In my first blog in more than 2 years, I’m back with updates on my latest novels and an explanation of why I’ve been gone so long.
I got married and had a baby
After Million Eyes III: Ouroboros came out, my priorities shifted to wedding planning. On October 14th 2023, Katy and I got married with a Dalek, stormtrooper and Princess Leia all in attendance. We also had a sci-fi exhibition full of props and models, including a life-size Borg drone, an Ewok, a Facehugger from Alien, and Thanos’s Infinity Gauntlet. Here’s some pics!
It was awesome fun but, as you can imagine, took a huuuuuuuge amount of time to organise. So, I’m now legally Christopher Dunford, but retaining my author name, C.R. Berry, for my books. (I’m also called ‘Berry’ at work. 
)
Then, in April 2024, Katy had our first baby, Nicolai, who is beautiful and amazing but my writing has taken a back seat to his needs for obvious reasons.
That said, I’m lucky to still have a fiction-writing day each week, and I’m forging ahead on a new novel, while I’ll talk about in a moment.
I fell out of love with blogging and social media because of online hate
This is the other reason why I disappeared for a while. As my readers know, when I was releasing Million Eyes, my brand was all about conspiracy theories. At one time, I was releasing a blog every week on the subject.
Thanks to Trump and Covid and the speed at which conspiracy theories can spread on social media, they aren’t as fun as they used to be.
To me, conspiracies are intriguing mysteries and what-if scenarios. Unfortunately, today’s world is heaving with conspiracy theories of a more harmful variety — bollocks about vaccinations and white genocide and stolen elections. And that’s made speculating about ones that could be true a lot less enjoyable.
But also, I started falling out with the toxic right-wingers who hate on franchises like Star Wars in Facebook fan groups. For example, I stood up to the misogynists attacking The Acolyte for having too many women in it and the vile responses I received were enough to put me off social media for a while. So I started posting less and less.
The internet felt like it was becoming a dark place, and with my son coming into the world, I was craving some light.
I still think there’s more love out there than hate
I’ve had some time to decompress and I’m coming back with some renewed enthusiasm for social media.
This has manifested as my new Instagram with my wife and co-author Katy, called The Gathered Worlds. It’s named after the intergalactic organisation in our joint novel, Breaching The Wall (news on this in a moment!) and it’s all about the nerdy merch and collections we’ve filled up our house with.
It was my friend Tara who suggested we should have an Insta for our house and so, about 3 years on, I’m finally acting on her suggestion. It helps that Katy’s doing it with me. Here it is if you’d like to check it out.
I’m also rebranding my website to be less about conspiracy theories, more about me. There will still be conspiracies in my books (because I love a good conspiracy), but I won’t be writing about real-life conspiracy theories anymore, not on the regular anyway.
Book news…. Breaching The Wall is coming!
I can share that my publishers, Elsewhen Press, have officially offered to publish Breaching The Wall, the space adventure novel I have co-written with Katy. We had a fab meeting with Pete and Al last month to talk timelines and it’ll be out sometime in the middle of next year. That seems like a long time away (although not in our lives, frankly) but it gives us time to get moving on the sequel!
Here’s a blurb to whet your appetite 
:
A thousand years in Earth’s future, the Wall at the edge of the universe has started to close in, crushing everything in its wake.
After a particularly grave Wall-caused disaster, an intergalactic union of planets called the Gathered Worlds puts together a crew of experts aboard the powerful science vessel Altum Ega. Their mission: find a way of stopping the Wall. If that fails, breach it.
What starts as a universe-saving adventure becomes a hunt for the hidden truth behind the disaster, the Wall, and the very nature of the universe itself.
The Puddle Bumps is complete
The Puddle Bumps is my crime horror novel and the darkest book I’ve written.
I finished this just before Nicolai was born, but it’s been on the backburner since then, mainly because my enthusiasm has shifted to another project, a novel that could be 3 or even 4 books (details below).
However, I fully intend on going back to The Puddle Bumps soon, reading it through, and submitting it to some crime agents. If I don’t find an agent (and this point, my hopes and expectations are extremely low), then I will submit this novel to Elsewhen as well.
Here’s a blurb for this one (and you can see that the conspiracy thriller elements are still very much present):
After discovering a videotape of an old 80s kids’ show called The Puddle Bumps in her late father’s attic, defence lawyer Jodie Hawes starts having flashes of a violent episode in which all the characters started attacking each other with knives and axes.
Investigating its origins, Jodie discovers a link between The Puddle Bumps and a former client, Monica Dunne, who is languishing in prison for murder. Before long she is questioning the circumstances of the murder, whether her client is truly guilty, and what it all has to do with the mysterious town of Dares Hill.
Meanwhile, there are people watching and following Jodie who will stop at nothing to make sure that the Monica Dunne case is never reopened.
Star Trek: Voyager companion book
Another project I’m working on is a book that celebrates my love of Star Trek: Voyager and acts as a companion to the series. It will have reviews and commentaries on each season, chapters focused on each character, and analyses of the show as a whole and its legacy.
I’m currently pitching this to publishers, but will consider self-publishing if I don’t get interest.
New project: The House of Everything
This is the first time I’ve mentioned this book publicly. A month or so after my son was born, I started work on a new series of books that could be 3 or 4 books when completed.
It came about after I fell into a bit of a creative ‘depression’, shall we say. It was mixed with sleep deprivation from having a newborn, and I was at my lowest on a day when Nicolai just wouldn’t stop crying. But basically, finishing The Puddle Bumps left me in a hole, as I had nothing else to move on to.
It was thanks to watching a bunch of shows and films during my paternity leave, and bouncing various different ideas off Katy, that I came up with The House of Everything.
Here’s a very rough blurb:
When thirteen-year-old Natasha Gunn moves into a mysterious old house with her father, a series of supernatural occurrences lead her to believe the house is haunted. But this is no regular haunting. In actual fact, the house is testing her. If she passes its trials, she will be the only thing that stands in the way of a rising evil threatening the world.
Meanwhile, LAPD detective Luke Cornwell is called to investigate a double murder on Hollywood Boulevard that defies natural law. Before long, Luke is on the trail of other strange, inexplicable events that happened all over the world at around the same time…
That’s all for now!
Thank you for sticking with me and I hope to bring you some more updates soon!
C.R. Berry 
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