Or, at least, the first part of it.
I always write (and rewrite, and edit, and all those other things…) to a playlist – and REBELLION is no exception.
The whole playlist will appear in the back of the book when it’s published on July 9th this year, and I’ll be putting it up on here too. But not quite yet.
In the meantime, you won’t be surprised to learn that this is the first track…
Posted by loummorgan on April 23, 2013
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/blood-feathers-rebellion-the-playlist/
Once again, I’ve got the amazing talent of Pye Parr to thank for this, as well as the team at Solaris Books. It perfectly matches the feel of the book, and (for once) I’m kind of lost for words.
I. LOVE. IT.
(And I hope you do too…)
You can pre-order the book from Amazon (UK) (US), BN.com, Waterstones and, of course, your local bookshop.
The angels are back…
Posted by loummorgan on April 11, 2013
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/blood-and-feathers-rebellion-cover/
As part of the giveaway I did a few weeks back, I promised to handwrite a copy of a short (very short!) BLOOD AND FEATHERS story for the overall winner. Which I did. And I also promised to put a version of that story up online after a couple of weeks… which I’m doing.
There’s a couple of minor differences between that version and this, but nothing significant.
For those of you who care about this kind of thing, there’s no real continuity. (It’ll make more sense, admittedly, if you’ve read the book, but it’s not mission critical!) In terms of when it fits, it’s fairly safe to assume that it takes place before the main events of BLOOD AND FEATHERS, but beyond that, you’re on your own…
THE PATRON SAINT OF WISHFUL THINKING
“It’s a bit shit, isn’t it?”
Vin and Mallory stood back and looked at the lump of metal on the bench; Vin critically, Mallory with vague dissatisfaction.
“‘Shit‘ is a slightly stronger word than I’d use…” Mallory said with a frown.
Vin just shook his head. “Go on. Say it. You know I’m right.”
“Fine. It’s shit. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.” Stepping forward, Vin poked at the offending item – yelping as it burned his fingertip. Mallory smirked.
“Might still be hot.”
It was Mallory’s latest thing, the metal-working. He was running low on funds (again) and had decided it was probably time to find some form of gainful employment. Again.
Posted by loummorgan on March 20, 2013
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/the-patron-saint-of-wishful-thinking/
Just a quick one because yes, I’m still supposed to be doing edits, and yes I have started – I promise. I’ve even written a couple of new scenes and done some swearing at Word’s “track changes” function. It’s a thing.
Where was I?
Oh yes.
BLOOD & FEATHERS: REBELLION now has a release date for this summer: July 9th.
As far as I know, this is the same for the UK and the US – although if that changes, I’ll let you know as soon as I do.
There’s also a pre-order page up on Amazon both for the UK & the US (before anyone asks me, yes, the cover they’ve got up there’s a draft!)
So there it is.
July 9th 2013.
The Fallen will rise, the angels will fight… and the rebellion will begin.
Posted by loummorgan on March 6, 2013
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/rebellion-release-date-and-pre-order/
UPDATE:
Thanks to everyone who entered the competition and spread the word on Twitter. I’ve now drawn the victims… winners and notified them.
The lucky three are:
@DogEarDiscs and @RichardKellum, who each win a signed copy of BLOOD AND FEATHERS
@CatHawkins, who wins the signed copy and the handwritten version of “The Patron Saint of Wishful Thinking” (which you’ll be able to read on here in a couple of weeks)
Congratulations to the winners, and thank you again to everyone who entered.
By the way, if you weren’t lucky this time, I’ll be doing another giveaway in the not-too-distant future, so keep your eyes open…
###
I’ve decided. I’m doing a thing.
I have THREE signed (and dedicated if you’d like) copies of BLOOD AND FEATHERS to give away.
One of these copies will come with a special bonus. Allow me to explain.
In the run-up to Solaris publishing BLOOD AND FEATHERS: REBELLION later this year, I’ll be putting some short stories and flash fiction online. Some of it will tell you more about characters like Mallory; some of it might be deleted scenes. It could be anything: you’ll just have to wait and see.
I’ll be putting the first of these new stories, The Patron Saint of Wishful Thinking, up in the next couple of weeks… but whoever wins the “book-plus” giveaway will get the chance to read it first, because they’ll get a handwritten copy of it along with their book. And yes, I’ll try to keep my handwriting legible…
So that’s three copies, one with a bonus you won’t get anywhere else.
I’ll be doing this via Twitter: all you have to do is include a link to this post in a tweet along with the hashtag #bloodandfeathers. (If you want to @ me at the end of your tweet too, it’ll make you easier to find.)
I’ll be keeping an eye on everyone who tweets and will pick three names at random on SUNDAY 24th FEBRUARY, starting with the two signed books, and then drawing for the book-and-short-story.
This is an international giveaway, so it doesn’t matter where you are: I’ll post the books to you.
I’ll notify winners via Twitter and the blog.
Good luck!
Posted by loummorgan on February 20, 2013
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/blood-feathers-giveaway/
What’s Pye Parr up to now…?
By the way, if you’re interested in reading a bit more about how Pye works, and how the first BLOOD AND FEATHERS cover evolved, there’s a really detailed interview with him over on the Shewolf reads site, including his mock-ups for concepts which didn’t quite make the cut…
Posted by loummorgan on January 25, 2013
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/featherbomb/
As part of The Great Relocation of 2013 (don’t ask), I’m currently holed up in a beautiful village in the South-West of England.
It was already pretty when I got here on Sunday afternoon – all old houses and mellow stone and leaded windows – but like most of the UK this morning we’ve woken up to a beautiful covering of snow.
So naturally, I went to the churchyard.
Like you do.
I’ve been asked once or twice why Mallory lives in the back of a church in BLOOD AND FEATHERS – but looking at this, it’s hard to imagine anywhere that would suit him better.
Posted by loummorgan on January 18, 2013
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/snowflakes-and-angels/
[WARNING! SERIOUS POST KLAXON!]
It being very, very nearly Christmas, I’ve done what a lot of people do at some point in December.
I’ve just watched It’s A Wonderful Life.
I’ve not seen it that many times – twice, I think – but I have a huge degree of fondness for it… partly because it’s surprisingly dark for what’s usually called a “feel-good” film – after all, any film where a potential suicide attempt is crucial to the plot would be a hard sell as “fluffy”. Maybe it’s not really that surprising: December is the Beachy Head chaplaincy team‘s peak time of the year.
The genius of Frank Capra’s film is that just for a short while, George Bailey gets to see the world as it would be if he had never been a part of it. It’s the ultimate answer to the question: “Wouldn’t they all be better off without me?”
It’s an answer that anyone who takes their own life never gets.
Mental health has, rightly or wrongly, been brought into the news lately too. Rightly because there should be conversations about mental health and they should happen regularly; conversations about supporting people who are struggling and about seeking to dismantle the stigma which surrounds mental health issues. (Wrongly because, well, bullets do have a habit of killing people and it’s very difficult to walk around with a semi-automatic depressive episode in your pocket.)
So here’s the thing. I’m going to tell you about my very own Clarence.
His name was Sanjay. He was my therapist, and I’m certain that without his intervention my life would be very different. Or would have been very different.
Between my second year as an undergraduate and now, I’ve suffered several massively debilitating depressions, each of which has, in its own way, completely and utterly destroyed me. It’s only thanks to the extreme understanding and support of people around me (my family, my various doctors and in that initial instance, my lecturers and the English department at UCL) that each time I have been able to put myself back together.
I’ve taken anti-depressants in varying doses for varying periods of time (Citalopram ftw, kids) and enjoyed their delightful side effects as well as some superbly trippy withdrawal (my particular favourite was the auditory hallucinations: for about 3 days, I was followed everywhere by echoing footsteps. It was incredibly creepy to begin with, but after a while it just got silly. Phantom footsteps don’t follow you to the compost bin on a Tuesday morning. They just… don’t).
I’ve never enjoyed taking them because I feel less like myself on them: they change the way your brain functions, after all, and our brains – our minds – make us what we are. But I’ve taken them because I’ve known that I needed them. And they’ve done their job each and every time – they’ve given me the start I need to pick up the pieces and glue them back together. (There’s almost certainly a “crazy glue” joke to be made there, but it’s just too easy.)
Sanjay, however, changed everything. I was fortunate to have an engaged and understanding NHS GP, and a surgery with a cognitive behavioural therapy teaching programme. I was assigned to Sanjay, overseen by his supervisor, and I saw him once a week for most of a year. That was almost 6 years ago, and since then I’ve not needed medication or further treatment (although that’s not to say I might not need either or both again at some point.)
Sanjay was my Clarence. And I can’t tell you how grateful I am that he was there.
And that’s the thing about It’s A Wonderful Life. In its own way, it shows you the truth about depression, about despair: that they distort. Depression isn’t a black dog. It’s a radiation suit that’s inside out and stitched to your skin, trapping you inside while it slowly poisons you.
Unpicking the stitches is hard.
Realising they’re there in the first place is harder.
I’ve watched several of my friends deal with depression in the last few years, and I’m so proud of them. I’m proud because I know how hard it is, and how it’s so much easier just to give up. I’m thankful they didn’t.
And I suppose that’s why I’m putting this blog up now – while everyone’s doing their “Best of 2012″ lists, I’m here nattering away about pretty much the bleakest things imaginable. Because I’m thankful.
I’m thankful for Sanjay. I’m thankful for my family, and my husband especially. I’m thankful for my friends – many of whom have seen the worst of me, and somehow are still here.
I’m thankful for the extraordinary difference that modern medicine, psychology and the NHS have made to my life. Without them… well.
On Twitter, the Samaritans are running a “Stand Up, Speak Out” campaign, raising awareness of the fact they’re there, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their phone number is 08457 909090. You might not need it, but someone you know might.
We can’t all be George Bailey… but maybe, just maybe, we can be somebody’s Clarence.
Posted by loummorgan on December 22, 2012
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/clarence/
The reason I’ve been so quiet lately? Oh, nothing. It’s just… well.
REBELLION’s finished, at least in first draft and has survived its first reading by Other Half.
And now I’m all:
It is only the first draft, and there’s lots of work still to do – but even so, it feels like victory.
This will doubtless turn to utter despair, and reaching for the gin once my editor Jon gets his hands on it (and that’s just his reaction…) but at just over 100,000 words in this version, it’s by far the longest thing I’ve ever written – and when I started, I genuinely didn’t realise how much I would enjoy being back with Alice, Mallory and Vin. Which I did. And I do.
I still have to make my own passes on it, and that’s before we start the real heavy lifting of making it fit for actual human consumption… but I’m happy.
I was made even more happy, as it turns out, by discovering that Book Chick City have made BLOOD AND FEATHERS both their December “Book of the Month” and one of their “Books You Should Be Reading Right Now.” I love the BCC site, so this is a big deal.
(Dean? If you would…?)
I’ll stop now. I promise.
And as it’s my birthday tomorrow – when I’ll be turning the grand old age of 22 (ha!) – I’ll leave you with this. A while back, the excellent Hub Fiction published my Lovecraftian Anglo-Saxon mash-up story, “And the Northmen Brought Their Gods.” It’s now available as a podcast to stream or download, thanks to the lovely team at Dark Fiction Magazine.
Enjoy!
Posted by loummorgan on December 6, 2012
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/the-end-of-the-rebellion/
It finally got me. I’ve been tagged in the Next Big Thing meme (shout-out to Danie Ware, Paul Kane and Elspeth Cooper, all of whom cornered me and memed me into submission, as has the lovely Janet Edwards).
The idea is to answer a few questions on whatever it is you (the Tag-ee? The Be-tagged?) happen to be working on and then to pass on the tag to five other people. Think of it like Ringu, only with writers crawling through your computer screen.
Lovely mental image, isn’t it? Anyway. Let’s get on with things, shall we?
What is the working title of your next book?
At the moment, I’m working on BLOOD AND FEATHERS: REBELLION. Which is, fairly obviously, the follow-up to BLOOD AND FEATHERS, which came out in August this year.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
REBELLION being a direct sequel to B&F, it largely sprang from the fact that the characters’ stories weren’t finished. Alice wasn’t done, Mallory wasn’t done and Vin, well… Vin’s so scatty he’d probably forget if he was done. I wanted to open up the world – after all, we’ve only really seen hell so far – and to spend some more time with those characters, as well as to bring new ones into play. The angelic war’s been going on forever… and there’s a lot more to it than Alice knew.
What genre does your book fall under?
Like B&F, REBELLION likes to lurk on the borders. It’s closest to urban fantasy (certainly this time around, there’s an actual city…) but there’s elements of fantasy and horror in there too. What it isn’t is paranormal romance. By the way, I’m quite taken with “featherpunk” by way of sub-genre, if anyone feels like running with that…
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Ah. The best / worst question. I have fairly strong views on who’d be ideal for most of the characters… and several of them, I’m not sharing. This is largely because I like the idea that everyone has a slightly different mental image of Alice, or Vin, or Mallory – and that, technically, none of them are wrong. The Mallory you have in your head might look and sound completely different from the one in mine – but that’s the way it should be. It doesn’t make your Mallory any less “Mallory” than mine. So I’ll keep those three to myself, but I will tell you about a couple of others.
Michael, in an ideal and perfectly perfect world, would be Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. It’s funny, because I’d had a very clear mental image of Michael right from the get-go, which is a couple of years back… and the first time I saw a photo of him, he fitted exactly.
A new character who appears in REBELLION is the Earthbound angel, Castor – and him, I’d love to see played by Jamie Parker (who’ll be familiar to anyone who saw the Globe’s Henry V this year.) You should totally follow him on Twitter, by the way – @DickLeFenwick.
Finally, the one that everyone who’s familiar with my own Twitter feed (or, well, me) will have been waiting for. The Archangel Zadkiel – he’s mentioned in BLOOD & FEATHERS, but doesn’t appear in person until REBELLION.
Jeremy Renner.
Happy now?
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
With the Fallen wreaking havoc in the world and on humanity, the Archangel Michael is determined to destroy Lucifer once and for all – whatever the cost – and Alice, Mallory and Vin will be called on to sacrifice more than they ever imagined possible…
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I’m represented by the gorgeous, talented and lovely Juliet Mushens, and REBELLION will be published by Solaris Books in the summer of 2013.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Ask me that when I’ve finished it… which should hopefully be sometime in the next couple of weeks. If all goes to plan, it’ll have taken a few months. But that’s only a first draft. Getting to a cleaner version will take another month or so of tinkering on my part, and that’s before my fantastic and long-suffering editor Jon gets his hands (and his red pen) on it!
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
The easy answer is that it’s like BLOOD AND FEATHERS. I’ve been told that one’s comparable to SANDMAN SLIM, which I’ve not read yet but certainly will do. The easiest (and probably most useful) comparison to make is with the TV show SUPERNATURAL – we seem to overlap in a lot of ways, much to my initial despair. I’d written most of B&F before I started watching that one, so you can imagine how I felt when I got as far as season 4…
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The first book, in a way. There was that, and there was somewhere I went. I was on holiday with my family – while B&F was on submission to Solaris, funnily enough, and I had no idea whether they were going to want it or not – and we went somewhere that made me start thinking. You can’t take me anywhere…
There was also this, which has (in my head at least) become an informal theme tune for Michael. Because if this doesn’t make you think of angels, nothing will.
Not only is the video utterly extraordinary, if REBELLION had a sound, that would be it.
What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
Someone described BLOOD AND FEATHERS as “post-Bourne angels”. REBELLION has more of them, interacting much more widely with the world, with the Fallen and with one another. Oh, and you might just get to find out what’s in all those notebooks that Mallory keeps knocking around his floor…
So that was relatively painless. (The photo of Renner helped, right?)
I’m going to pass on the meme by tagging five people to write their own post in a week’s time – but as this is me, I’m going slightly off-piste and tagging someone who’s not an author, but an editor. In this case, that’s Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch, and one of the people behind the Pandemonium anthologies.
Also tagged are Jonathan Oliver, Anne Lyle, Niel Bushnell and – because eventually he’ll have no choice but to cave under the sheer weight of tags and play along – Will Hill.
Posted by loummorgan on November 14, 2012
http://loummorgan.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/the-next-big-thing/
