Byzantine Empire

The Children of the Seventh Son cover

A Sunday sample from The Children of the Seventh Son The new Dark Age novel Coming Friday, the 13th of November Javor’s left hand found a place to grasp in the soft, crumbling sandstone. His boot slipped once, then caught on the cliff face and he pulled himself up, over a lip of stone onto […]

It's been a productive pandemic—I mean, summer

Without belittling the importance of the COVID-19 pandemic, I can say that I’ve had a productive few months. Since March, I have: finished the second Dark Age novel, The Children of the Seventh Son rewritten the second Hawaiian Storm full-length novel, Dead Man Lying outlined a completely new novel, a near-future dystopian thriller. What you […]

Do you love geography?

One of the best things about being a fiction writer is the ability to set stories literally anywhere on earth, in space, on other worlds and in world that never existed outside of your own imagination. For me, that means I can choose a setting at geographically interesting places. I’ve always loved maps. I must […]

It's written! The new Dark Age novel

This is an announcement I once thought I would make three years ago. Then, two years ago. Then last year. But better late than never, right? So here it is: I have finished the first draft of the second novel in the projected Dark Age trilogy. I typed FIN at the conclusion of the final […]

Writing can go fast, and then you run headfirst into a wall: how did ancient people live? What did they eat? What kind of clothes did they wear? What were their houses like? This gets more challenging the more obscure you get, particularly when you’re dealing with pre-literary cultures. I’m deep into writing The Triumph […]

Since the publication of Wildfire last month, I have returned to the work-in-progress that I have been promising for so long: The Triumph of the Sky, the sequel to The Bones of the Earth and Book 2 in the Dark Age trilogy. A story set more than 1,400 years ago, requires a lot of historical […]

An action scene from The Bones of the Earth

The following excerpt comes from Chapter 8 of The Bones of the Earth. Javor and Photius have been taken in, temporarily, by the village of Bilavod, just before it comes under the attack of a band of Avar raiders. Photius shows the villagers how to prepare defences, and Javor trains some of the young men […]