This is by way of apologizing for the light blogging lately: I've been somewhat busy, because ...

Regular readers might have noticed occasional references to an ongoing project of mine which first got started under the working monicker "Merchant Princes: The Next Generation". It's a trilogy, which is to say a lump of prose about the size of a typical Neal Stephenson novel, or maybe "The Lord of the Rings", and rather than risk writing myself into a corner by letting book one escape into print before I'd lined up all my ducks for the ending of book three, I argued for writing the whole damn thing before first publication. This has good consequences and bad consequences. The good: not writing myself into a corner with giant plot holes locked in place by publication. The bad: everything takes much longer than expected—much longer.

Book one of the trilogy now known as "Empire Games", titled "Dark State", is provisionally scheduled to show up some time in Q1/2017. It will be followed by "Black Rain" and "Invisible Sun". It's set circa 2020 in the divergent future of the Merchant Princes universe, in the security state that evolved after the US president was assassinated in the White House with a stolen nuke in 2003 by narcoterrorists from a parallel universe. With the DHS tasked with protecting the USA from threats from all over time lines, America in this version of 2020 isn't a terribly happy (or liberal) place. And then they make contact with another time line—one that has developed its own nuclear weapons and paratime infrastructure, and sees words like "democracy" and "imperialism" in a different light ...

I've spent a chunk of the past two months head-down, redrafting and tidying up the second book, "Black Rain". But that on its own wouldn't be enough to keep me from blogging.

I've also spent a chunk of the past two months head-down, redrafting and tidying up the seventh Laundry Files novel, "The Nightmare Stacks". This is now in the production pipeline, and is due for publication by Ace on June 28th, 2016 in the US, and by Orbit on June 23rd, 2016 in the UK. You can pre-order it here in the UK/EU and here in the USA. (Note: there will be a UK ebook link in due course but it's not up yet. The US link goes to the Kindle edition; you can find the hardcover one mouse-click away.)

As the American cover copy explains:

After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by The Laundry, Britain's secret counter-occult agency that's humanity's first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence--as Alex has no stomach for predatory bloodsucking--he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative-in-training. Dispatched to Leeds, Alex's first assignment is to help assess the costs of renovating a 1950s Cold War bunker into The Laundry's new headquarters. Unfortunately, Leeds is Alex's hometown, and the thought of breaking the news to his parents that he's left banking for civil service, while hiding his undead condition, is causing more anxiety than learning how to live as a vampire secret agent preparing to confront multiple apocalypses. Alex's only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a drama student appearing in the local Goth Festival who is inexplicably attracted to him despite his awkward personality and massive amounts of sunblock. But Cassie has secrets of her own--secrets that make Alex's night life behaviors seem positively normal...

As you probably figured out, this isn't a Bob novel (or a Mo novel), it's a Laundry novel. However I think it's just as much fun as the others; and we'll be going back to Bob's snarky viewpoint in book eight, "The Delirium Brief", which I'm planning for 2017.

What's next?

By the time "Invisible Sun" and "The Delirium Brief" are in production, I will have written seven in-series books in a row. Moreover, the books immediately before (or interleaved with) these were also sequels. In fact, I haven't begun a totally clean-sheet novel length project since 2007, and my Muse is going a bit stir-crazy. Upshot: the next book will probably be something utterly different and, hopefully, fresh. But I'm not planning on abandoning either ongoing series—I just need to write something different once in a while.

Oh, and hopefully I'll have a little more time for blogging from now until the end of the year.