The Ulysses Quicksilver Omnibus - Volume 2

Look what arrived in the post today!

Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland & Pax Britannia: White Rabbit

If you back Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland on Kickstarter at the £10 WHITE RABBIT level pledge or above, you will receive an eBook of the Pax Britannia novella White Rabbit as part of your reward, courtesy of those thoroughly decent chaps at Abaddon Books - the home of Pax Britannia.

In White Rabbit, dandy, detective and adventurer Ulysses Quicksilver journeys into a world of madness and murder, meeting some sinisterly familiar characters along the way.

So what are you waiting for? ;-)

JG in SFX Magazine

In case you hadn't already discovered it for yourself, I'm in the latest issue of SFX Magazine (#219 if you're keeping score - the one with Bilbo Baggins on the front). But just for once it's not a review of one of my books; it is in fact a book review written by me. Of a classic.

That's right, I've had the temerity of reviewing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It somehow seemed appropriate, after the book inspired me to write the Pax Britannia novella White Rabbit and, naturally, because of its Victorian connection.

In the same issue, fellow steampunk author* Lavie Tidhar, the 'emerging master' behind The Bookman Histories, gets a double-page spread! (Well one page and a whopping great photo.)

So if you haven't had a copy arrive already through the post, get down to your local newsagent tomorrow and pick one up!

STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS!

I'm on SFX.co.uk today, or at least my latest Doctor Who story is. Monstrous Missions gets 3 stars out of a possible 5 overall, with the reviewer describing Terrible Lizards as 'action-packed, but bland.' Naturally, I disagree, but then I guess you can't win 'em all.

*He'll love me for calling him that!

JG and Pax Britannia on SFX.co.uk

If you check out the front page of SFX.co.uk right now (as in Sunday night) you'll see that top of the latest articles list (above one about detestable Doctor Who companion Melanie Bush) is an interview with me about The Ulysses Short Story Collection.

Dave Bradley (editor of SFX magazine) conducted the interview with me earlier this week via email and you can read the results here. I don't only talk about writing short stories during the course of the interview; there's also stuff about steampunk, novel writing and eBooks.

I'm very proud of the three stories in the collection - Fruiting Bodies, Vanishing Point and White Rabbit - which were all especially selected by myself, and it would appear that other people are discovering they like them as much as I do. And for 69p you can't really go wrong, can you?

Alice - Madness Returns

Alice: Madness Returns is the long-awaited sequel to American McGee's Alice. Watching the following trailer, I couldn't help but be reminded of my own Pax Britannia novella White Rabbit, which just happens to be available now for the Kindle and other e-readers
as part of The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection.

The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection - available now!

All you eBook readers out there might like to know that The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection is available to download now for your Kindle. Here's the blurb from the back:

Dandy, detective and adventurer Ulysses Quicksilver tackles the enemies of the crown in this thrilling collection of three complete short stories drawn from the steampunk Pax Britannia Ulysses Quicksilver novels.

In 'Fruiting Bodies' a gruesome death leads Ulysses and his manservant Nimrod to the glasshouses of Kew, bringing them face to face with the horrors lurking within. A Hallowe'en séance leads our intrepid duo into a close encounter with the world beyond in 'Vanishing Point', whilst in 'White Rabbit' Ulysses journeys into a world of madness and murder, meeting some sinisterly familiar characters along the way.

This collection is the perfect starting point for readers new to the exciting world of Pax Britannia! 'Fruiting Bodies' was first published in the novel 'El Sombra', 'Vanishing Point' was first published in the novel 'Leviathan Rising' and 'White Rabbit' was first published in the novel 'Blood Royal'.

I'm very excited about the release of this Kindle-only collection and am looking into releasing some more of my work via Kindle in the not-too-distant future. My only problem now is that I need to buy myself a Kindle to see how the book's turned out in digital format.

And just in case you need persuading that you really should get hold of The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection for yourself, watch the following video:

Alice in Wonderland

Like many people, I suspect, I felt that I knew the story of Alice in Wonderland even though I had never actually read Lewis Carroll's children's classic. And because of that I decided I wanted to write a story that drew heavily from both Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass. But first of all I decided that I had to read the originals before putting pen to paper myself (or rather fingers to keyboard).


Anyway, the upshot of all this is that today I started work on White Rabbit, a short story that's due to be printed in the back of Pax Britannia: Blood Royal. Now Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is due on 5 March 2010 and Blood Royal won't be published until April 2010, so it will be interesting to see how the two compare.


But just to get your senses in a state of surreal excitement, in preparation for next Spring, here's the trailer for the movie.