OK, I’ve been AWOL here for a little while because of, well, life. You know how it goes.

A lot of you have been asking about the sequel to The Mona Lisa Sacrifice. I’ve finished a working draft of it and submitted it to the publisher. It’s called The Dead Hamlets, and it involves the haunting of a certain Shakespeare play. Hopefully there’ll be more news on that soon.

I’ve also got part of the third Cross book written and I’d like to finish that next. It’s about the end of the world, so I’d like to publish it before the real apocalypse happens.

Here’s the first few paragraphs from The Dead Hamlets, just to tease you:

I lost the angel Baal on a dark and stormy night in Berlin. Some might say the weather was a sign of things to come, or maybe a sign of things past. But if there was one thing I’d learned over the ages, it was that the weather was usually just the weather. Usually. So instead of killing Baal and getting drunk on his grace, I found a bar on a quiet street and got drunk on regular spirits instead. It wasn’t the same, but I’d learned to make do.

Make that drunker. I hadn’t been sober in months, not since the Barcelona Incident. The less said about that, the better. Let’s just say if I didn’t have a reason to kill angels before, I had one now.

If I had been sober, Baal might not have been able to lose me in the crowd at Potsdamer Platz, disappearing like he was just another person. Sure, he looked like a regular person most of the time, just another mortal hurrying his life away to the grave. But appearances can be deceiving. Take me, for instance. I look like one of you too, but I’m not. I wish I were. So do the angels. But if wishes were stars, the heavens would be on fire.

I wasn’t any more sober than I am mortal, so I lost Baal in the rain and the crowd. Which meant I’d thrown away the money I’d paid to the priest who had come to me in Spain with Baal’s location. It wasn’t the first time drink had cost me dearly. I’ve lost fortunes over the centuries, thanks to my bad decisions. It wouldn’t be the last time either. There’s no way I’m going to spend the rest of eternity sober, not with the sort of things that happen to me on a regular basis.

I told myself that it didn’t matter as I stumbled out of the rain and into the bar. I’d find Baal again, or I’d find some other angel to kill. There were always other angels to kill. Not as many of them as there used to be, granted, because I’d hunted down my fair share of them over the centuries. But there were enough seraphim left to get me through a few more Dark Ages. God had made a lot of spares.

I hope you get to read the rest soon.

Win a signed copy of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice! I’ve teamed up with Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine to give away a free copy of my new novel, The Mona Lisa Sacrifice. All you have to do is go over to BCS and post a comment. While you’re there, why don’t you read some of the fine, fine stories published by BCS, my favourite genre magazine. You won’t be sorry.

Those of you who have been following along will know that BCS published two of my weird western stories featuring the angel gunslinger Azrael: The Angel Azrael Rode into the Town of Burnt Church on a Dead Horse and The Angel Azrael Delivers Small Mercies. (And you can now buy Small Mercies on Kobo.)

Now go read some free stories and win a free book!

There’s a lovely review of my new book, The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, in the National Post. It talks about the pen name issue — probably the only time I’ll appear in a piece that also discusses JK Rowling — and gives me some great quote material:

The Mona Lisa Sacrifice is a deliriously unhinged roller coaster of a novel, blending fantasy, history, horror and humour with the aplomb of an overfull blender, but all of it smarter than it, truly, has any right — or need — to be.

I blush.