Book 1 is scheduled to release in ebook and paperback format on Amazon on 4th July 2018.
Inevitable, some of my readers will be asking themselves what does the publication of the first book in this new series imply for my ONGOING commitment to TIMELINE 10/27/62?
I can tell you that it has no impact or bearing of any kind on my ongoing plans for TIMELINE 10/27/62 – for which I have outline plans for books 12 to 20 over the next three to four years.
I have always written other books or researched, scoped out or otherwise undertaken other projects in between TIMELINE 10/27/62 books. It is what keeps me fresh, stops me getting jaundiced with the TIMELINE 10/27/62 project (presently 18 books in publication with another, standalone novel coming out on 7th June 2018).
ONLY IN AMERICA – CIVIL WAR (Book 12) will be published on 27th October this year, and WARSAW CONCERTO (Book 13) will be published in March or April 2019. Thereafter the Main Series will progress by 2 to 3 editions per year until I get to Book 20…
When I will see where I am with the project!
In the meantime, I plan to carry on with other projects, including bringing out three books from my ‘back catalogue’, the NEW ENGLAND books (EMPIRE DAY will be followed by TWO HUNDRED LOST YEARS and TRAVELS THROUGH THE WIND by the end of 2019), and the first book, possibly the first two books of a project which for working purposes I call GAMES OF SPIES (again by the end of 2019). I write a lot. I write fast. It is what I do. Shoot me!
OKAY, why start another alternative history series?
GOOD QUESTION!
Forgive me if this explanation, or apologia, gets a tad tautological but here it goes: TIMELINE 10/27/62 has developed into a real ‘alternative history’, a saga; in NEW ENGLAND I wanted to tell stories in an alternative 1970s rather than write a second alternative history.
NEW ENGLAND is a project I’ve had in my head – or up my sleeve – whatever, for a couple of years. I find writing projects either gather momentum in one’s mind or they don’t; you can not force it. NEW ENGLAND built up a sufficient head of steam that I just had to write it (well, the first book) because that is the only way you ever discover if an idea, concept, or frankly a question or even a daydream holds water dramatically, emotionally, intellectually. Once a project gets to the stage you put pen to paper it is – although I’ve never seen the point of gambling, even on a visit to Vegas – a writer basically puts his money where his mouth is and my goodness, you soon learn if you have a story with legs!
Anyway, after I finished 1966 & ALL THAT, and my TIMELINE 10/27/62 ‘football book’ – FOOTBALL IN THE RUINS – I finally bit the bullet and went for EMPIRE DAY. The book came so easily that way ahead of schedule it is now out there on pre-order ahead of its release on 4th July. Which means that I am now completely in the hands of my readers.
SO, WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
In EMPIRE DAY, the opening chapters of the NEW ENGLAND Series, I posit that American revolution – 1776 et cetera – failed and the British (perfidious Albion) are still running the show in North America, albeit one somewhat unlike it is today!. In NEW ENGLAND the great global superpower is the British Empire of which North America – the New England colonies and the Canadian dominions – are the most critical elements.
YES, there is a back story about how things got to be the way they are in an alternate 1976 BUT my focus is to tell the stories of and the crises and terrible choices confronting my characters at a point in the alternative timeline of NEW ENGLAND at which for the first time in a century, the status quo in British Imperial North America is beginning to crumble.