Tag Archives: histfic

Lightborne Updates: A Big Box of Books

Last Friday I received the most exciting bookmail any author could ask for: a box full of shiny (very shiny) new copies of my debut novel, hot off the press! They even have that “new book smell,” which, IYKYK.

Look at that GOLD!

With my planned trip to London for pub-day fast approaching, just about every friend I talk to asks me whether things are starting to feel “real” yet. What I’ve discovered throughout this whole publishing process is that the goalposts for “real” keep moving the closer you come to the big day. Seeing the manuscript become a digital ARC felt “real,” then holding the physical ARC in my hands felt even “realer”; after that came the final cover design, then the corrected digital proof, and now I sit here with a copy of Lightborne next to me – the same as will soon appear on bookshelves across the UK, Ireland, even as far away as Australia.

It can’t possibly get any “realer” than that, can it? Have we not, at last, reached “maximum realness,” as a drag queen somewhere is probably also wondering right now?

I count on nothing, as far as that is concerned. A year ago, in my naivete, I might have believed that walking into my book launch would be the peak of this whole experience, but now I’m no longer certain there will be such a thing as a peak. (Or a launch, for that matter!) We writers like to impose the rules by which our little worlds are governed onto the “real” world, in the hope that we might feel just a little more in control of our lives, but the shape of a publishing journey is not a single curve building towards climax, probably more like a series of waves of varying lengths. There’s an addictive element to it – the highs are very high, the lows abysmally low. And you never really know when one is going to hit.

For now, amidst so much uncertainty, I’m doing my best to focus on the milestones I can count on happening: the next time I hand a friend or a family member their very own copy of the book and blushingly insist, “You don’t have to read it”; the first time I get to listen to the entire audiobook, and hear award-winning narrator Will M Watt bring Kit Marlowe, Ingram Frizer and Robin Poley to life. The first time I walk into a bookshop and see Lightborne for sale – an experience I’ll be lucky enough to share with my wife, and my parents, who are traveling all the way from Pittsburgh.

For now, please enjoy this extremely amateur unboxing video, in which I finally get to hold Lightborne for the first time – another beginning in a long series of beginnings.

The GOOOOOLLLLLDDDD!

Lightborne Updates: USA Launch Date & Cover Reveal

It’s finally happening: after many months of tireless work from my agent and rights manager, Lightborne has officially found a home in my home country with Pegasus Books! While it’s available to pre-order in the US now, you can look for it in bookstores from October 22, 2024.

As soon as my agent gave me the good news, I realized there was something very familiar about the name Pegasus. Like many of my anecdotes, it all starts with my dad and his ever-expanding collection of books.

Cast your eyes across the innumerable spines packed higgledy-piggledy into Dad’s groaning, sagging bookcases, and two things will surely stand out to you: one, that nearly every book has something to do with history, and two, that the Pegasus logo appears over and over again. Turns out, my dad is one of their most dedicated customers. He likes to describe himself as a history buff – though “fanatic” might be a more accurate word – and for just about every notable person, important event, place or people you can think of, there’s a book or two in Pegasus’ catalogue. On any given weekend morning, you may find old Dad planted in the history section of one of his local bookstores, flipping through some massive tome about a medieval Venetian cartographer or the life of Hannibal or the beef between Andrew Mellon and Winston Churchill. Only rarely does he walk out with his wallet unscathed. I’m fairly sure that some of the booksellers in southwestern Pennsylvania are only keeping the lights on thanks to his patronage.

I also have a few Pegasus titles on my shelves, like the thoroughly enjoyable and informative A Journey Through Tudor England by Susannah Lipscomb, Paul Strathern’s indispensable The Other Renaissance, and Living Like A Tudor by Amy Licence, which paints a vivid sensory portrait of the time period I anachronistically refer to as “mine.” Pegasus also publishes a brilliant selection of fiction titles by trail-blazing authors like Andrea J. Buchanan, Henriette Lazardis, Neil Jordan, Elizabeth Freemantle, and J.R. Thorpe, all of whom are redefining the historical genre.

It’s humbling and exciting to see my own name listed alongside luminaries like these. But naturally, nothing brings me more pleasure than to imagine Dad walking into one of his favorite bookstores on a Saturday morning and seeing a copy of Lightborne there on the shelf, in its gorgeous new American jacket.

A stunner, isn’t she? I’ve really lucked out with my cover designs!

(Dad, if you’re reading this, when the time comes: DON’T BUY IT. You’ll be getting a free copy!)

And now – for now – it’s back to gearing up for the UK launch on 2nd May. There will be an event scheduled in London to celebrate Lightborne’s birthday. More details to come!