The wonderful world of werewolves

An anthology of werewolf stories is published in January — and I’m very proud to say that one of my stories is featured. Editor and author Graeme Reynolds (High Moor) contacted me last year and asked me to contribute a tale to the collection. The criteria was that it had to be based on an already-created werewolf universe.

My horror-thriller Maneater was published by Snowbooks in 2008, and introduced Laura Greenacre – the tagline was “Meet Laura. She’ll eat you alive.” She wasn’t the troubled, sweet-natured, “I-don’t-really-want-to-hurt-people” type of werewolf that had started to plague fiction and films at the time (and that kind of werewolf still does). She was animal. And she went down well with readers. You can read more about her here.

And here’s just one review, by Sheila Merritt of Hellnotes:

“Laura is gory and gorgeous, beauty and the beast, the stuff that dreams (and nightmares) are made of. Male readers will find her extremely attractive, and women readers will admire her for her attributes and attitude.

Couple of years later I wrote a sequel, also published by Snowbooks, called Prey. Went down well, too.

So when Graeme commissioned me, there was only one place to go — back to Laura.

My story’s called The Hunt and elaborates on an event mentioned in Maneater that took place when Laura was a teenager. The story also flashes back to Roman times, 60AD, telling the story of how the Maneater werewolves came to be, their history, their culture.

This week, I’ve just received the proof — and it looks great. That’s the cover, above. I’m really excited to be featured in this collection alongside some top horror names such as Paul Kane, Ray Garton, Jeff Strand and David Wellington.

You can pre-order Leaders Of The Pack: A Werewolf Anthology, here in the UK, here in the U.S.

Coming soon…

I’ll be self-publishing the first volume of my dystopian/sci-fi/fantasy/YA-but-suitable-for-grown-ups novel The Prophet Wars in the next few weeks.

This book’s been through the mill. I wrote it back in 2015. We were very optimistic it would find a home. My agent liked it; lots of readers I asked to look over it liked it.

But the publishing industry is unpredictable. To quote William Goldman, the screenwriter, “Nobody knows anything.” I certainly didn’t. The Prophet Wars did not find a home. Yes, people liked it a lot, but… always a but.

Usually these days “buts” are related to uncertainty. Publishers aren’t as willing to take risks – although to be honest we didn’t think The Prophet Wars was that risky. However, here’s the pitch:

Britain 2026. Crime is rife. Unemployment soars. There is hunger, there is misery, there is devastation. Our world is on the brink of catastrophe. Earthquakes, storms, wars and plagues blight the planet.

And dark forces are gathering…

The future looks bleak. And 15-year-old Billy Kingdom can see it coming. He dreams about disasters – and days later, they happen.

Through social media, Billy learns that other kids are experiencing similar visions. Online, he grows close to a girl named Tawny Lang.

But one night Billy, Tawny, and other youngsters from across Britain with the same gifts, are kidnapped by armed men. They are taken to an underground compound called The Caves run by Ruby Bleak and her teenage nephew Robin, a child genius lacking any empathy.

Holed up in the subterranean complex, Billy and Tawny develop a bond. The Caves, however, hides a sinister secret. The kids quickly learn that they are only guinea pigs in a plot to control the future. But Billy isn’t having any of it and plots his escape.

But will his desire to see his family again tear apart the trust and friendship he has forged with Tawny and create, for himself and the world, a deadly enemy?

An action-packed story set in the near future and dealing with themes such as family, relationship, trust, and the environment, this is the first volume of Thomas Emson’s Young Adult thriller.

Volume One, which is titled Project 9:6, is available for pre-order here (UK) and here (U.S.).

If you’re a book reviewer or blogger, or just a fan of YA fiction who’d be willing to review the Prophet Wars when it’s published, you can download an ARC (advanced reader copy) on BookFunnel.

If you would like to read an extract, here are a few pages…

Just joined Goodreads

goodreadsI have signed up to Goodreads this week. I’d not really been aware of its potential, but I have been reading Goodreads For Authors: How To Use Goodreads To Promote Your Books by Michelle Campbell-Scott. Very interesting, and quite eye-opening. I thought I’d give it a go. All my books are already there, so I assume someone put them up. Someone had also written a profile of me, which was sort of right but a bit dated; but I’ve now updated it.