Once upon a time! . . . later.
February, 1860. Workers break ground for the world’s first underground railway system, that will soon cut through the heart of London — and threaten the secrets that lie beneath.
For centuries, fae have dwelt in a shadowy mirror of the city above. Now, at last, their sanctuary is crumbling. The Queen of the Onyx Court has gone into seclusion, fighting to maintain their defenses, and in her absence, her subjects run unchecked. The filthy, gas-lit streets of Victorian London are their playground and battleground both, in a conflict between ancient magic and modern industry that will force them to an inescapable choice: flee, adapt, or be destroyed.
When I said Midnight Never Come was a stand-alone novel, I meant it. And I still do.
But I figured out how to write a sequel . . . 270 years later.
The blurb above is pure, unadulterated hand-waving. I know roughly the ideas I want to toss into the stew of this novel, but not the specifics of what I’m doing with them, because right now you are witnessing the very embryonic stages of a book. I thought this idea up all of eight days ago, proposed it to my editor all of seven days ago, and got it approved this afternoon. I have not yet begun researching it. But I can’t bring myself to hold off on announcing it until I’ve worked out the finer details. (Like, you know, a title1.)
So what am I really saying? That I’ll be writing another historical London faerie fantasy. (That I am indeed a sucker for punishment.) That the book will be set in the later Victorian period, and will concern any or all of the following: the London Underground, Queen Victoria, spiritualism, imperialism, Charles Dickens, Spring-Heeled Jack, class conflict, the Industrial Revolution, and Christina Rossetti’s poem “The Goblin Market” — plus assorted other things I don’t even know about yet.
Stay tuned to this space for the further adventures of Good God I Really Have Gone Crazy.
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1 – Courtesy of certain friends, the tongue-in-cheek working title is Karl Marx and the Faerie Proletariat.