All you Kit Marlowe fanboys and fangirls out there may be interested to know that Issue #12 of Paradox Magazine is now available to order, and within its pages you may find my story “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe”. No relation to Midnight Never Come, despite that title coming from Marlowe, but I welcome speculation as to how the two might be made to connect. (I suppose the answer might be Ink and Steel.)

Also, C.E. Murphy’s book The Queen’s Bastard debuts today. I mention this because it will always hold a special place in my heart as the first book I blurbed. Yes, ladies and gents, somebody at her publisher decided that Marie Brennan was a name worth putting on the cover! Oddly enough, the letter I got with the review copy connected it to Warrior and Witch, but it’s far more like Midnight Never Come, so that’s the vein I will use to pitch it to you all here.

The Queen’s Bastard, much like Michael Moorcock’s Gloriana, takes place in a setting that is sixteenth-century Europe in almost everything but name. (Unlike Gloriana, at no point did I want to throw it across the room and light it on fire with the power of my rage.) It has espionage and magic and is way sexier than MNC, and it’s the first book of a new series called The Inheritors’ Cycle. Short-form synopsis is, Belinda Primrose is the unacknowledged bastard daughter of Elizabeth Lorraine, queen of England Aulun, and she’s been trained by her father Robert Dudley Robert Drake in the art of international spying and assassination.

Belinda isn’t an entirely likeable character; she takes several actions in the story that had my skin crawling. But that’s clearly deliberate, and tied in with the growth of Belinda’s powers; I suspect that when it’s viewed in the larger context of the series, that will become an interesting facet of her character development. I’m certainly very curious to see the next book. This is clearly based on Reformation-era Europe, but taking it one step aside means Murphy can play with some elements of her own creation, and I’m looking forward to seeing where those go.

Finally, I’m hard at work on creating content for the dedicated Midnight Never Come website. (That’s just the holding page, until the thing goes live.) The plans, they are glorious. I have no idea what this stuff will look like in execution, but the ideas have me hugely pleased.