The Cover-nant Of Genesis
17 December 2008

I was going to reveal this, for the first time anywhere in the world, right here, but Amazon beat me to it... oh well! So here, for the second time anywhere in the world, is the cover for the fourth Nina & Eddie novel, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS. And isn't it a stunner? Can't wait to see how it looks on the shelves!

Four (More) Play!
5 December 2008

At last, it can be revealed: the mysterious "big news" of the last couple of updates. It is... that I've just signed a contract with Headline to write not one, not two, not even three, but four more novels! So I'm going to be very busy for the next couple of years, as the current plan is to keep to the same two-books-a-year schedule that I was working to for the first four. I'd better get started, I suppose...

What are they going to be about? For now, let's just say - in proper Bond movie end-credits style - that Nina and Eddie will return!

Four Play
27 November 2008

Another small update; both THE TOMB OF HERCULES and THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR got off to good starts after going on sale a couple of weeks ago, with HERCULES even being chosen by Tesco (the UK's largest retail chain) as one of their books of the week!


(That's McDermott with a capital D, chaps...)

It then followed that by coming straight in at #4 in their paperback charts, as you can see here (yes, I'm just showing off now, sorry); pretty impressive!

I've been told that it was at #11 in the overall UK paperback charts - damn, so close to being a Top Ten bestseller! Still, there's always the next book...

As for the previous book, here's the cover of the Dutch edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS. I'm really going to have to buy some more bookshelves to make room for my ever-growing collection of foreign editions - either that, or buy a new house!

(The "big news" I mentioned in the previous update? Still pending: I'm just waiting to sign on the dotted line...)

Norway? Yes Way!
29 October 2008

A quick update to announce that both THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS and THE TOMB OF HERCULES have been sold to Norway, and show the cover of the Czech edition of ATLANTIS.

There's also big news on the way, which I'll reveal here as soon as everything's been finalised - stay tuned!

Sword Swinging
17 October 2008

With the publication of THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR coming up fast, I thought it was about time I updated the front page to include it - and also the revised publication date, which has gone back slightly from 3 November to 13 November. (Don't worry, the extra 10 days will be totally worth the wait!) Also featured here is the moody blue cover for the Indonesian edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS!

In other news, it seems I now have a Wikipedia entry. Fame at last, I guess... In true Wikipedia style, it's an odd mix of disturbingly accurate (I don't remember ever mentioning which university I attended in any of my publicity notes) and completely wrong (no, I wasn't born on exactly the same day as Matthew Reilly)!

Bella Italia!
15 October 2008

A short update: THE TOMB OF HERCULES has been sold to Italy, the first Western European sale for Nina and Eddie's second adventure. Here's hoping that the rest of the Eurozone follows their example!

Hacked 'n' Slashed
30 September 2008

Earlier in the month, I finished THE COVENANT OF GENESIS - but now I've finished it, in the sense that I've just submitted it to Headline. The latest draft is over 50,000 words shorter than the first, meaning that just like THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR I managed to cut a full quarter of the book without actually changing the story. (I really must do something about that in future - it'd save me a lot of time and effort if I just wrote less in the first place!)

There will probably still be changes to come during the editing phase, but the story is nice and solid - and there are some awesome action sequences that show off Eddie's bad-assitude to the full. (Though Nina's no slouch in that area either - just wait and see what she does with a boat, a desk lamp and a laptop computer...) There's also Nina's - even the world's - most incredible archaeological discovery yet at stake, so it's one high-octane, turbocharged, no-limits hell of a ride!

The Genesis Of Genesis
11 September 2008

After 77 days of hard work, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS is finished!

Well, the first draft is, at least. Unfortunately, said draft is almost 210,000 words long. (For comparison, THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS is about 135,000 words.) Gah! That means I need to cut the length of an average novel... from my novel. So there's still a fair bit of work to do, to say the least.

But that can wait until tomorrow, because tonight I'll be celebrating with a nicely chilled bottle of Piper-Heidsieck Red Label champagne. (Hey, everyone has their own little traditions.) Woot!

State Of Affairs
3 September 2008

Another quick update with some exciting news: THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS has been sold to Serbia! Oh, and also to some place called the United States of America. You may have heard of it.

Kidding aside, this is really big news - it's not just ATLANTIS that's been sold to the US (and also to Canada, as the deal with Bantam Dell was for North American rights) - it's all four of Nina and Eddie's adventures! I have no idea what the publication dates are yet, but as soon as I do I'll be shouting about them here, as I obviously want the biggest book-buying market in the world to know about my stories!

So a celebratory drink will be in order tonight, and maybe, in honour of the US of A, I'll put a downpayment on that Roush Mustang I've been lusting after...

Great Danes
29 August 2008

A very brief update to announce that THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS has added another country to its list of international sales, this time Denmark!

A Sword, By Lord!
1 August 2008

At last, it can be revealed... the cover for my third novel, THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR!

I think it looks fantastic, so well done to everyone at Headline involved in the design. And there's something that makes it even more awesome, at least for me: see that castle in the bottom-right corner? That's actually a real place, the Burg Hohenwerfen in the town of Werfen in Austria... which just happens to be the place where Where Eagles Dare, one of Eddie's favourite films (and by staggering coincidence, also one of mine!), was filmed. I'm sure that particular image was chosen by the designer simply because it looked cool and fitted the story (in which Nina and Eddie visit an Austrian castle that in absolutely no way, shape or form was inspired by the one in Where Eagles Dare, honest), but it's a great piece of synchronicity.

As for THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to realise that I've written a 20,000 word section, a good four chapters, in which there's no action. Yes, things happen - old acquaintances are renewed, new environments explored, incredible discoveries made - but nobody gets chased or shot at, and nothing explodes. And I can't have that! So come the first rewrite there'll be some shuffling, cutting and explosion-adding. I mean, I've got an image to maintain now... (That's the great thing about books as opposed to movies - a 'reshoot' costs me nothing more than time and toner!)

It does illustrate how things change during the writing of a novel; what was in the outline just a few paragraphs, because all the details were in my head, ended up expanding to multiple chapters as I had to explain some backstory and introduce new characters and locations. You'd think that after so many novels (THE COVENANT OF GENESIS will be my fourth published novel, but it's actually the fourteenth I've written) I'd have planned for it by now!

Spanning The EU From East To West
28 July 2008

A couple of new foreign-language covers of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS for your delectation: the Spanish and Polish editions.

THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR has also had its first sale, to a British book club, so hopefully that's the first of many more deals to come.

THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, meanwhile, passed the 100,000 word mark yesterday, taking Nina and Eddie and their travelling companions (not all of whom are exactly good guys...) on to their next destination: Antarctica! What are they searching for there? Let's just say that there's something incredible buried beneath the ice... and that no, it's not an alien spaceship!

A Harro'ing Experience
24 July 2008

My trip up north to the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival was enjoyable; I met (and got drunk with) a bunch of other authors, was grilled about writing over dinner by a group of readers (all of whom had read THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, which was good, and enjoyed it, which was better!) and even discovered what Andy McNab looks like! I was expecting him to be some sort of grizzled life-sized Action Man, but disappointingly he looked more like the kind of bloke you'd find in the bar at a golf club. Albeit the sort who can kill you with his bare hands.

After all that, it was back to work on THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, and as I'd feared the first day was incredibly frustrating because after four days away I'd lost my momentum, so assembling each sentence was as painful as pulling out a tooth with pliers. But things are thankfully back on track now!

Setting Sale
16 July 2008

I found out something very exciting today - THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS (which is still chillin' in the Bookscan top 50 for a fourth week) has now sold over 40,000 copies of the paperback edition, which only went on sale a month ago: pretty impressive stuff. Next objective, 50,000 sales... and then 100,000!

THE COVENANT OF GENESIS is really rolling along: I just passed the 80,000 word mark today, after 24 days of work, so I'm well ahead of my 3000-word-a-day writing target. Which is handy, because I won't be working over the weekend as I normally do - instead I'll be a guest at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. If you're there and you see me (and I'm not totally inebriated), say hello!

Do You Come From A Land...
7 July 2008

THE COVENANT OF GENESIS passed 50,000 words today. In first draft terms, that's roughly the one-third mark. Unfortunately, in story terms, it's more like the one-quarter mark. I foresee quite a lot of cutting in the future... But the story's progressing well, which is the main thing - three set-pieces down, another lined up to be written tomorrow, and then Nina and Eddie will embark on an excursion, like Quigley and the Rescuers, Down Under! What will be left of Australia after they're done, I wonder?

Pinch, Punch, First Of The Month
1 July 2008

And another foreign sale for THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS - there's going to be a Hebrew edition in Israel! That brings the total to 19 languages (well, 20 if you include English). Not bad at all.

Meanwhile, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS is proceeding apace - I'm over 30,000 words in after just nine days' work, which puts me over my self-imposed target of 3,000 words a day. The first big action sequence is done, which involves pirates - not the wacky, Captain Jack Sparrow kind, but the murderous modern variety armed with AK-47s rather than cutlasses. This being one of my books, it won't be much of a spoiler to reveal that several of them come to outrageously gruesome ends - and since Eddie has just tracked them to their lair, I'll be writing plenty more of them tomorrow!

Chloe, We're Running Out Of Time!
26 June 2008

Guess who's at the Jack Bauer-ish position of #24 on the official chart of all books sold in the UK over the past week? That would be me! (I've been told that I would have made the Top 20 if not for the appearance of several novels from the new Richard & Judy list. A Bauer-style "Dammit!" is warranted there, I think...) THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS still sold over 10,000 copies in the week, though, so I've really got nothing to complain about!

Wasn't That An AC/DC Song?
20 June 2008

I got a phone call from my agent today while I was reading The Bookseller to tell me - in one of those astounding coincidences that generally only happen in fiction - that I was mentioned in The Bookseller! (Though the perfect fairytale gleam was slightly taken off it by the fact that the issue I was reading was last week's, since my local Borders for some reason takes seven days to put the thing on the shelves... oh well!)

So why was I mentioned? The picture below will explain all! (Click it to embiggen.)

That's right: Number One with a bullet, baby! Yay, me! Better yet, because the paperback of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS only went on sale on the Thursday of that week, it managed it with just three days of sales. So hopefully the first full week's results will be even better! (Just to freak myself out still further, I worked out that 6,654 copies sold in three days means that on average, one and a half copies were sold every minute of those three days. If I can keep up that same rate of sales for a year I'll sell over 811,000 books... though somehow I think that's the fever dream of a madman. But then, I never imagined I'd sell 6,654 copies in three days, so who knows?)

Away from genuinely stunning paperback sales figures, the trip to Cambridge went very well (over 80 hardbacks of THE TOMB OF HERCULES signed!) and I got through my radio interview on TalkSport without making an arse of myself! I was incredibly nervous, however, so it's probably a good thing that it was only a short segment - I can't help thinking I was on the brink of babbling at the end...

Final news: I plan to start writing my fourth novel, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, on Monday. (I'll be taking the weekend off to play Metal Gear Solid 4.) Expect further progress reports soon!

Celeb!
16 June 2008

Short notice as the times have only just been confirmed, but I'll be doing a signing at Heffers bookshop in Cambridge tomorrow (Tuesday) from about 12:30 on, and on Wednesday at 3:30 I'll be doing a radio interview on TalkSport. In addition, there's a radio advert for THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, which makes it sound like the latest blockbuster movie (which was kind of my intent when writing it!) - you can listen to it by clicking here. Signings, interviews, adverts... it's almost like being famous!

Also, a quick 'thank you' to Lilah and Caroline from Fayard, who organised my trip to Paris to promote the French edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS last week. The Eurostar is a very civilised way to travel!

The Chart Show(-Off)
9 June 2008

A mini, somewhat self-congratulatory update: THE TOMB OF HERCULES made it into Amazon.co.uk's top 1000 books today, at #966 to be exact. This may not sound that impressive - it's still a long way from the Sebastian Faulkses and Gordon Ramsays in the top 10 - but it took THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS over six weeks from publication to do the same, whereas HERCULES isn't even out yet! So it's definitely a case for small-scale celebration.

Ready For Launch
8 June 2008

I'm in an unusual situation for the next couple of weeks: I have a packed schedule! I suppose that's an occupational hazard of being a writer, spending ages sitting at home working, then suddenly having everything kick off at once around publication time...

So, on Wednesday the 11th I'm going to Paris to promote the French edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS for publishers Fayard, which should be an interesting experience - as a former journalist I'm used to being the one asking the questions, not answering them! Tuesday the 17th I'm doing a signing at Heffers in Cambridge (time to be confirmed), and also at some point that week I'll be doing a radio interview with Paul Hawksbee and Andy Jacobs on TalkSport (date to be confirmed). On top of all that, on 19 July I'll be a guest at the Readers' Dinner at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Oh, and as well as preparing to start writing novel #4, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, I also have the first proofs of #3, THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR, to read through. Busy!

But the biggest day for me is Thursday 12 June, when the paperback of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS and the hardback and trade paperback of THE TOMB OF HERCULES all go on sale (though you may be able to find it early in some places; I saw HERCULES in the Bournemouth branch of WH Smith this morning). It'll be nerve-wracking in some ways - even though ATLANTIS has apparently done pretty well in hardback and trade sales, the paperback edition is key, so I'll be keeping all crossable body parts crossed that it's a success.

I'm buoyed by the confidence of my publishers, Headline, though - they wouldn't have given me a second two-book deal if they didn't think I had potential! So I'll take this opportunity to thank everyone at Headline for the fantastic support they've given me, with special shout-outs going to Joanna (for her brilliant work with all the foreign-language sales), Becky (your new employers are lucky to have you) and Ross (for getting my books out to the right people, and also for inviting me to some rather good parties), and of course my editor Vicki (for always-constructive criticism, plot-hole spotting and, by no means least, being the one to champion my books in the first place!) It's been a great experience working with everyone there so far: long may it continue!

I Believe The Appropriate Response Is "BOO-YAH!"
5 June 2008

Double news today: my editor loved my synopsis for THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, so I'll be starting work on that soon (the imminent arrival of Metal Gear Solid 4 permitting...) - but she also told me that the Daily Express had done a review of THE TOMB OF HERCULES. And what a review! (Click the image to see an enlargement.)

I'll quote the best bits here as well (hee hee):

"The Hunt For Atlantis introduced McDermott as a writer of rare, almost cinematic talent. Where others' action scenes limp along unconvincingly, his explode off the page in Technicolor, IMAX-scale, Dolby digital surround sound. And like The Terminator, they never, ever stop - until you reach the last page and collapse, exhausted, onto whichever seat you've been glued to for the past few hours."

"...the story reaches its, quite literally, shattering and explosive conclusion. The kind Hollywood would love to show you but can't afford to."

"[Andy McDermott's] intentions, he says, are to write books that provide the same pulse-racing, hair-raising reactions as a blockbuster movie. Well, he's done it."

See if you can guess which part I'll be plastering across the front page of the site...

Tribal Dance
30 May 2008

I couldn't help but smile when I saw the news story today about the discovery of a previously unknown tribe in the Brazilian rainforest: namely these guys.

They've been discovered just as the paperback edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, in which a lost tribe in the Amazon jungle plays an important part, is about to go on sale - how's that for timing? I wonder if they've got an ancient temple hidden beneath the trees nearby...

The Italian Job
29 May 2008

Check out the awesome cover for the Italian edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS!

It even has its own website, so if you can read Italian, take a look.

Over the weekend, THE TOMB OF HERCULES was outselling ATLANTIS on Amazon for the first time - and by quite a big margin. Since those are all pre-orders, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for even better results when it actually goes on sale!

The Hero Is Back (Again)
22 May 2008

I'm a big film fan, and if you've read any of my books it won't come as any surprise to learn that I enjoy action movies in particular. Considering that I generally describe my novels as "Indiana Jones meets James Bond", it'll probably be even less surprising that Raiders Of The Lost Ark is one of my favourite movies of all time. (For the record, the others in my top five are Aliens, Die Hard, Back To The Future and North By Northwest. Again, your jaw may not exactly be dropping in shock to discover that.) So saying that I was looking forward to Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is rather an understatement.

One of the reasons why I wrote THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS in the first place was to get that feeling of excitement and exhilaration a great action-adventure can provide, the breathless sensation of being thrust along by events, desperate to see what happens next... and I didn't just want to experience it as a reader or viewer, I wanted to create that feeling. Since it was pretty unlikely that Hollywood would hand me hundreds of millions of dollars to do so in movie form, a novel it was (which had the advantage that I could include colossal temples housing 60-foot-high golden statues or speeding locomotives colliding head-on or people being thrown into helicopter blades, without worrying about budgets or the need to get a PG-13 rating in the States). ATLANTIS had many influences, but when the story follows a globetrotting archaeologist, it's not hard to guess that foremost among them was one Henry Jones Jr.

So the return of the fedora-sporting obtainer of rare antiquities was a big thing for me. Could it live up to two decades of expectations? Would it succumb to the temptations of lazy self-parody for cheap laughs? From a purely mercenary point of view, will it help - or hinder - sales of adventure novels? And most importantly, is it entertaining?

The answers, in turn: mostly; occasionally; hopefully the former; and a big fat yes.

I don't want to spoil anything - the film only came out today, after all - so I won't give away any specific details, other than to say my problems with it were that the extensive (and fairly obvious) use of greenscreens and CGI rather than real locations and vehicles in the big chase saps much of the tension, some of Indy and co's escapes go way beyond preposterous into outright cartoony (there's one sequence involving a tree that could have come from Road Runner - you'll know it when you see it), and the climax... Well, it'll depend on whether you can accept the switch from mysticism to science fiction. I could, more or less, but it did remind me of the endings of (in decreasing order of quality) The X Files Movie, The Mummy Returns and Mission To Mars, which is not really a good thing.

But... so what? The more important thing is that it's a new Indiana Jones movie, something I've waited 19 years to see. And it works. Harrison Ford may be a pensioner, but watching him beat up guys half his age somehow never looks anything but right. The booby-trapped tombs, the nasty creatures, the gunshots that sound like small explosions, the punches that sound like small explosions, the fedora, the whip, the fear of snakes... they're all there. Is it as good as Raiders? No, but few things are. Is it as good as the other two movies? I'd say yes. Indy's back, and it's like he never went away.

So that was me looking at the film in my old job of film critic; what about as a writer of adventure novels? Right now, I'm in the final stages of preparing my fourth novel, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, and fortunately the two stories have nothing in common in terms of plot. But there's one thing I may have to tweak before I start writing - Indy makes a comment near the end of the film about the nature of the treasure, and in my current outline I have Nina saying almost exactly the same thing, word for word!

Early Takeoff
20 May 2008

Want to get hold of a copy of THE TOMB OF HERCULES before its official release date on 12 June? Then head to Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport, where it's apparently already on sale at WH Smith! There's the minor inconvenience of needing to buy a plane ticket as well, but at least you'll have something to read on the flight... (Thanks to Ben for the info)

The Secret Is Revealed
12 May 2008

That 'secret' being the name of my third novel, which has now been accepted for publication with the new title of... THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR! (THE POWER OF EXCALIBUR was always just a working title, but I've been using it so long it'll probably take me a little while to get used to the final version. "So what's your next book called?" "The Pow- Secret Of Excalibur." "What's a 'powsecret'?")

So what is the secret of Excalibur? Well, I'm not going to give that away yet - you'll have to wait for the book!

Monsieur Bertillon Est Un Douanier
7 May 2008

Arriving at my door today was the first foreign-language edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, namely the French translation published by Fayard.

Chase's 'catchphrase' in French was translated as "Nom d'un chien, on n'est pas dans la merde!" Which my appalling schoolboy French tells me is something to do with a dog and, er, the stuff that comes out of a dog!

Look Polish, Everyone!
25 April 2008

Let's see if anyone gets that reference! The reason for such an obscure headline is to celebrate the fact that THE TOMB OF HERCULES has just been sold to Poland. More countries to follow soon, I hope!

I also got my first finished copies of the hardback and trade paperback of HERCULES this morning, and they both look fantastic. Can't wait to see them on the shelves!

Alphabet Soup
9 April 2008

Another international sale for THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, this time a slightly complicated one - the 'Chinese Complex' rights have been sold for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, but it hasn't (yet) been sold in mainland China, where it seems books are published using 'Chinese Simplified' characters. Since Hong Kong and Macao are part of China, I'm not sure if this means new sales in one country or two! (Saying it's been sold in an extra language is probably simpler...)

Flaming June
7 April 2008

No sooner do I say that THE TOMB OF HERCULES is still coming out in May than I learn no, it's actually been put back until June. This does, however, mean that the paperback and audio editions of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS and the hardback and trade paperback editions of THE TOMB OF HERCULES are now all coming out at the same time - 12 June. So it's going to be quite a big day!

It's still mildly annoying, though: firstly because I'm an impatient type of chap who wants everything now (three weeks before I can play Grand Theft Auto IV? Over a month to wait for the new Indiana Jones film?), and secondly because I get paid on publication!

The (Re)write Stuff
2 April 2008

Rewrites! A term almost as welcome to any author as 'libel lawsuit' or 'pulped'. That's what I've been doing for the last few weeks (hence the lack of updates), after my editor thought a few parts of THE POWER OF EXCALIBUR needed tightening up. Annoyingly, after thinking about it, I realised she was right. (Even more annoyingly, it meant putting a character whom I'd taken out of one section in an earlier rewrite back into it - I would have saved myself a lot of hassle if I'd stuck to my original outline!) But everything is now coming together, and yes, the book as a whole is definitely better for the changes. Which is ultimately what matters. So thank you, Vicki, for all your constructive criticism, even if we disagree about the duck thing!

In other news, the paperback release date of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS has been moved back a few weeks, to 12 June. (THE TOMB OF HERCULES is still coming out on 15 May.) 12 June also sees the release of the audio edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS by Oakhill Publishing - it comes on a whopping 14 CDs and is 18 hours long! It should be an interesting, if odd, experience for me to listen to it; when I read my work, I 'hear' it in my head in my own voice and with my own tempo and intonation, so having someone else recite it could be quite strange...

I also recorded a short video interview for my Italian publishers, Longanesi, about In cerca di Atlantide, which should be appearing on their website soon.

Herculean Sales
21 February 2008

THE TOMB OF HERCULES has just garnered its first foreign-language sale today, being sold to a publisher in Russia. It's also been sold to a UK book club.

In addition, I might be taking a trip to France to promote the French edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS (or as it'll be called across the Channel, A la poursuite de l'Atlantide) sometime in May! More details once they've been finalised, but it's all rather exciting...

Where's My Book Going To Be Sold? In-Donesia!
14 February 2008

A quick update: THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS has now been sold to an Indonesian publisher, by odd coincidence just after I decided to set part of THE COVENANT OF GENESIS in that very country. Maybe I should also decide to set other parts of it in the United States and Canada and see what happens!

Back From The Void
13 February 2008

The horror! The horror! I've just had a week with no internet connection (cheers for that, Virgin Media), and it felt like going back to the Stone Age. You don't realise just how much you take technology for granted until it stops working... Anyway, now I'm back online I decided to update the front page with the upcoming paperback edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, an advance copy of which dropped through my letterbox this morning, and the hardback of THE TOMB OF HERCULES. And now that's done, I'm going to look at every single site on the internet to see what I've missed.

Right To Romania
30 January 2008

Two little snippets of news today; the first is that THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS has been sold to a Romanian publisher, bringing the number of foreign language editions to fifteen. The second is that the German edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS comes out on September 1st, and here's the cover:

So now I know the German word for "hunt"! It'll be interesting to see how Eddie's 'catchphrase' translates...

Ex-calibur
28 January 2008

THE POWER OF EXCALIBUR is finished! I submitted it to Headline today after one final, nitpicky, have-I-missed-any-dumb-typing-errors readthrough. (Which I almost certainly have even now - it's amazing/horrifying how easy it is to miss them.) Final wordcount: 125,747 words - quite a reduction from the original 168,000!

However, I can't kick back and relax just yet, as no sooner do I finish proofreading one novel than I have to proofread another - in this case, THE TOMB OF HERCULES. It's the last chance to spot any mistakes which may have crept in during the typesetting process - like one I found today, the sentence "Chase flashed him a grin" somehow turning into "Chase flashed him again", which makes the scene very different!

Busy, Busy, Busy
23 January 2008

Firstly, a quick apology to anyone who's emailed me but hasn't had a reply yet; I've been completely wrapped up in doing the revisions for THE POWER OF EXCALIBUR since the New Year, and have also got to check the final proofs of THE TOMB OF HERCULES, so I'll respond properly when my workload's cleared, I promise!

Two bits of news: the first is that Headline has sent me the final cover for the hardback and trade paperback editions of THE TOMB OF HERCULES, which I will now present...

Pretty cool, eh? And the second bit of news is that there's a full-page interview with me in issue 11 of Sci-Fi Now magazine, which has just gone on sale in the UK. So many thanks to everyone on the mag!

Anything else since my last update? Oh, just that THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS reached Amazon.co.uk's Top 10 Thrillers chart... (#7, in fact: now to see if it can get any higher!)


Happy New Year!
3 January 2008

To keep the News page from getting too long, I thought this would be as good a time as any to break it up, so the 2007 page is now available here.

Anyway, Happy New Year to you all - it's certainly got off to a promising start for me! THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS not only reached #174 in Amazon.co.uk's sales rankings today, its highest to date, but also made the top ten of all thrillers on Amazon. And there's more - the book has just been sold to Bulgaria and Turkey, bringing the total number of countries to 18.

I've had quite a lot of emails from people all around the world telling me how much they've enjoyed the book, so thank you to everyone - and look out for THE TOMB OF HERCULES this spring!

Click here for 2007 news