Following a very busy autumn, I’m now finally sitting down to plan creative work for 2017.
My new novel Necessary Monsters is scheduled to be published by Resurrection House/ Arche Press in May. I thought I’d share the description from the distributor’s website.
Lumsden Moss is an escaped thief and an unrepentant bibliophile with a long-suffering desire to foist some karmic retribution on those who have wronged him. But when the opportunity to steal a rare book from the man who sentenced him to prison puts him on the wrong side of the wrong people, Moss finds himself on the run. And it’s not just the book he stole that these people want, it’s also the secrets of a long-forgotten location on Nightjar Island, a place cursed and abandoned since the Purge.
When Moss falls in with Imogen, a nimble-fingered thief who has taken a traveling bookcase filled with many secrets, he starts to realize how much of his unsavory past is indelibly tied to a frightening witch-child and her nightmarish pet monster.
In a fantastic world, still recovering from a war where magic and technology were fused together, Moss and Imogen must decipher the mystery of their mutual pasts in order to illuminate the dark heart that still lurks on Nightjar Island.
Bookending 2017, fall will see the publication of my illustrated short story collection Magpie’s Ladder. I just signed the contract for this project last week and will have more details when I am able to share them. Needless to say I’m very excited about both of these projects.
In late November I turned in 8 illustrations for Centipede Press’s edition of Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Houses Under the Sea – Mythos Tales. This title will be published sometime in 2017.
Also on the art front, I’m working on some new personal work, which I plan to share here as the winter progresses. Sometime in the next few months I’ll be participating in a show with the Shadowood Collective. Shadowood shows are always incredible and this one will be no exception.
– Richard.
