This one’s been bubbling under for a while but it’s finally come to the surface…

Titan Books have made me an offer to write a couple of Sherlock Holmes novels for them.  I pitched them two proposals earlier this year, and found out this week that they would like to publish them.

To say I’m thrilled about this is an understatement.  One of the great pleasures of my childhood was reading the Holmes stories or having them read to me by my father.  In particular, during a two-week holiday in a clifftop house in Brittany, Dad read the whole of The Hound Of The Baskervilles to us, a couple of chapters an evening.  It was fantastic.

Ever since, I’ve wanted to write a Holmes story.  In fact, Conan Doyle is one of the reasons I became a writer (he and Ian Fleming are two of my earliest influences).  So this is genuinely a boyhood dream come true.

The working titles for the books are The Stuff Of Nightmares and Gods Of War.  They’re not going to be completely straight Holmes tales.  There’ll be elements of cyberpunk and the supernatural in both.  There’ll be plenty of action in them too, but also some good, old-fashioned sleuthing.

It’s too early to announce publication dates.  I haven’t even signed a contract yet.  But the first should be out in late 2013 and the second the year after that.

P.S. There’s also this, an interview I’ve done recently for Keith Brooke, about Age Of Aztec and various other forthcoming events.  It was conducted before the above news arrived.