It’s almost a year since I last published – I’m not slacking (!!), I’m working on a 3-book series about a rage virus. My plan is to have the first two ready to go and the third underway before I publish Book #1. The SFV-1 series is a continuing story rather than three stand-alones, so the ‘9 month gap while I write the next book’ practice wouldn’t work in this case.
Can’t give a date yet, or even a definite month, but I’m hoping to see this on Amazon in late May or early June:
I haven’t started work on the blurb yet, but here’s a brief, spoiler-free summary:
The SFV-1 virus is discovered amongst a rare species of primate in the Amazon rainforest, and is assigned the name simia furens – ‘raging monkey’. It is proved to be zoonotic just before it gets out; no governmental targeted depopulation plots with this one (as I’ve written about before, in Tipping Point), just good old-fashioned human error.
Infected centres around three main characters:
Norah Wood (on the cover). Norah is an artist working on the commission of a lifetime, the artwork for a major exhibition at her town’s central museum. Unwilling to accept that the exhibition won’t take place, she ignores the news, social media and the increasing concern of her live-in boyfriend, until shocking circumstances force her to accept what is happening outside the safety of her studio.
London wife and mother Cat is taking part in TV reality show Year Out, in the hope of winning a cash prize large enough to change the lives of her family. As a contestant, she is spending a year alone on a remote island, with a monthly visit from the show’s production team. During the third month, Zenith TV’s helicopter fails to arrive…
Lion, a stressed out marketing consultant, is enjoying a month away from his hectic online world in northern Cumbria, with girlfriend Zephyr and several members of her family. Always something of a loner, he finds his loyalties are tested when the extent of the catastrophe becomes clear.
Then there is virologist Paul Locke and online motivational guru Julian Sweet, whose lucrative career is cut short when the internet becomes history. Can the skills that made him so successful be employed elsewhere?
Infected is in its final stages, while Book #2, Darkness, is in progress. The books are shorter than my usual novels; my other publications are all around 90-105k words, but Infected is 53K and Darkness around 60k. Book #3, working title Reboot, is still in my head and note form! Though a continuing story, each part depicts distinct phases in the characters’ lives, and I will provide a ‘story so far’ piece in Books #2 and #3, as I always do.
More later! 🙂
