Onwards and upwards

Had a chat with Stan, the agent, about future projects yesterday and came up with a lot of interesting possibilities. In true morale boosting fashion, he brought along a copy of last week's Bookseller which has The Doomsday Testament featuring at No. 5 in the Movers and Shakers chart, and, would you believe, down from No.1 the previous week.

It can't be bad when you're rubbing
 shoulders with Le Carré

Great to see James Douglas up there with some of the biggest names in fiction. I knew it had been doing well because it was pretty high up in the Waterstone's thriller chart, rubbing shoulders with Lee Child, James Patterson and John Le Carre, which is fantastic. It gave me a real thrill to be in the same league as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, because Mr Le Carre (aka David Cornwell and dad of my friend Tim) wrote me a letter full of encouragement when I sent him a proof copy of Caligula.


Stan loved my idea for a third Jamie Saintclair book, and I'm now putting together some thoughts for a fourth.

I've already put together a detailed plan for a further three Valerius novels. Avenger of Rome leaves him perfectly placed for The Year of the Four Emperors, in AD 69, when the Empire was torn apart by civil war and which provides the plots for two of the books. There are three possibilities for the third of the trilogy, but I especially like the one that allows me to finally reveal what happened to Rufus and Bersheba at the end of The Emperor's Elephant. Of course, it all depends on my publishers and how well they think Hero of Rome and Defender of Rome have done, but Valerius is growing in character with every book and I'd like to take him as far as I can.

We also talked about how e-books will develop and Stan has some great ideas in that line, and we mulled over the possibility of branching out into non-fiction at some point, although finding the time would obviously be the biggest problem.

AND finally, I took part in a wonderful Write to be Published event at Stirling's Tollbooth on Sunday, when Bob McDevitt of Hachette and I talked about our experiences to an audience of writers, before Nicola Morgan gave a workshop. Nicola very kindly said I was a great example for any writer. I must bear that in mind when I get stuck into The Isis Covenant next week!