I know you’re supposed to schedule a cover reveal and all that, but I thought I’d post it here for those of you checking in every once in a while.
I wrote over a quarter of a million words this year (and will begin adding to that number tomorrow!) and most of it has been broken into two books. The first is the sequel to London’s Calling, and can be seen above. Secret Agent Vann is a secret agent story set in the Ster, a post-apocalyptic Massachusetts city that has to deal with magic, cryptids, historical reenactors and, in this story, the fact that even the very best of us may fail to notice what’s wrong with our community. It heavily features Vann, a young man whose character asks the question, “What would I do if I had ADHD, but also had to be James Bond for a living” and Tavora, the lover and sometimes-associate of Agent London from London’s Calling. Tavora is not quite a secret agent, but she gets swept up in the story’s larger themes regardless of her profession.
Also there are gnomes. Gnomes feature heavily. I couldn’t help myself. If you like Aventura (she’s here too!) you’ll probably like the gnomes. They have their own problems.
I’m very pleased with Secret Agent Vann. My writing’s come a long way in two and a half years (goodness, has it been that long?) and I think you’ll see real improvement not only in the prose but also in plot, pacing and pumpkineering. As always I intend to keep the cost of this novel at about ten to twelve dollars, depending on what Amazon allows. I sincerely hope Arisia lets me into their Dealer’s room this year, or at least their Creator’s Corner, so that many of you who have met me there will have the opportunity to pick up the next Nu-England novel. It’s really good, or at least that’s what my beta readers have told me. I hope you enjoy it.
The second half of my writing has been devoted to another project, currently titled The Stumplet. It’s about a dryad whose tree dies, and what comes afterwards. I don’t want to spoil too much of it, but we’re working very hard to have it ready in time for Arisia/January also. Failing that I would expect to have it at Boskone and Intercon, at least. I’ll keep you posted here as October advances. I’m in the middle of final edits on my end, then we have to do line edits and get the cover done in time for Amazon to have physical copies printed and shipped to me. Fingers, as always, are crossed.
I’ve written other things too, some short stories, a longer piece that I don’t quite know what to do with. The latter is vaguely autobiographical in places, and features someone with whom I haven’t spoken in a very long time. It may never see the light of day because of that. We’ll have to play the cards as they fall, I guess.
So what’s next? I keep coming back to a novel I’ve now written twice. The working title for this piece is The Smith Book, which is an awful title, I know. It heavily features a few medieval-era Vikings who live on a mysterious Island. They’re all strictly speaking professionals, but only good at one thing. They’re also over one thousand years old, or thereabouts. It’s a really need story but I can’t quite get to a spot where I’m happy with it. Hopefully once all the edits are done on my end I’ll return to it. Or there’ll be something else! Perhaps more smut. Perhaps a story about weresharks dating in the modern era. Perhaps another Nu-England novel. I have many ideas and not as much time as I’d like. Fear makes a mess of art, and love, I find, and lately I have been afraid — for my friends and family, for myself, for our country. But where there is fear there is hope, and my writing (and I) believe hope to be a bottomless, limitless resource from which we may draw strength, determination and especially, especially art. So while there is hope I will write, I promise you all.
Happy Writing! More to come soon.
-Adam Brink
