In a couple of days I’ll send an email from here letting everyone know about the new edition of He Died With A Felafel in His Hand. The 30th Anniversary edition.
I know, right?
Yikes!
I was hoping to have it out this week, but the gnarly old bots at Amazon got freaked out because, of course, it’s had a bunch of previous publishers. So, I had to prove I had the rights to publish my own book. I’m still a bit iffy on the UK, but I’ll try to figure out a workaround for them.
I’ll write more about the weird process of going back in time to edit this latest version but believe me, it was weird. I hadn’t read that book seriously in about 29 years, and large parts of it came as a… well, not a shock, but definitely an unsettling reminder of times past.
Also unsettling? The amount of faffing around needed to relaunch a book for which I didn’t control the original IP. I fear I’ll be disarming little time bombs for a while to come.
Mostly, I’m done, though, which gives me time to get into a project Jason and I worked on while he was over here. The Javan War. We’ve been playing around with this sucker for years. I’ve long wanted to write stand-alone origin stories for each of the main characters in The Cruel Stars, but again, it’s difficult when the main IP is controlled by a trad publisher. Two, in fact. Random House in the US and Head of Zeus everywhere else.
The final book in the trilogy was finished a while ago. I think I submitted it at the end of last year. But it hasn’t come back to me for edits, and I don’t expect to see it released until 2025. So, I reckon that’s a big enough gap into which to stuff The Javan War. It’s not a full-length novel, but it’s pretty long. More than a novella, for sure.
Because it’s not for trade publication, I feel as though I can experiment a bit with it. I’m going to try a non-linear narrative with a small twist, which will become obvious when you get the book in your hands.
I’m not sure whether we’ll go with the original cover art. But here ‘tis.
