About my new novel, Dinnusos Rises

So I am having my second novel published by Elsewhen Press!

Now that it has been announced, I can tell you a few things about it.

Dinnusos Rises is going to be my indirect sequel to The Janus Cycle. So if you have not read the first book it will be possible to jump straight into this story (although if you do plan on reading both I would advise it would be much more rewarding to read them in the correct order).

It is based in the same universe – a return to the off-beat, weirder, quirkier version of our own present-day world I created for The Janus Cycle – and it is in a similar vein. It even has the same structure of eight chapters, all narrated by different characters who end up crossing paths during a cataclysmic event at the end of the story.

But there are many differences.

I have always been quite open about the fact that The Janus Cycle was a semi-biographical novel. This new book, while it does still contain echoes from my past, is more about the characters coming into their own and living out their own stories.

I see it as a more mature novel. Just as I am older now, the characters are too. One of the principal themes of The Janus Cycle was personal identity and the structures we live within which pressure people into submitting into stifling societal norms. During that story most of the characters manage to break free, liberate and find themselves (as well as each other). This book is about what happens after. It is about cultural identity. Less about I and more about the we.

There are also going to be some new voices. Of the eight characters who were the primary focus of The Janus Cycle, only three of them are returning again as actual narrators (although most of the others will make an appearance at some point). There were some secondary characters in the first book whom I felt deserved their own chance to shine (and even, in a couple of cases, redeem themselves), and it is they who are going to take the reins in Dinnusos Rises. It is very much a novel of sonder. Where I explore the notion that everyone is complex and has their own story to tell.

I will not say too much more – because I want those of you who read it to discover the rest for yourselves – but, if you haven’t already guessed from the title, there are going to be some Bacchic themes, and those of you who are familiar with the works of Carl Jung and his theory of the Collective Unconscious might find some of the other ideas explored interesting.

I hope it is as much of a pleasure for you to read as it was for me to write.

Dinnusos Rises will be published in a digital edition in April 2017 and as a paperback in July 2017.