Jun 18, 2015

UPDATE! It's now less than two weeks until the digital version of Abomination shows up in the email boxes of backers like YOU, but that still feels like an age away to me so here are a couple of things to keep your appetites whetted in the meantime:

FIRSTLY! Previously readers have been able to sample the first three chapters via the Inkshares website, though those were from an early uncorrected manuscript proof. Here now are the the first three chapters from Abomination as they will appear for final publication. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF.

SECONDLY! This was a real coup for Abomination. Although the story is set in a real historical place and time, it has enough fantasy elements that I wanted the book to have a map at the beginning, as all good fantasy books are wont to do. And we were lucky enough to have ours drawn up by none other than Jonathan Roberts of Fantastic Maps​, who fantasy fans will know as the official cartographer of Game of Thrones​!

I think it's a really interesting map in that it's historically accurate -- this is England as it looked in 888 AD -- but it almost looks like a map of a fictional place because England looked so different back then, pretty much half of it known as "Danelaw", territory ceded to Viking invaders by Alfred the Great as part of a peace treaty to prevent the rest of the country being consumed by war. This strangely bifurcated kingdom is the historical backdrop for Abomination, and I think it's fascinating even without awesome monsters and magic (which we also have, BTW.) CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MAP