NEW CONTRACT, NEW IDENTITY

The writing life is going into overdrive. I have just signed a two-book deal with the splendid Angry Robot, a division of HarperCollins. These are the first of my near-future thrillers to appear under my new pseudonym of Thomas Blackthorne.

Both books will appear next year! Since Absorption, book 1 of the Ragnarok trilogy will also hit the shelves in 2010, I'm going to be just a bit busy...

Here's what I'm writing:

As Thomas Blackthorne --

···EDGE···The world trembles on the edge of phase transition: climate collapse, superpower breakdown. In Britain, the blade generation has grown up. Featuring Josh Cumberland, ex-soldier, ex-Ghost Force, a hard man for the surveilled Web 3.0 world, and his hunt for a missing boy, fuelled by his own family tragedy.

···POINT···The second novel featuring Josh Cumberland, and a disturbing memetic plague.

As John Meaney, the Ragnarok trilogy --

···ABSORPTION···Roger Blackstone has grown up on Fulgor, a rich and complex world; but his parents are spies, and he longs to return to Labyrinth, the strange city-world that lies in the fractal ur-continuum of mu-space, the home of Pilots. Centuries earlier, a young Jewess becomes a physics student at the Eidgennössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich, where Einstein so recently taught. While in the eighth century, a youthful Viking warrior called Ulfr comes into his own. All face disturbing enemies, pawns of the same unknowable Darkness; and shocking changes take place.

···TRANSMISSION···Roger takes his place in mu-space; Ulfr wages bloody campaigns; while Gavriela faces more than the rise of Naziism.

···RESONANCE···The final battle in the final war.

I'd like to think the Josh Cumberland books are more literary than the synopses imply, and that the Ragnarok books are way more complex, literary and exciting... By now you'll know the way to make your mind is to get hold of 'em and read 'em, just as soon as they're ready. Please...!