cause with the Devil?
From the glittering balls of high society to dung-caked slums, from a decrepit castle to tunnels beneath the city itself, blood is spilled and betrayal reigns. An exhausted stalemate looks nigh as Death’s scythe reaps without discrimination, but Arakiel plots to draw out Fisher for one last, decisive battle. And crucial to this scheme is an unwitting Lucifer, who must face the consequences of an ancient sin.
Lucifer & Son, Book 3 of David Craig’s supernatural Sooty Feathers series, was published in a digital edition on 5th July 2024 and will be published in paperback on 5th August 2024.
Lacey has a woman living inside her head … or is it the other way around?
Cover art: Paramita Bhattacharjee & Troy Edward Nikolic
Decades from now, technology has advanced, and everyone has a ‘neuro-net’ wired into their brain. This provides each person with a ‘voyce’ inside their head that offers advice that guides and ostensibly protects them; as teen Lacey Clarke puts it: “Voyces help us all make the right decisions. They give us reason, protect us from outside chaos. And in some cases, they protect us from ourselves.”
In this republic, Lacey and her older sister, Yadira, barely make ends meet. Their lives are made worse when they discover they must pay off their late father’s debt and that Lacey has been marked to become a Puzzler in a brainteaser competition in which losers are killed. Alina, Lacey’s voyce, reassures her everything will be fine if only they follow the rules, but when an encounter with Ogden Oliver, a powerful Elite, ends with Alina being temporarily deactivated, Lacey is left alone with her own thoughts. For the first time in her life, she is able to perceive the world as it actually is – without augmented-reality illusions.
As Lacey navigates the competition, she realizes she may be a pawn but one that has hitherto unknown power.
Book II of The Sundering Chronicles, Mark Iles’ latest book A Voice in the Darkness will be out later this month. But first we’re going to introduce you to the cover. A spooky image, which perfectly depicts the atmosphere of much of the story, set in wild woods on the Earth as it has become since the aliens invaded and (re-)introduced mythological creatures: shapeshifters, elves, werewolves, Fey, and even the dead who now inhabit the Earth. Yes! It is science fiction. Cover artwork: Alex Storer
The author, Mark Iles, had been delighted with the cover for the first book in the series, Gardens of Earth, and was thrilled when the artist Alex Storer was available to do the cover for this book also. Alex said: “After initial conversations about possible directions for the cover art, I felt an image that matched the mystery of the title would work well. It is quite a sparse illustration compared to what I might normally do, but I’ve always loved the idea of artwork with pathways or entrances leading to curious places – which hopefully draw the reader in and make them want to find out what the cover isn’t showing…”
Mark was once again delighted and especially happy that this unique cover image successfully captures such a key aspect of his story.
No longer invisible, Harp finds that fame, and family, might mean an even riskier future.
In Harpan’s Worlds Harp faced his own personal history, and its repercussions. In Worlds Aligned he must deal with the results. Providing of course that he survives them.
So Worlds Aligned is a second glimpse of the humans who survive long after OldEarth is abandoned.
Note: Harpan’s Worlds and Worlds Aligned form a duology, and can be read as two standalones; but together they connect some of the puzzle-pieces of a fractured humanity. And its evolution.
You can abandon your past…
but your secrets won’t abandon you.
As a tattooist, it’s easy keeping people at arm’s length. Distract them with questions, and when they inevitably ask their own, reply vaguely. Lie. When the lies pile up, disappear.
It’s a cycle Lynna’s all too familiar with. Staying guarded is a necessity, but what keeps her safe is also what keeps her lonely. It’s an empty existence, hiding behind lies, and she wishes she was someone else. Someone not burdened with a secret.
A year into her most recent move, the loneliness bleeds into her work, and she admits a few truths. At the insistence of a client, she explores the city’s night scene, where she meets the enigmatic Rhys. As the months progress, so do her feelings for him, despite the risks of getting too close. When a dangerous encounter leads her straight into his arms, she abandons her past in exchange for a new beginning, only her secret refuses to be abandoned. With her life hanging by a thread, she’s forced to confess, but the secret that will change everything isn’t hers.
Set in an alternate present, LACUNA opens with Lynna’s transition to an atmospheric northwestern city. Derailed from what she’s built, she finds herself immersed in the lush world of medicinal horticulture, enveloped in the kind of close-knit relationships she always craved. Her fantasy has become reality, but not without caveat. As she plunges further into this new life, she begins to expose the conflicting threads holding it together, and what she discovers will bring more questions than answers.
In Tirog, rulers of a domain are its source of magical power
Lady Trinafar, seventh child of a seventh child, should be a source and become the next ruler of Eideann after her mother Igrainid. But she is not a source. No-one knows why. When she meets Fergus in Edinburgh and he persuades her to take him to Tirog, she doesn’t realise that she is triggering a series of events that will affect not only her but the future of Eideann itself.
The Magic Is Always With Us will be out in paperback at the end of April.
We are delighted to reveal the cover of David M Allan’s new fantasy novel The Magic Is Always With Us. Set in Tirog, the land of the Sidhe that is co-incident to the human world and accessed through portals or lacunae in the barrier that separates the two. There are Realms and Domains in the land of the Sidhe, with population centres that are often in the ‘same’ place as they are in the human world. So, Eideann in Alba is co-located with Edinburgh in Scotland.
The cover, designed by Alison Buck, was inspired by a passage in the book where the main protagonist, Lady Trinafar, is standing in front of the throne of the ruler of Obharden (co-located with Aberdeen):
The floor in front of the throne was covered by a yellow and green carpet with a maze pattern. It grabbed Trinafar’s attention. It’s a trap, isn’t it. Start tracing the curves and the magic will ensnare the watcher. She knew she should ignore it, but it was difficult. It must give him an advantage over any visitors. It took a lot of concentration, but she did manage to drag her eyes away from the maze and look somewhere else. Even with the effort she had put into breaking the mesmeric effect it wasn’t until he spoke that she was completely free of the influence of the carpet.
Having escaped from an attempted drugging/mugging on a bus in Ecuador, Tej Turner completed the editing of the third book in his epic series in hostels and the rainforest.
DARTFORD, KENT – 26 February 2024 – Tej Turner, author, chef, and inveterate traveller, recently returned from a nine-months trip backpacking around South America. On his travelblog he tells of being drugged and mugged on a public bus as well as volunteering in a wildlife sanctuary in Ecuador. While he was travelling, Blood War, the third book in his Avatars of Ruin fantasy series was in the process of being prepared for publication by Elsewhen Press, a UK publishing house specialising in high quality, entertaining and thoughtful speculative fiction from talented authors like Tej. Part of the pre-publication process is an interaction between the author and their editor, to finesse the final text (and root out any typos). At times, Tej was editing the text on his laptop in exotic locations that made the editorial team highly envious, although they did not let their envy stop them helping him to complete the book, which was published as an eBook in January and in print this month. Of course, at other times Tej was trying to edit in an oven-like hostel room with no air conditioning and loudly snoring companions; or even on a bus (not while being mugged!).
Tej says: “Having the occasional mishap is all part of having an adventure, and it was overall a great trip that I will look back on fondly. I am back in the UK now, and I have even started working on my new novel. It has certainly been an inspiring year and that should give me plenty of material for the next book. I hope that my readers enjoy Blood War as it is possibly my most ambitious work to date.”
Peter Buck, Editorial Director of Elsewhen Press, says: “This is not the first time that Tej has been completing the editing of a book while backpacking in exotic locations. When you’re sitting in an office in Kent on a rainy afternoon and Tej sends a picture of his ‘office for the day’ with lush vegetation and a waterfall just beyond the veranda of his hostel, it’s hard not to feel a little envious. But, on the other hand, sitting in an office is generally not as dangerous as travelling alone in some parts of South America!”
One reader described Tej’s Avatars of Ruin series as ‘Wheel of Time meets The Walking Dead’. It is an epic fantasy series about a group of survivors forced to band together when their world takes a dark turn. It has some illustrious fans. Trip Galey, author of A Market of Dreams and Destiny said, “This is epic fantasy with a touch of the mythic to it. There were villains I loved to hate, and a queer protagonist I loved rooting for. Action, magic, a world in peril…what more could you ask for?” Bestselling science fiction and fantasy author Christopher G. Nuttall called Bloodsworn, the first book in the series, “a stunning introduction to a new fantasy world” and renowned grimdark author Anna Smith Spark said “Classic epic fantasy. I enjoyed it enormously.” Allen Stroud, Chair of the British Science Fiction Association, said “a journey into Fantasy, only it’s not quite the journey you expected, and it’s all the better for it”. David Craig, author of the Sooty Feathers gothic fantasy series, said of Blood Legacy, the second book in Tej’s series, “an exciting book which ups the stakes, mixing traditional fantasy with an element of possession horror”. Fantasy author Joanne Hall said “a nuanced, smart high fantasy novel with intelligent, complex characters, good LGBT rep and some killer twists”.
Tej Turner is an SFF author and travel-blogger. His debut novel The Janus Cycle was published by Elsewhen Press in 2015 and its sequel Dinnusos Rises was released in 2017. Both are hard to classify within typical genres but were contemporary and semi-biographical with elements of surrealism. He has since branched off into writing epic fantasy and has an ongoing series called the Avatars of Ruin. The first instalment – Bloodsworn – was released in 2021, and its sequel Blood Legacy in 2022. The third – Blood War – was published in early 2024.
He does not have any particular place he would say he is ‘from’, as his family moved between various parts of England during his childhood. He eventually settled in Wales, where he studied Creative Writing and Film at Trinity College in Carmarthen, followed by a master’s degree at The University of Wales Lampeter.
Since then, Tej has mostly resided in Cardiff, where he works as a chef by day and writes by moonlight. His childhood on the move seems to have rubbed off on him because when he is not in Cardiff, it is usually because he has strapped on a backpack and flown off to another part of the world to go on an adventure.
He has so far clocked two years in Asia and two years in South America, and when he travels, he takes a particular interest in historic sites, jungles, wildlife, native cultures, and mountains. He also spent some time volunteering at the Merazonia Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Ecuador.
Firsthand accounts of Tej’s adventures abroad can be found on his travel blog at https://tejturner.com/
About Avatars of Ruin
A reader described the Avatars of Ruin series as ‘Wheel of Time meets The Walking Dead’.
It is an epic fantasy series about a group of survivors forced to band together when their world takes a dark turn. The story starts in Bloodsworn where we meet the villagers of Jalard. Once a year they are visited by representatives from the Academy who choose two of them to be taken away to their institute in the capital. To be Chosen is considered a great honour… of which most of Jalard’s children dream. But this year the Academy representatives make an announcement which is so shocking it causes friction between the villagers, and some of them begin to suspect that all is not what it seems. Just where are they taking the Chosen, and why? Some of them intend to find out, but what they discover will change their lives forever and set them on a long and bloody path to seek vengeance…
The story continues in Blood Legacy and Blood War.
Sharma stands on the precipice of destruction as Gavendara’s army of shapeshifters surges towards the Valantian mountains. A mutant invasion leaving terror and death in its wake and whose victims rise again, swelling its ranks.
Yet still the Synod dithers, its leaders fractured as they plot and scheme against each other. Jaedin is now a fugitive, Bryna’s powers are waning, and Rivan grapples with the consequences of his resurrection – as well as the ominous entity that now lives beneath his skin. Whilst Miles, torn between loyalties, faces an impossible choice that could reshape the fate of nations.
Meanwhile, to the east, Elita seeks sanctuary within the enigmatic depths of Babua’s jungle. The people who dwell there are distrustful of her, but for a good reason. She indeed has secrets, and it seems that trouble has followed her.
Blood War will be available in paperback on 2nd February 2024.
“Smoothly throttles up a gear from the previous two books. The diverse and fleshed out characters face the desperate horrors of war, leading to a thrilling climax. An excellent addition to a gripping series.
“This is epic fantasy with a touch of the mythic to it. There were villains I loved to hate, and a queer protagonist I loved rooting for. Action, magic, a world in peril… what more could you ask for?
– Trip Galeyauthor of A Market of Dreams and Destiny
