Upcoming project for Brian Ruckley

This from Ruckley's website:

As promised in the last post here, some brief details on the new book I'm writing. Yes, the fine folks at Orbit, in their infinite wisdom, seem to feel that the world could withstand further literary output by yours truly. (I say wisdom, but it might just be some ghastly administrative error on their part, of course. No matter. They signed the contract, so they're stuck with me now).

The working title (and so far everyone, including me, seems to quite like it, so I imagine it'll probably survive all the way through to publication) is The Edinburgh Dead. The setting is, as you might guess, Edinburgh; specifically, Edinburgh in the first half of the 19th century. Since I write fantasy rather than history, though, it's not quite as simple as that.

I'm taking some gruesome and rather famous aspects of Edinburgh's past and spicing them up a bit with veteran warriors, magical conspiracies, killers both human and decidedly not, desperate combat and sinister goings-on in general. In short, it's a dark, heroic fantasy set in 19th century Edinburgh. With swords and gaslamps.

As for publication date - because I know someone will ask about that sooner rather than later - I can't say exactly, but I'll be delivering the manuscript next year and barring exceptional circumstances it takes at least nine months, more likely something approaching twelve, to go from that point to publication. So you can do the math yourselves.

I'm having a lot of fun working on this so far. It's a stand alone novel, and that makes a very pleasant change after turning out a hefty trilogy like The Godless World. I'll no doubt report back here on the creative process and progress (watch out for that mid-book slump of despair and self-doubt!), but I'll leave it there for now. Got stuff to write.

If you haven't already, give Ruckley's latest, Fall of Thanes (Canada, USA, Europe) a shot, as it definitely is one of the fantasy books to read this year.