I had planned today to share a few quick updates on where I am with the Million Eyes series, not expecting my publisher, Elsewhen Press, to email me this morning with their release schedule for Million Eyes II: The Unraveller!
So I can now officially reveal that the book will be published in July as an ebook and in September as a paperback! (There aren’t any exact dates yet, but as soon as I have those, I will share them here.)
Hopefully by September, the whole of the UK will be nice and vaccinated and life will be more or less back to normal, as it would be great to do some in-person events and launches.
Here’s an unofficial blurb that I shared with my newsletter readers a little while back, just to whet your appetite 🙂
Following an impossible discovery in East London, archaeologist Dr Samantha Lester joins forces with software developer Adam Bryant to investigate the events that led to the disappearance of his best friend, Jennifer, and to bring down the people responsible—Million Eyes.
Before long, Lester and Adam are drawn into a tangled conspiratorial web involving dinosaurs, the Gunpowder Plot, Jesus, the Bermuda Triangle, and a mysterious history-hopping individual called the Unraveller, who is determined to wipe Million Eyes off the temporal map.
But as the secrets of Million Eyes’ past are revealed, picking a side in this fight might not be so easy.
In other news…
I’m 41,000 words into Million Eyes III: Ouroboros and making good progress. My progress has slowed down in March simply because I have a new copywriting role that keeps me busy 3 days a week (also great as I’m about to be paying my first mortgage!). It’ll probably slow down more when Katherine and I move into our house. That said, I’m still way ahead of where I expected to be this early in the year.
I’ve spent a bit more time this morning submitting new Million Eyes short stories to various competitions and magazines. No successes yet, although one story, Change Matters, has been accepted by New Myths magazine into their second round of consideration. They’ll decide by October, I’m told, whether they’re going to publish it (they have accepted previous stories of mine into their second rounds, then rejected them, so I’m quietly hopeful but not holding my breath).
Change Matters was also ‘selected’ by Secret Attic Short Story Contest, although I’m not 100% sure what that means; it may be the same as ‘shortlisted’, in which case, that’s a nice little win for that story.
A new version of Accidentally in Time, written following feedback from Leading Edge Magazine, is being reconsidered by them. Leading Edge previously accepted my story Operation Loch Ness but couldn’t publish it as it had already been published elsewhere. I’ve got another long wait with this one.
In non-Million Eyes news, I’ve decided that my next project after the Million Eyes trilogy and short stories is going to be The Puddle Bumps. Readers of my newsletter will know that The Puddle Bumps is set to be a horror conspiracy thriller inspired by ‘lost episode’ creepypastas.
The gist of the book is this: a cop finds an old VHS tape in her late father’s attic with recordings of a children’s TV series she remembers watching, The Puddle Bumps. She has flashes of an episode in which gruesome and obscene things happened and investigates, soon discovering that a mysterious English village is hiding a monstrous conspiracy to do with the show.
I’ve got a huge amount of the story already plotted and because it’s going to be a contemporary thriller with far less research or worldbuilding involved, I’d like to see if I can write this one more quickly.
After The Puddle Bumps I plan to get back to Scuzzling, which is a fantasy conspiracy thriller set in a highly religious society that runs on animals and follows a lawyer called to defend a scuzzling (a man suffering from an STD called the Whiteness) on murder charges.
And perhaps after that is when I’ll get back to time travel, with my planned time travel theme park conspiracy thriller Yesterland! (Think Netflix’s Dark meets Jurassic Park.)
So, you know, lots of books to write. Best get back to it… 🙂
If you’re new to the site, first, welcome! And second, if you’d like to get hold of a copy of the first Million Eyes novel, it’s available from Elsewhen Press as a paperback (£9.99) and as an ebook (£2.99).
The short story collection, Million Eyes: Extra Time, is available for free download here.
Here are some quick links to the paperback of the novel on Amazon and in Waterstones and the ebook on your chosen ebook platform.
And here’s a trailer!
C.R. Berry 