London’s Calling is scheduled for release on January 10th of 2025!! Here’s the cover, done by Sleepy Fox Studio (www.sleepyfoxstudio.net) with whom I am, as they say, well pleased.
I am super excited to share this book with you. London’s a non-binary secret agent who featured more or less prominently in Spin the Throttle and Handcuffed to Never. I wanted to do more with them in those books, but the Sex Bunker Apocalypse trilogy was already crammed full of stuff, so London got their own book here. I’m so glad they did.
Writing LC was difficult because I wanted it to be so much better than anything I’d written before. I think I’ve accomplished that, and my editors think so too. I started writing the first dozen chapters during the winter, which was a mistake. The dark of that season always brings me down, and London was already in a dark place in their story, so our two sadnesses combined to showcase something I wasn’t really ready to talk about myself. Fortunately there’s a chapter about the ghost army about a third of the way through the book, and I wrote it on the first real day of spring – the sun was shining, the temperature was warming up, I’d prepped the garden that afternoon – and suddenly the rest of the book fell into place. London’s grief mattered, but climbing out of that hole mattered too. London’s friends help so much with that too, especially Vann, who’s young, over-enthusiastic and confident everything will turn out better than ok. I used to be more like Vann than I am now, I admit, but writing a character means that every so often that character will turn to me in my daily life and murmur something encouraging or thoughtful. I’m so glad London, Vann and all the others will be here to do that when winter gets dark, cold, and ugly.
So what’s next? I have another book in the works about a blacksmith living on a strange island. It’s been reviewed by a seriously incredible editor and I hope to have it done with in 2025 (there’s some timing issues that need working out inside the story itself). After that I had planned to write a story about dryads living in Boston before the magical storms mentioned in the SBA trilogy and LC, but I admit to a certain level of enthusiasm for a new London story already. Maybe both? Since 2024 I’ve written almost a million words; two more novels this year should be very doable if my hands hold up. And of course I need to publish Goat Story.
Goat Story is probably the finest thing I’ll ever write. Maybe I’ll post it here. Maybe I’ll give it out to people I meet at conventions. I’m not sure yet. I have written another short story called Backwoods Heavy about an old woman spying on her neighbors that I should get out there somehow, too. And then there’s all the social media stuff – Bluesky, Instagram, even, dare I say it, the TikTok. But all in good time.
Thanks for sticking with me my dears. I’ll link to the book as soon as it’s live. Until then, watch this space! There’s more to come, I promise.
-Adam Brink
