“Your wish may be granted. Blackhand wants me to forge a letter from some obscure lord no one’s ever heard of that’ll get your Murdering Bastard into the Emperor’s Guard.”

“You can do that?”

“Of course I can!”

“You going to?”

Seth caught Fings’ eye. When he was quite sure he had it, he dragged it to his tray of sodden pastries and then gave Fings a baleful look. “Blackhand asked nicely. What do you think?”

What he could have been doing – what he should have been doing if his life hadn’t abruptly turned into an ash-heap six months ago – was sitting in the nice warm undercroft of a nice cosy temple in front of a nice hot fire. What he should have been doing was putting his feet up, toasting his toes, sipping warm spiced wine and chewing the fat with other senior novices and junior priests, discussing politics, theology and which of the fat old Lightbringers who lorded it over them was the most likely to drop dead before winter ended. He missed that. Truth be told, he missed that a lot.

“Don’t read the forbidden books.” What do you do? Read the forbidden books. “Don’t sneak into the forbidden crypt.” What do you do? Fuck about in the forbidden crypt. “Definitely don’t go into the forbidden catacombs.” What do you do? Not that they’d caught him on the last one.

Of course, no one had said that all these things were forbidden, exactly. That was the galling part. A novice was simply supposed to know by some trick of divine telepathy, and then be a good little cleric and not do them.

But you did know. You knew perfectly well.

All he’d ever wanted was to serve the Sun. To understand the four Divinities.

Yes, and if you’d managed to do as you were bloody well told for five minutes, maybe that’s exactly what would have happened, eh? What you wanted, you cretin, was a little patience.

The end of a lifetime of dreams. There wasn’t even a shred of injustice to it. Warning after warning and he hadn’t stopped. Didn’t even know why, not really. He just… couldn’t.

“I hope you’re fleecing him,” said Fings.

Across the archery field, Sulfane was running from the stump of a tree. Seth watched as he vaulted onto a low platform and fired at one of the targets. He looked very determined. Dynamic. Intense. All good qualities a soldier was supposed to have, Seth supposed. He wasn’t sure where being as mad as a bag of spiders fitted, whether that was good or bad or whether it simply didn’t matter when you were standing in front of a thousand armoured horses bearing down on you at a gallop. Probably helped, didn’t it?

“I said I hope you’re fleecing him.”

“Blackhand? You must be joking.”

<p2>I’ve been this way for as long as can remember. As a child, blissfully ignorant that I was different from anyone else, steadily more aware through my teens of how it made me special. It did feel like a gift back then, the way I could summon any moment of my life and live it again, fresh and bright and with nothing faded. Tests and exams were easy. I could remember – can remember, even now – everything my teachers said in the classroom.

And then boys. The day I first saw Declan. The look in his eye, the first words he ever spoke to me, the first time we kissed; that first summer when we discovered each other, the sense of a love that went far beyond anything I’ll find again. Even now, after a bad day, I can lie awake and relive those memories and it’s all as vivid as ever: the colour and the joy, the anticipation, the love that brings tears to my eyes. My mind is wired differently from yours. The doctors have a name for it and there are only a handful of people in the world who live their lives as I do.

But a blessing?

Imagine the moments that broke your heart and crushed you flat. A loss, a humiliation, a betrayal. Imagine every slight, every rejection, every disappointment, all kept polished for safe keeping in a little chest inside you. Imagine the things you did and wish you hadn’t; every word spoken or received in anger; every regret as fresh as the moment it was made. Imagine every mistake and all the words never said that might have changed your life. Imagine them forever lurking, never knowing when they might steal out and take you.

A gift?

They say that time heals, but for me it festers. Where your scars fade, mine stay raw. On good days, my memory will take me to places that others can only dream of finding. On bad days, it rips the soul from my chest and shreds it in front of me.

Right now . . . ?

Right now, the phone is ringing. My hand hovers over the receiver. Whatever happens next, I will remember its every detail for the rest of my life.

I close my eyes and force myself to breathe.

It’s been a long, long day and I have a sense that something terrible is coming.

Agent Laura Patterson of the Magentan Investigation Bureau – the Tesseract, as everyone calls it these days – sits in a quiet office. She’s alone and it’s late. Everyone else has long since gone home.

<EX>Summary Progress Report: Suspect: Chase Hunt</EX>

Case notes. Nothing official. A report in progress. Unseen, Instantiation One watches her read.

<EX>Primary suspect in the killing of Walter Becker outside Mercy hospital. Associated data theft from Mercy. Arson. Abduction, assault and imprisonment of Kamaljit Kaur. Post-mortem mutilation of Doctor Nicholas Steadman (bullet in the head several hours after death – same gun as Becker).</EX>

On the desk beside her is a small, sealed evidence bag. Inside is a single hair. Attached is a DNA analysis.

<EX>Evidence suggests a well-resourced and experienced professional intelligence operative with excellent fieldcraft and marksmanship. Intimate familiarity with operational practices and procedures of the Tesseract and with the Firstfall surveillance network. Clear connection to Darius Vishakh: recommend bringing this up in Vishakh’s questioning.

Query: Becker fits for the Steadman and Kettler murders. Sadly too dead to interrogate. Did Becker do it or did Hunt set him up?

Query: Is Chase Hunt a real person or a shell?</EX>

Patterson deletes the last line and types new words in its place.

<EX>Query: Chase Hunt is one of us? Or was?</EX>

She pauses and thinks, looks at the evidence bag and hisses between her teeth.

‘Alysha Rause.’ But everyone knows that Alysha Rause died six years ago.

Agent Patterson files the report in her personal workspace where no one else will find it, pockets the evidence bag and goes home. Through the cameras in the Tesseract, through the Servant in her apartment, Instantiation One watches.

Scientists working with the Magenta Institute Polar Expedition have released images from ground penetrating radar of an object visible through the Magentan polar ice. The object, discovered during a routine survey, was initially mistaken for a rock formation; however the new survey shows the object to be metallic in nature and categorically not a natural formation. The Magenta Institute Polar Expedition commenced its survey of Magenta’s polar regions two months ago with the objective of. . . Details

‘It’s been all over the media today. Everyone’s talking about it.’

I stared at the images. ‘It’s a spaceship.’ Couldn’t really be that though.

‘You mean it looks like a spaceship.’ She was chiding me.

‘I suppose. It looks a lot like a spaceship.’

‘Duh! That’s why it’s all over every news channel and why it’s going to break off-world too. Then we’ll find out– ’

‘How long has it been there?’

Liss cackled. ‘That’s the question! At least a hundred years. Maybe a lot more. Was it here before the first settlers came? Because if it was then it has to be a Masters’ ship. Unless . . . unless it was here before the Masters came too, in which case . . .’

It was late, and I was dog-tired. ‘It’s probably a rock, you know? An odd-shaped rock. Or maybe it’s an old Fleet interplanetary cruiser that had some sort of accident back in the early days. They came down where they could and . . . Mind you, it would have to be in the first colonial days. Before there was a global satellite network and search and rescue. That would narrow it down to . . .’

Cox huddled in the shelter of a service tunnel. He slipped a hand into the pocket of his K-polymer, a battered hand-me-down all-weather skin long past its prime. His fingers kneaded the bag of pills inside. Three left. Powdered and pressed alien life that scrambled human neurochemistry into a hallucinatory mess, concocted by some off-world chemist who’d spent years working on the formula, according to JoJo, but the raw materials grew right here on Magenta. The pills more than made up for the rain and the wind and the oppressive gravity.

The sound of the rain drew him in, the hiss and crackle; now and then it seemed he could pick a single crashing droplet from the white noise wall of thunderclaps. They trickled their way into the tunnel, mingling with chemical stains on the concrete floor into a sheen of rainbow colours. They slipped into his head, painting the inside of his skull with a lurid iridescence, a shimmering of kaleidoscopic tentacles.

Some dim recess of consciousness reminded him that Rangesh was supposed to be here. Any time now, with a fistful of government credits to take one of Jojo’s magic pills for ten times what Cox had paid. Rangesh was such a sucker.

A monitor on the wall flickered on and off, fritzing in the rain. Cox left the colour-sheen stains singing to themselves and walked closer. Its coded flashes meant something, some deep encryption hiding the meaning of the universe, a message unravelling the insane purposes of the Masters who had re-shaped Earth and transported humanity across the stars. He stood in front of it and stared until some long-dormant sense twitched, shifting with the flickering monitor. Behind the oblique on-off flash of numbers were images. Deep space. Movement. Colours of pixelated music. His head felt swollen, blowing up like a balloon. Deeper and deeper into the flicker, as whips of wind lashed him with rain and then were gone.

For one still and eternal moment an understanding hit him that was both perfect and terrible, like peeling back the skin of the universe and glimpsing the mechanisms beneath. Like seeing how the meticulous clicking of electrons between quantum states was in fact run by tiny bearded elves who, as you stared at them, looked back and saluted. Just say the word, boss. Whatever you want.

He started to giggle. A trickle of blood oozed from his nose. So this was what nirvana felt like.

In the flicker of the monitor he saw a figure behind him, a watching monster with arms too long to be real, dressed in a swirling coat. The monster grinned, baring his teeth. Cox grinned too, laughter breaking out of him like water from a cracked dam. There was blood in his eyes and in his mouth. The octopus inside his head stirred. The tunnel began to melt. The monster didn’t move as the octopus tore it to pieces.

Rapt with transcendent ecstasy, Cox haemorrhaged, quietly and gently torn apart, a ripped red wetness across warped tunnel walls.

There’s an excerpt here, so you can see what you’re letting yourself in for.

So what this is is a bit of an experiment while other projects are going about their usual business through more conventional means. Venture Press, as best I can tell, sit somewhere between conventional publishing and self-publishing.You can sort of see that from the cover and I dare say there’s a typo or two more than usual. Nevertheless here it is, so make what you will of it. I’m interested in criticism of the formatting and production and I’m interested to whether anyone actually buys a copy. If this works out then it could be a means to put out something more closely related to the Memory of Flames books.

Here’s the cover. Enjoy or not as your tastes take you. In the desperately unlikely event that I find any reviews that aren’t Amazon or Goodreads, I’ll be sure to put them up here…

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 to London, Falkland is introduced to a young man of letters – a polemicist and pamphleteer by the name of John Milton. His cherished sister Anne has vanished, apparently abducted by supporters of the king.

Falkland’s task – to identify the culprit and return Anne unharmed – will lead him to a brutal murder buried in the maelstrom of the War and to a secret that must be snuffed out at all costs.

The Protector was published in hardcover on July 30th 2015. Early reviews have been entusiastic.

“I was captivated from the first sentence…” Linda’s Book Bag

“…a thoroughly enjoyable and involving Civil War mystery…” For Winter Nights

“I heartily recommend both books to you.” Dorinda Balchin

“The Best 5 historical books of the season.” Sunday Express

There is no warmth in the ancient fortress of the Pinnacles, timeless bastion against the dragons. The dragon-rider Hyrkallan is a harsh king with a loathing venom for all who practise alchemy. His consort is the mad queen Jaslyn, who once woke a hatchling dragon because she thought there could be peace between men and dragons without the poison of alchemy, a madness that came to her after Speaker Zafir beheaded her mother. The union between this king and queen once carried the desert realms of the north to war and victory, but there is neither love nor desire nor affection between them. Hyrkallan dreams of glories he will never see returned. Queen Jaslyn thinks of the simple things she cannot have. To be with her sister Lystra. To be with a dragon and fly once more. To be left alone and never be touched.

Together and apart Hyrkallan and his queen lay tattered claim to realms now ruled by monsters. They make their home with a thousand souls inside the Moonlit Mountain, above the fire-gutted dragon-wrecked majesty that was once the Silver City. Safe within their fortress they search the endless tunnels for relics of the Silver King, the ancient half-god sorcerer who once tamed dragons. It is said, in whispers, that the old queens of the Silver City were one by one driven mad by the half-god’s Enchanted Palace, whose white stone walls shimmer with their own inner light.
The last of those queens was Zafir, vanished when the dragons shattered their chains of alchemy.

The Black Moon has returned, Zafir is coming home and the dragons are waiting. Will anyone be able to stop them?

The Silver Kings is a direct sequel to The Splintered God. Read it on its own and it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. Or maybe it’s utterly wonderful, who knows. But it’s the tenth book in a series and draws on all of what has gone before, soI’d be surprised if it works well on its own.

Excerpt: in which Zafir returns to the world in which she was born.

Be honest: you’re not going to read this unless you’ve ready some of the rest, not the last volume of a series like this. And I’ll be honest too – nor should you. It won’t make a great deal of sense. So reviews are unexpected and largely by the by – at this point you’re either in or your out. But I’ll post them up as and when i stumble across them anyway.

“No one does dragons like Deas…” Upcoming4me

]]> http://www.stephendeas.com/the-silver-kings-june-2015/feed/ 3 http://www.stephendeas.com/empires-extraction/ http://www.stephendeas.com/empires-extraction/#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2014 11:16:47 +0000 Stephen http://www.stephendeas.com/?p=4115

“This groundbreaking collaboration between two Gollancz authors tells of the invasion of Earth by two different alien races – at the same time. Two men become aware of the threat, and must work to sabotage the invasion plans and see off the aliens. Each book follows one hero, uncovering the threat to humanity and the world from their point of view. Each book can be read on its own, and will give the reader a complete, kinetic, fast-paced military SF story. But read both books and the reader gets something else – another view of (some of) the same events and crossover points, culminating in [redacted, but the cover might be a clue]. The two books can be read in any order, but together they tell the story of humanity caught in the crossfire between two deadly alien races, who have made Earth their battleground…”

So there’s the blurb from the publisher about what Gav (Gavin Smith) and I were trying to do with these two books.

“Two alien races have fought a long and bitter war among the stars. And now their conflict has bought them to our world, and the end of humanity is nigh. We have something they want, something which can’t be found anywhere else in the universe. Neither side can afford to show their hand too early and attract the attention of their enemies, but their plans are in place and their agents are at work. When two men – a soldier and a policeman – stumble into the alien plots, their investigations will lead them to the aliens and, eventually, to each other. And to war.”

And there’s another. I think that about covers it. Speaking of covers…

Hopefully it’s clear enough that these two novels are joined at the hip. Gavin wrote Infiltration and also a couple of short scenes  in Extraction.

The opening chapter of Extraction is here.

“A neat idea, neatly executed.” The Financial Times. Presumably because we didn’t flatten the City after all.

“Once the action kicks in there is some brilliantly realised military science fiction on offer.” The Book Bag. (This is one of those irritating reviews where someone actually pays close attention and is critical and says stuff to which an author ought to pay attention. Yes, I did cherry-pick this quote).

“Taken as a whole the books just about work. EMPIRES INFILTRATION is the better by a country mile.” Frightfest. Le sigh.

“Fast-paced and blackly humerous with a spattering of decent characters, and the crossovers add to the fun.” SFX (more quote cherry-picking – if you prefer you can have “One tenth Iain M Banks-lite … 90% is half urban thriller, half Michael Bay’s Transformers” I’m not sure that was meant in a good way, but I’m shallow enough to like it).

“All round a cracking piece of fiction and something that a lot of Science Fiction fans can really get behind especially as the tales not only keep you hooked but leave you wondering throughout if mankind can triumph against such odds. Magic.” Falcatta Times (a review of both Empires books at once)

And finally a few odds and sods. Articles and the like.

A few fun facts about neurotransmitters. Sci-Fi-London

Gav and I interview each other. Wondrous Reads. And criticise one another… SFFWorld

Another extract at GeekPlanetOnline ]]> http://www.stephendeas.com/empires-extraction/feed/ 0 http://www.stephendeas.com/the-royalist-september-2014/ http://www.stephendeas.com/the-royalist-september-2014/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2014 07:10:30 +0000 Stephen http://www.stephendeas.com/?p=3967 William Falkland is a dead man.

A Royalist dragoon who fought against Parliament, he is currently awaiting execution at Newgate prison. Yet when he is led away from Newgate with a sack over his head, it is not the gallows to which they take him, but to Oliver Cromwell himself. Cromwell has heard of Falkland’s reputation as an investigator and now more than ever he needs a man of conscience. His New Model Army are wintering in Devon but mysterious deaths are sweeping the camp. In return for his freedom, Falkland is despatched to uncover the truth. With few friends and a slew of enemies, Falkland soon learns there is a dark demon at work, one who won’t go down without a fight. But how can he protect Cromwell’s army from such a monster and, more importantly, will he be able to protect himself?

The Royalist is published in hardcover on 25th September, and in paperback early next year. Here’s the opening chapter.

Reviews:

“There are no rose-tinted glasses in this tale, and for me that’s its brilliance…” Parmenion books

“The Royalist is a fine novel, immersing us so deeply into the dark and dirty world of Cromwell’s Model Army during one particularly cold and chilling winter” For Winter Nights

“A perfect read for fans of Shona MacLean and C.J. Sansom.” We Love This Book

“Deas … integrates history and narrative knowledgeably, with wisdom that shines through in Falkland’s voice based on his experience of the tragedy of war.” The Historical Novel Society

“a very enjoyable and refreshing read that gave you a new understanding of the time and the New Model army and how it was anything but united” Reality is a Bore

“The author writes with clear understanding of the period in which the book is set and makes the characters believable.” Jaffareadstoo

“This is a clever, convoluted tale steeped in historical detail.” Lovereading

“Deas has delivered an intriguing, drama-laden, heart-thumping crime thriller with historical accuracy and authenticity. I found myself sorely disappointed at the last page; not with the ending, but that it had ended!” Storminthestacks

I try to post the critical reviews that are actually thoughtful too.

“The hero has promise for future adventures but the ‘modern man’ personality needs to be amended.” (off Amazon)

Yes, my protagonist is world-weary and no, I don’t think the “modern man” personality is likely to change. But it’s a fair review.