The Sequel to ‘That Scoundrel Émile Dubois’ and ‘Ravensdale’ due out soon

Now is the time to wish all readers of this blog,  and all my wonderful writer friends, Season’s Greetings.

On that, I wish I had that plug in with snow drifting across the screen that everyone else seems to display at this time of year, but I believe you need to have the self hosted wordpress to enjoy that. No matter. ‘I ask everyone to picture a snowstorm…’ as I once heard a drama teacher say. Update: lovely Jo Danilo has just told me how to do it; so here are those snowflakes.

In common with many areas, we had the real thing here last week. A foot of the stuff, so that for days people round here had to abandon car dependency and walk down to the town. People actually started to talk to each other and strange things like that.

Snow and plug ins or not, I’ve been in a jubilant mood these last few days, because at last, I have finished the final edits of “Where Worlds Meet’ the sequel to both ‘That Scoundrel Émile Dubois’ and ‘Ravensdale’ . I hope to bring it out after Christmas. Well, at this time of year, everything is ‘After Christmas’. I hoped to bring it out before Christmas, but that schedule is too tight for the formatters, who have a backlog of work, no doubt of Christmas novellas.

That surge of relief the author has, when finally, s/he has read that manuscript through  for inconsistencies, anachronisms, and typos for the last time!

Now, you can get on with the next project. Well, there always is a new project, isn’t there?

That is the problem with reading something over and again. It slightly ceases to entertain.  There will be a time when once more, you can bear to look it in the face – but re-reading can be torment when you come on those same jokes and funny scenes again and again. You do remember that you thought they were funny when you wrote them; you can only hope that the reader doesn’t feel as weary on encuntering them the first time, as you do, on your sixth reading…

Being dyslexic and so having a mild form of ‘word blindness’ , I am particularly prone to missing those typos: what would I do without my Beta readers? And, it’s amazing how none dyslexic authors say that they have the same problem, and some typo becomes invisible. Ah yes, I know there are copy editors. But the expense, the expense…

Anyway, back to ‘Where Worlds Meet’.

You can download ‘That Scoundrel Émile Dubois’ for free here

Spoilers follow.

Readers may remember that Goronwy Kenrick’s half vampire household on the Famau Mountain is a menace not only through their liking for a nice sup of blood, but through their time travelling ambitions.

Kenrick has come back from a journey to Transylvania, having accidentally killed his beloved wife. Having no faith in another life, he now set his mind on time travel as a form of reunion.

Being unable to find a capable enough mathematician who will work with him willingly, he uses his siren second wife to lure in the rakish French émigré  Émile Dubois, then besotted with his aunt’s companion Sophie de Courcy, but at odds with her and seeking diversion elsewhere.

Gothic adventure amongst the snows on the isolated Famau Mountain in North Wales in the bitter winter of 1794-1795 follows – some of it alarming, much of it comic. Finally, the mutual hatred between Émile and Kenrick culminates in a brutal knife fight where Émile and his ally Georges – as they think – stab Kenrick and his man Arthur through the heart.

They believe they have killed them. But an explosion soon follows, which draws the bodies away before they can sever their heads.

End of Spoilers…

Three years have passed.  Kenrick and Arthur plan to return from that other sphere in the time distortion, and Kenrick, having failed to achieve reunion with his wife there, once again sets to draw in Émile into his schemes. He has a new accomplice in another siren, Ceridwen’s cousin Guinevere.

Émile and his cousin Reynaud Ravensdale, the eponymous anti hero of ‘Ravensdale’ available from Amazon here,  are now on their way up to North Wales to investigate if all is yet still at Kenrick’s house, and the sharpshooter Reynaud carries silver bullets. Kenrick sends through some odd creations of his own to waylay them.

Kenrick – who always suffered from what was once known as a ‘servant problem’ – has been far from idle in his other sphere, and has created a private army of monster men.

…And if they don’t deter Émile and Reynaud, perhaps his new siren accomplice will.

Meanwhile, he sends ahead his man Arthur to prepare his house for his own return. Unluckily for Émile and Sophie, their maid, the sultry Éloise, has always had a soft spot for Arthur. When she comes upon him, bloodied and seemingly dying, she can’t resist helping him, paving the way for another full scale confrontation between the deadly enemies.

Can Sophie – with the invaluable help of Agnes – her mentor and nominally her maid –  change the course of events, so the men and half men do not once again descend into another bloodbath?