Correct as of February 2021. I will periodically update this for major changes.
Fantasy as Stephen Deas and Crime as SK Sharp
The Moonsteel Crown is published by Angry Robot in the US and UK on February 9th 2021. I Know What I Saw is published by Arrow in the UK in October 2020 (e-book only) and January 2021 (Paperback)
A Memory of Flames:
Click here for Maps and Gazetteers
The Adamantine Palace (2009) is in print in UK/Australia/NZ/SA, France, USA, Germany and Poland and might or might not be on its way to Bulgaria. The King of the Crags (2010) and The Order of the Scales (2011) are in UK/Australia/NZ/SA, France, Germany and US bookshops but NOT Poland for reasons beyond my control.
The Silver Kings series The Black Mausoleum (UK August 2012) is a stand-alone novel in the same setting as the Memory of Flames series. Dragon Queen (2013), The Splintered Gods (2014) and The Silver Kings (2015) pick up threads and characters from the Memory of Flames series and also pick up some threads from the Thief-Taker's Apprentice series and The Black Mausoleum. There are no overseas deals for these (you're not as sorry about that as I am) but it should be possible to get them in the US. That's going to be that for the dragons at least for a while.
Fantasy as Stephen Deas: The Thief-Taker's Apprentice
The Thief-Taker's Apprentice (2010) is out in the UK and Poland. Parts two and three, The Warlock's Shadow, (2011) and The King's Assassin (2012), are out in the UK. Allegedly all three are available now in the US as both physical and e-book editions. Some left-over threads of the story are picked up in Dragon Queen.
Science Fiction as Sam Peters
What do you get if you take every fragment left behind after someone dies? Every electronic message, every image caught on every camera, every word caught by every microphone? If you crushed every trace left behind onto a blank waiting canvas? I ask myself every day because that’s how I was made, the embryo of an artificial intelligence fertilised with a dead woman’s data in a shell of metal and plastic. I did not ask for my creation, but here I am: a ghost summoned back to her husband’s side. Alysha 2.0. Keon wants nothing more than to find out who killed me. The problem is, I think I already know.
The Magenta series: From Darkest Skies (2017), From Distant Stars (2018) and From Divergent Suns (2019) all published by Gollancz under the pen name Sam Peters
Fantasy as Nathan Hawke: Gallow
The Fateguard series: The Crimson Shield (2013), Cold Redemption (2013), The Last Bastion (2013), all published by Gollancz under the pen-name Nathan Hawke
Historical Fiction as S J Deas (William Falkland)
William Falkland has spent six years fighting for the king. It's four years since he last saw his family, and all he wants to do is go home; but first, to save himself from Parliament's noose, he must play the part of Cromwell's reluctant intelligencer. The first William Falkland book, the Royalist, is published by Headline in September this year. The second William Falkland mystery, The Protector featuring John Milton (a wonderfully colourful character, it turns out) comes out in July 2015.
Historical Fiction as Stephen Deas (Bulldog Drummond)
Bulldog Drummond (a character first created in the 1920s by HC McNeile) is a retired verteran of the first world war with too much restless energy on his hands and a penchant for adventure and trouble. I like to think of him as James Bond's occasional uncle. More than a dozen Bulldog Drummond books were written between 1919 and 1940, along with a similar number of movies. Ian Fleming cited Drummond as one of the influences behind the character of James Bond. At present three Bulldog Drummond novellas are in the pipeline (Dead Man's Gate (2014), The Faceless Men (due late 2015), The Jaguar Mask (late 2015)). They will be available as e-books only through Piqwiq.
Science Fiction as Stephen Deas
LoneFire (September 2015, e-book only): half space opera, half cyberpunk, half Tourette's Syndrome and something of an experiment in something between conventional and self-publishing.
Science Fiction as Gavin Deas
Elite: Wanted (May 2014 e-book, October 2014 hardcopy), a tie-in novel to the game Elite:Dangerous. Co-written with Gavin Smith under the name Gavin Deas. Empires: Extraction (November 2014), another partnership with Gavin Smith, co-released with Gavin's Empires: Infiltration.
The Nathan Hawke site has an interactive map and some extra short stories. All three books are out in paperback. An omnibus edition is available as an e-book and a print edition is on its way in later 2014 - the omnibus has all the extras included in it. Three short stories were released over the first half of 2015: The Anvil, Solance and Dragon's Reach:
If you're still here, what follows is a list of all of my published work of any significance - novels first, then short stories - in chronological publication order. If you're really, really interested, you can click on a title to see details, full-scale cover images and any reviews I happen to have noticed. I used to pay a lot more attention to that sort of thing for the earlier books.
Novels
The Emperor of Aria has been murdered. Dead Men walk the streets and the Empire has been thrown into crisis Myla, Fings, and Seth, however, couldn’t give a shit They’re too busy trying to survive on the cold, Sulk-struck streets of the city of Varr, committing petty violence and pettier crimes to earn their keep in the Unrulys, a motley gang led by Blackhand.
Until the Unrulys are commissioned to steal a mysterious item to order, by an equally mysterious patron, the trio are thrust right into the bitter heart of a struggle for the Crown, where every faction is after what they have. Forced to lie low in a city on lockdown, Myla, Fings, and Seth will have to work together if they want to save their skins. But for thieves, working together can sometimes be… difficult.
Imagine a heart ready to burst with joy. Christmas mornings as a child, passing your final exams, the thrill of a first kiss – all that and more. Imagine being able to reach and find those glorious moments whenever you want, the feelings fresh and intense, undiminished by time. Imagine sinking into them when the world grows heavy, always there whenever you call. If I describe my perfect memory to you like this, does it sound like a gift? Something precious, even something to envy?
Five years ago, Keon fled the colony world of Magenta to Earth, running away from his grief. Now he’s come home, bringing with him with the two things that between them have the power to unravel the truth: an all-consuming hunger to know what happened to his wife . . .
And me. A highly illegal simulated personality. LISS. ALYSHA RAUSE 2.0.
I did not ask for my creation, but here I am: a pseudo-Alysha built from a dead woman’s data and the face she showed the world, a ghost summoned to her husband’s side. Keon wants nothing more than to find out who killed me. The problem is, I think I already know.
What do you get if you take every fragment left behind after someone dies? Every electronic message, every image caught on every camera, every word caught by every microphone? If you sent a computer program across the world and crushed every trace of a person onto a blank waiting canvas?
My name is LISS, and that’s how I was made. KEON made me in memory of his wife ALYSHA the embryo of an artificial intelligence fertilised with a dead woman’s data in a shell of metal and plastic. The United Nations Right to Uniqueness and Individuality Act makes my creation illegal on every world, yet here I am. Everything about me is the way you’d remember Alysha if you knew her; whatever mask she chose to wear for you, I wear it too. I talk like Alysha, sound like her, move like her. My gestures, my mannerisms, my smiles, all of them are hers; but the person behind those masks, the private inner person that was the true Alysha? She’s gone. In his head Keon knows that, but in his heart… His heart doesn’t want to know.
When a minor celebrity dies of an apparent drug overdose, Keon is drawn into a world of drug dealers and quantum chemists, of quasi-religious anti-technologist fanatics and the world of xeno-gens, hallucinogens engineered from Magenta’s native lifeforms. Cashing in old favours, Koen and Liss piece together his wife’s last days. As past and present converge he closes in on a conspiracy to re-engineer humanity from the ground up; ultimately he must choose between knowing the truth behind Alysha’s end or exposing a sinister cabal whose aim is to change the very essence of what it means to be human, no matter the cost.
Half cyberpunk, half space opera, half Tourettes Syndrome, LoneFire was started a long long time ago by a younger me. It’s raw in places and not as refined as it might be in others but always had a soft spot for this one. It’s not like most of my other work, but if you read [...]
Summer1646. The First Civil War is over and England licks its wounds. But the killing is not yet done.
William Falkland, former favourite of King Charles turned reluctant investigator for Oliver Cromwell, seeks his missing family. Time and again his hopes are destroyed; but Cromwell is not finished with his former intelligencer. Summoned [...]
Black Moon comes, round and round.
Black Moon comes, all fall down.
-Children’s rhyme, Deephaven
The first drone returned with a sample of the material. There wasn’t very much of it. A complex neurotransmitter of some sort, clearly related to the biology of the indigenous species. The hybrid and the Exponential analysed it in every way they could imagine while the hybrid installed the entangled pions that allowed the Exponential direct access to the Hive. After they were done, they did it all again to be sure. By then, the hybrid construct and as many drones as the frigate could reasonably spare were in transit between the two ships. The hybrid and the duplicate of the Exponential’s mind would track back along the freighter’s course to the world from which this catastrophic chemistry came. The journey would take some thirty-five years so they’d all have plenty of time to think about it.
William Falkland has spent six years fighting for the king. It’s four years since he last saw his family, and all he wants to do is go home; but first, to save himself from Parliament’s noose, he must play the part of Cromwell’s reluctant intelligencer. The first William Falkland book, the Royalist, is published by Headline in September this year. The second will come out in 2015.
The second instalment of the Silver Kings quartet and a direct sequel to Dragon Queen. Baros Tsen T’Varr has unleashed the dragon-queen Zafir and the monstrous Diamond Eye, and now the consequences are coming for both of them.
She fired at the ceiling. That got the attention of every spacer in the bar quick enough. Once she had it she asked:
‘So which one of you fuckers flies the Unkindness?’
Elite: Wanted is a tie-in book for the forthcoming Elite: Dangerous game it’s available to download in e-book form, while a hardback version will be released later in the year timed to coincide with the general release of the game.
Bulldog Drummond (a character first created in the 1920s by HC McNeile) is a retired verteran of the first world war with too much restless energy on his hands and a penchant for adventure and trouble. I like to think of him as James Bond’s occasional uncle.
The Crimson Shield is the first of a trilogy written under the pan-name Nathan Hawke. The dragon books might owe their politics, their spread of viewpoints and their emotionally troubled characters to the New Wave of Grimdark, but Nathan Hawke’s Gallow belongs to an older time when fantasy was a little more straightforward. Gemmell, Lieber, Howard, the heroic fantasy and swords and sorcery that, to be honest, has always sat a little more comfortably as a reading pleasure for me.
Dragon Queen is the first volume in The Silver Kings series, which follows events and characters from the Memory of Flames trilogy and also from the Thief-Taker trilogy. It was always my intention to bring these two series together. Dragon Queen is the start of a new story drawing on characters from both previous series.
“Nothing can stop me.
Nothing can hurt me.”
“And then later he got up and walked away and joined the Hawks as they marched out of their camp, as they turned towards the south and towards the war that the thief-taker had made.”
The last of the Thief-Taker’s Apprentice trilogy.
Chronologically The Black Mausoleum follows The Splintered Gods, but was published between The Order of the Scales and Dragon Queen, as it set in the aftermath of the former’s events. While it ties in with the other dragon stories, it’s the most standalone of any of the dragon stories.
The Black Mausoleum. Someone’s going to die.
The secind volume of the Thief-Taker’s Apprentice series. Two years have passed. Berren is becoming a man and learning the thief-taker’s trade; But the thief-taker’s own past is about to catch up with both of them.
“We are the masters of the dragons, no matter what the kings and queens of the realms might think. They sit in their palaces and wallow in their decadence and toss out their decrees and edicts, but without us they are nothing. We hold the keys to their power and they know it. We are their slaves and their puppets and their eyes are ever watching us, for they all, deep down, wonder the same thing: Who does my eyrie-master truly serve? Is he bound to the alchemists as his position demands? Has he been bought by my enemies? Or is he mine, owned, heart and soul? Have my bribes and threats been enough?”
The third and final volume of the Memory of Flames trilogy (following from The Adamantine Palace and The King of the Crags)
UK/Austrailia/New Zealand publication: 2011
French/US/German publication: 2012
“No one steals a thief-taker’s purse. Really. No one does. It’s a bit like walking up to the Overlord and spitting at him. Dim as a donkey’s arse.” The first volume of the Thief-Taker’s Apprentice trilogy. Berren is a street-rat pickpocket whose life is about to change when he tries to steal the wrong purse.
The new Speaker has been crowned, and in the Night of the Knives that follows has murdered or imprisoned many rivals. A dragon-war is brewing, but whose side will fly the dragons of the elusive yet powerful King of the Crags.
UK/Austrailia/New Zealand publication: 2010
French/US/German publication: 2011
The first volume of the Memory of Flames trilogy. The current Speaker of the Realms is about to abdicate in favour of his chosen successor. There are differing ideas as to who this should be. The most likely candidate is set on cementing her position by marrying her youngest daughter to the first son of an old rival. As a wedding gift she means to give him her most precious prize: a pure white dragon.
UK publication date: 19th march 2009
Austrailia/New Zealand publication date: 4th May 2009
French publication date: 17th June 2009
US publication date: February 2010
German publication date: 1st January 2010
Polish publication: 13th May 2011
Short Stories
A trilogy of novelettes following some of the characters from The Crimson Shield / Cold Redemption / The Last Bastion. Released worldwide as e-books in February/April/June 2015 respectively.
The Sin Eater first appeared in Unexpected Journeys, the BFS anthology published for the 2013 World Fantasy Convention.
The Genre for Japan appeal was launched in the Spring of 2011 to raise money for victims of the recent earthquake near Japan. Many people gave generously of their time, their creativity and their money. I offered up two days of my time, Many suggestions were made as to what could be done with it, and I honestly didn’t expect much interest. But there was, and an interest that far exceeded my expectations. This story is the result of that auction, written on request for the winning bidder, Michael Amouyal. Michael, I salute you.
Probably the first thing I ever finished that was worth reading, this started life as an exercise in descriptive prose and ended up surprising me. With thanks to Lord Byron.