Proctor Novella Two - The Art of Killing.

The Art of Killing is now available on Kindle from here

"In the mountains of Tanpei, hidden deep below the rocky surface, lies Cavern City. The City Fathers, a self styled 'Black Corporation' have filled it with chemfacs and now use the city to supply a vast region of space with the popular drugs 'Float' and 'Spike'. Hasseed, the vicious, sadistic leader of the City Fathers gathers wealth and extends his power, all the while protected from above by miles of rock.

Proctor steals a valuable ancient artefact, killing Hasseed's second in command deep in the caves of Cavern City, and flees across the continent. A chase ensues and Proctor finds himself fighting for his life every step of the way against seemingly impossible odds. As the net starts to close and Proctor's situation becomes increasingly desperate, Hasseed's security chief, Garrett, begins to suspect that there's more to this than meets the eye, but if so, who is this 'Proctor' and what is his ultimate plan?"

I really enjoyed writing The Art of Killing; the style is a step away from my previous books - perhaps a short step, I'm not sure.  A novella needs to be handled a little differently to a full novel and I tried to maintain a steady pace but at the same time, make the locations come to life and fully develop the characters.  It's a difficult balance and one which perhaps pulls this book away from it's description as a 'novella' and shoves it more firmly in to the 'short novel' category.  At 200 pages and 54,000 words it is long as far as novellas go, but I believe it keeps the pace going nicely all the way through and is an exciting read - I certainly hope so!

My beta reader, Arthur Edwards, had this to say about it:

"And so to the Art of Killing we come, second in what may or may not become a longer series of Proctor novellas that chart the struggle back to humanity for our wayward ex cult-marine. In this episode we follow Proctor in the aftermath of a daring (if not ill-advised) raid deep underground in a planetary crime boss's stronghold. The raid itself passes quickly, the story concentrates on what happens after and is written in an absorbing and somewhat refreshing tone for what is a short story. There is detail here that would possibly be out of place in a longer novel that has a more dilated plot to follow - the author has time to explore the locations, the characters and their motivations, as well as giving past and future hints. You feel that these neighbourhoods exist, that they were there before our story and that they will be there after it also - they're not just place in which something needs to happen to move the story along. You *know* people lived and loved here, that they worked and died, that they left their imprint on the scenery. You know why the players do what they do, why they are where they are and where they want to be. All at once you realise that they are all important to you - you may not like them but nonetheless you miss them when they're "offstage".
I like this form of writing, it's refreshing and maintains interest without bloating things. Once again, Andy has provided another excellent piece of writing that sits well in the Proctor stable."
As always, my thanks go to Arthur for his kind words and for taking the time to read the draft manuscript and give me his thoughts on it.  I look forwards to reading some more opinions.

A quick update on other writing projects.

No news on the publication date for Night Time in Shanghai.  I thought I might have been a little optimistic on the launch date when I first mentioned Q2 of 2016 and that's looking to be very much the case now.  Perhaps Q3 or Q4 are more likely now, though I imagine after all my time sitting around wondering what's going on, that when it does finally come together, it'll all come at once.

Once that's done, I'll move right along to publishing "The Gaps Between The Stars".  If this takes a similar amount of time, then perhaps Q4 2017 will be a good estimate of when that will hit the shelves, which means that "Machine War" won't even be considered until next year, so I'm going to take a break from The Night Time in Shanghai Universe and focus on something very different.

At the moment, I'll just say that it relates strongly to a post-singularity society and I'll refer to it as 'Book Five' for now...  I'll start writing it in a few weeks.  I have an outline plot and book structure written for it and I've started toying a little with the main protagonist's character.  At the moment, I'm estimating that it will come in at around 150,000 words or 575 pages, which will make it my longest novel to date.

Once finished, I will re-approach agents and publishers with that manuscript and see if I can get it published alongside the Night Time in Shanghai series.

I'm expecting that it will take me most of the rest of 2016 to write Book Five - I've a busy year ahead.  In around four months time my daughter's off to uni and (hopefully, if things work out) I'll be off to live on a boat.  Perhaps this will allow me to find more time for writing eventually, but my first few months will be focused on making my new home survivable for the winter, so I imagine I won't have much time to focus on writing.  We'll see!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading The Art of Killing as much as I enjoyed writing it.