Queen of Clouds

I’m utterly thrilled to announce that NewCon Press are going to be publishing my new novel, Queen of Clouds. For those of you that remember The Moon King, Queen of Clouds is set in the same world several hundred years earlier and tells the story of how that strange, flooded world came to be. So, it’s a prequel of sorts, set in a city called Karpentine, where various trade factions – Constructors and Artisans, Inksmiths and Weathermakers –  vie for supremacy, and features beautiful wooden automata, newly sentient and very badly behaved clouds, the multifarious uses of compellant ink and even the odd talking cat. It’s also a story about the futility of trying to make people in power do the right thing in the face of environmental catastrophe: a fantasy take on selfishness versus the greater good that felt pertinent when I started writing it, and feels ever more pertinent today.

When will all this happen? Well, publishing schedules being what they are, we’re looking at Easter 2022. I know, I know, you’re excited (though possibly not quite as excited as I am) but the time will race in, I promise.

I’m delighted to be working with Ian Whates and his team again. NewCon Press are one of our very best independent presses and their roster of ambitious, challenging releases over the last few years speaks for itself. They did such an unbelievable job with The Moon King and I’m looking forward to having an equally beautiful companion edition of Queen of Clouds sitting beside it on the shelf.  Really? I’m over the moon about this.

I’d also like to express my thanks to my agent, John Jarrold, for all his editorial and business advice along Queen of Clouds’s road to publication. The man’s a diamond.

Now, where’s that fast forward button…???