Back to the Future

After a break from serious writing for almost the past year (due in no small part to what you see before you on this very webpage), serious work has now begun on ‘Maranatha’s sequels - and prequel. While ‘Maranatha’ ends with the promise "Tomas de Carranza and Emanuel Khalamanga will return, in ‘The Keys of Heaven, the Ashes of Hell’ ", the next book in the series in fact features Vanessa Descartes, set several years before the events in 'Maranatha', and during her previous career in criminal forensics. The reasoning behind this is that firstly, I needed to tie up some of the loose ends and unanswered questions about Vanessa that were left at the end of the first book, and also set up the rather complex background for what follows chronologically in ‘Keys of Heaven’. These are works in which the smallest details and throwaway references can have great symbolic significance later on, and the story arc is one that ultimately encompasses the past 10,000 years or so of human history, as well as the race's place in the cosmos, and the fate of the Western Church – the merest foundations for which were laid in ‘Maranatha’.

The remaining entries in what has now fallen under the umbrella title of 'The Trinity Chronicles' see a steep escalation in the overt supernatural elements which were, for the most part, tacit in 'Maranatha' or could at least be explained away by rational means. There is no such ambiguity in what is to follow, and that's all I'm going to say on the matter at this stage. (Apart from anything else, I'm still figuring out the full details of the background and the true nature of every character's place in that storyline).

The current working title for the Vanessa book is ‘Venus in Capricorn’ but that will definitely change by the end. Like it’s predecessor it will end up being illustrated, by me, and will most likely be a good deal shorter in length as well – a novella, rather than a novel, according to the current plan, so as not to hold up production of 'Keys' for too long.