It’s April. APRIL. How the hell did this happen? January lasted for about ten years, February came with bush fires in Australia and floods in Wales, we turned 37 and boom! March had a global pandemic up its sleeve. When we wrote our SWOT analysis and business plan for the magazine and our studio, we failed to foresee a global pandemic as a threat. We have been forced to temporarily close our shiny new pole studio, but it means we have reverted back to being full-time writers.
We have a few stories being released right now. Three in fact. Our horror erotica, Touch of Death, was released in the Deranged anthology. Our story, Dying Art, about a man who fully employs the zero waste policy when making furniture, was released in Laughing at Shadows anthology and our true crime article, About a Boy, about teenage Welsh child killer, Harold Jones, is being released in the True Crime anthology by Mitzi Szerto. And we’ve had several rejections. Just to keep us grounded.
We have started a new novel, The Eden Project, which is actually an adaptation of our short story of the same name. It won third place in the British Fantasy Society short story awards in 2016, and has since been published by Bards and Sages Quarterly. It’s set in future where natural beauty has been eroded by years of unhealthy living, so a retreat was set up to protect the ‘beautiful people’. The Eden Project now has retreats all over the world and regularly runs tours so the regular people of the world can visit the residents. Think safari park of beautiful people. It’s a partial satirical swipe at the beauty industry, Hollywood, and celebrity culture.
Seeing as this lockdown is due to continue for a few more weeks (and probably til the end of summer) we plan to use this time to get our writing projects back on track. We WILL release The Curse of Ravenhall, although sadly in won’t be in Sweden. Unless the travel ban is lifted before the end of the year. We’d like to start writing the next book in our Edinburgh City of the Dead series, which will be based on the Sawney Bean legend. We may end up writing the two novels side by side, which isn’t something we’ve done before. But the rules have changed.
As we can’t visit our Silent Dawn: Asylum co-creator, Steve, we’re taking the opportunity to playtest the game so there will be less to do when the game is finally finished. We may end up adding to it then poor Steve will have to implement the changes and do the coding.
At the moment, Wales Comic Con has been postponed until 22nd & 23rd August, and Leicester Horror Con has been postponed until 2021, so you won’t be seeing us at many conventions this year. It’s a shame, because that’s where about 80-90% of our book sales come from, but it can’t be helped.
Oh we’ve been interviewed by journalist Mark Bestford for issue 47 of Devolution Magazine. You can sign up for a free digital copy here. Out end of May.
We’ll see you on the other side. Stay safe.
Raven's Retreat 