Here you are, folks, the finished cover image for The Age Of Ra, and doesn’t it look splendid? Kudos to Solaris Books, and to Marek Okon for turning in such a fine job. Intense, beefy, dark… Or is that a description of Bovril? At any rate, it’s exciting and enticing and if it doesn’t help sell the book, I don’t know what will. I only hope that the association of military SF and Egyptian gods doesn’t put people in mind of Stargate because (a) I loathed that movie, one of the all-time stinkers, and (b) I have never watched even one minute of the TV series.

Meanwhile, in other news… It’s been a busy summer. I completed a five-book series for Barrington Stoke during July and August. It’s called The 5 Lords Of Pain and it’ll be appearing over the course of 2010 at two-monthly intervals, starting in April. They asked me for something with ninjas in. I gave them ninjas, demons, zombie ninjas, witches, and the end of the world. Which is a bargain package if ever I saw one.

In addition, I managed to turn out a plethora of pieces for the FT as well as guest introductions for a couple of forthcoming PS Publishing products: PostScripts #17 and a new edition of Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree. And I’ve just this week begun work on a new novel, BetterLife, for which the fine French publishers Bragelonne have secured world rights. So far the writing’s going well. But then, so far I’ve only done 10 pages.

Also, we had a delightful holiday in August, staying with Professor Adam Roberts (not the historian, the other one, you know, the genius SF writer guy, you’ve heard of him) and his family in the south of France, near Montpelier and Avignon. Weather wasn’t fantastic — cloudy almost every day, in fact, which meant the swimming pool was freezing but I didn’t have much choice about going in because Monty and Theo, who are apparently descended from penguins and don’t feel the cold, demanded it, as did Lily, Adam’s “bongweird” daughter. That aside, it was good wine, good food, lots of chocolate, and long late-night conversations, sometimes heavy, sometimes dumb, at the dining table on the terrace while the mosquitos savaged our tender parts.