It's the great day! My new fantasy novel Malarat has gone on sale on Amazon, a prospect I view with a mixture of delight and trepidation. Malarat for Kindle
Malarat has taken a long time to come to fruition. I started to write it in 2003, not long after the publication of my second book, The Glass Mountain, but interrupted the process to pursue other ideas with my then publisher. I continued to work on Malarat at regular intervals, despite being distracted by discovering the Asian ball-jointed doll - BJD - hobby in 2003 and falling in love in 2005 (reader, I married him - apologies to Charlotte Bronte!).
I finished the book's first draft in 2009, the week before my father died. I won't rehash the events of the past few years in detail but between 2009 and 2010 we lost my father, my mother and my mother-in-law, and moved out of the family home.
Malarat has been on quite a journey, and so have I! It's not exactly a descent into hell, but it is much darker than my other books. The story is set in the same world as the earlier novels and has some characters in common with them, but it can be read as a stand-alone work.
I have included more detail about the world in which the action takes place, together with a map, a glossary and a list of characters. It's not a children's book, although one of the narrators is a child. The scale is more epic but it still involves a clash between Victorian and mediaeval cultures with a smattering of demonology and Kabbalah.
I've set up a couple of boards on Pinterest where I've pinned a random selection of images relating to places and themes in the book. Pinterest Malarat board I'm also going to try to blog a bit more about what inspired the novel, though I also have a WIP to return to soon, I hope.
Meanwhile, here's a picture of the Temple of Apollo at Stourhead, which appeared in Children of the Shaman as the Domain of the Goddess!
Malarat has taken a long time to come to fruition. I started to write it in 2003, not long after the publication of my second book, The Glass Mountain, but interrupted the process to pursue other ideas with my then publisher. I continued to work on Malarat at regular intervals, despite being distracted by discovering the Asian ball-jointed doll - BJD - hobby in 2003 and falling in love in 2005 (reader, I married him - apologies to Charlotte Bronte!).
I finished the book's first draft in 2009, the week before my father died. I won't rehash the events of the past few years in detail but between 2009 and 2010 we lost my father, my mother and my mother-in-law, and moved out of the family home.
Malarat has been on quite a journey, and so have I! It's not exactly a descent into hell, but it is much darker than my other books. The story is set in the same world as the earlier novels and has some characters in common with them, but it can be read as a stand-alone work.
I have included more detail about the world in which the action takes place, together with a map, a glossary and a list of characters. It's not a children's book, although one of the narrators is a child. The scale is more epic but it still involves a clash between Victorian and mediaeval cultures with a smattering of demonology and Kabbalah.
I've set up a couple of boards on Pinterest where I've pinned a random selection of images relating to places and themes in the book. Pinterest Malarat board I'm also going to try to blog a bit more about what inspired the novel, though I also have a WIP to return to soon, I hope.
Meanwhile, here's a picture of the Temple of Apollo at Stourhead, which appeared in Children of the Shaman as the Domain of the Goddess!
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