The New One

It's been a while I didn't do this. Start a new book, I mean. Back in 2012, I did it, writing as MJ Kingston, but since then everything I've done has either been part of a series, or based on older work (as in, for instance, The Last Five Days, which was an eight-year-old manuscript).

So I had a couple of characters floating around. Cyril Marriott - a former diplomat, milliner, restauranteur and bon viveur; Chapman Foley, a jobbing actor. Marriott's niece, Eithne. I had some ideas about the Enigma Machine, about computers, artificial intelligence and the Second World War. And I had the story of "Neil Dovestone", a mysterious individual whose dead body was found on Saddleworth Moor last year, who has since resisted all attempts at identification.

Naturally, I'm being ambitious. There are authors out there who will happily (and quite sensibly) settle on the notion of a short, intense 70,000 word sprint. It's an approach that has great value: Michael Moorcock, one of my heroes, was brilliant at it. But then Moorcock also wrote some monsters, of which Mother London - one of my favourite novels of all time - is a work of absolute genius.

I might not be a genius, but I want this one to be my Mother London. So it's going to be a long one.

A title? I have about three.

See you in a couple of years.....