Currently working on …

The Homeless Mystics (working title for the trilogy).

I chose these pictures from my Resonance file on this series. The mystics have a sophisticated society which evolved to keep their powerful gifts under control. They value honour and beauty in all things. I based the concept of their home, Celestial City, on the Heavenly City in medieval Japan and on the capital city of the Aztec Empire.

This series follows the fate of a tribe of dispossessed mystics, the T’Enatuath. Vastly outnumbered by the Meiren (people without magical abilities), the mystics are persecuted because the Mieren fear their gifts. This persecution culminates in a bloody pogrom sanctioned by the Meiren King who lays siege to the Celestial City, last bastion of the T’Enatuath.

When the city falls at great cost to both sides, the T’En leader, Imoshen, negotiates their surrender and the mystics are exiled from their homeland.

Under Imoshen’s leadership, the T’Enatuath battle vindictive Meiren, storms at sea, pirates, and even betrayal from within their own ranks.

I’m currently polishing the three books to hand in to my publishers early next year. I thought book one was almost done, but when I went away to World Con I spent every spare moment in my room writing and I had an epiphany. I realised I’d ended book one in the wrong place, (which explained why the opening of book two felt wrong). So I had to end book one earlier. This meant I had the room to explore a couple of narrative threads that had been implicit before. The book is much stronger now.

Love, loyalty … betrayal – all the things I like to explore.

Now if I only had more hours in a day! (If only I didn’t have to sleep!).