It’s here! The second book in The Future King series is now available on Kindle Unlimited, and the paperback version will be live on Amazon in a few days.
I’m particularly pleased with this book. I learned a lot when I wrote and published my first novel, and this time round the editing, formatting and proofing was certainly easier. It helps when you know how to format in Word and what sort of errors to look out for. This didn’t make the process any shorter, but I’m confident that this novel is in better shape than my initial first release (which I have since re-proofed). It also makes some exciting advances in the plot and overall story, too, and is finally a satisfying conclusion to the cliffhanger that ended Logres (1).
So what next in The Future King series? Like any author, I am hoping this sequel and the promise of more to come will encourage sales, perhaps giving me justification to prioritise my writing more than I already do. I would like to make a start on the next two books as one, hopefully to allow a closer release date between the two once they are finished. They will be challenging instalments to pen, however, as the world Gwenhwyfar, Arthur, and Morgan know is about to undergo substantial and radical change. Challenging is fun, however, and I can’t wait to get started.
In the meantime, if you enjoy Logres 1 & 2, it would be great if you could leave a review (if you haven’t already!) and recommend the series to your family and friends. Seeing the occasional feedback trickling in is encouraging, and reminds me that I have someone (other than myself) to write for.
Tag: Book Two
Preview of Logres, Book Two.
This is an extract from chapter two of The Future King: Logres, Book Two. The book itself is out on May 5 2020 and is available to preorder from Amazon.
Gone.
Gwenhwyfar stood in the middle of the living room, her eyes flitting across the destruction around her. The front door hung from its frame, a half-severed limb, and the broken glass of her mother’s favourite cabinet frosted the carpet. The vase that had sat on display lay on the floor among the shattered ornaments, its interior cracked open and as pale as bone.
‘Llew—?’ She waited, but no whine or whimper answered her call. There was nothing to indicate his path besides a few spots of blood leading beyond the threshold. The sound he’d made when he’d been hit with the butt of the New Moral officer’s gun reverberated in her mind. ‘Llewellyn!’
Nothing. Time ticked prominently to her racing pulse. They didn’t take me. Why? She sank down into the sofa, her eyes fixed to the carpet. A deep chill gripped her and suddenly she was shaking violently.
They’ll come back. The New Moral Army had accidentally arrested her parents. It was a misunderstanding, something crazy she could tell her friends about in school on Monday when her mother and father were home again, when this had all been sorted out.
Disappeared. That word had been echoing at the fringe of her vocabulary, and now it was frighteningly real. But her parents hadn’t vanished; she had seen the New Morals take them. She was the one who was Free Countries. This is about me.
The packing passed in a blur. Llew was nowhere to be seen, inside the house or outside of it. She grabbed the essentials—water, money, a torch and something to eat—yet was mindful of her need to pack light. She was stuffing the last few items into her rucksack when headlights scanned the living room. Car doors slammed and footprints crunched across the gravel towards the house. Gwenhwyfar froze, her heart lodged in her throat. She still had time to run, could slip over the garden wall before they realised she was missing. She zipped her rucksack up in a hurry.
‘Police!’ The front door rattled against her makeshift barricade as they attempted to gain access to the property. ‘Let us in!’
She ran into the kitchen, her shoes crunching over the broken sugar pot scattered across the tiled floor. A momentary glance to the pictures stuck to the refrigerator stopped her, her gaze caught by a photo of their last family holiday. Her parents were smiling before a blue seascape, her mother sunburned and carefree, her father windswept and darkened by the Mediterranean sun. She stood with them, short and petite; her brown hair tousled and bronzed, her skin tanned like her father’s, her eyes green like her mother’s.
I can’t run, where would I go? It was impossible to just disappear. And what about her parents? The only people who knew where they had been taken were the ones who had taken them. Abruptly she removed her rucksack and pushed it into the nearest cupboard. A moment later she was at the front door. She began to clear the barricade.
‘Police!’ they yelled. ‘Open up!’
‘I’m in here!’ she shouted. ‘Help me!’ They redoubled their efforts to get in. Soon the furniture was gone and the front door was propped up in the hall. ‘They took my parents!’ Gwenhwyfar exclaimed. She gazed up at the two police officers imploringly. With them was a plain-clothed woman. ‘They just came in and broke everything!’
The woman eyed her pityingly. ‘Miss Taliesin—’
‘Where are they? Where have they taken them?’ She appealed to the shorter of the two police officers. ‘You need to fix this! Why won’t you help me?’
‘I am here to help you, Gwen,’ the woman said calmly. A beaked nose crowned her thin smile, and ash blonde ringlets curtained her long face. ‘My name’s Victoria, I work for the New Morals. I’m here to bring you to see a colleague of mine.’
Gwenhwyfar sensed that she shouldn’t go anywhere with this woman. Despite Victoria’s motherly tone there was something patronising in her eyes—contempt that she failed to cloak. She took an involuntary step back.
‘Please, we can talk about your parents as soon as we get there,’ Victoria continued. ‘We’ll sort all of this out.’
‘I can’t leave,’ Gwenhwyfar protested. ‘My dog’s missing. He’s hurt.’
‘What does he look like?’ the shorter police officer asked.
‘He’s a Catalan sheepdog. He has long fur, looks quite scruffy. His name is Llew.’ She turned to Victoria accusingly. ‘One of your New Morals hit him.’
‘We’ll find him,’ the taller police officer assured her. ‘He won’t have gone far.’
‘Come,’ Victoria urged. Keeping her distance, Gwenhwyfar followed the woman onto the driveway and headed towards the single patrol car. ‘No, not that one,’ Victoria said.
Thrown, Gwenhwyfar followed her off the drive to an unmarked car. The moment she was shut in the back of the vehicle she realised she couldn’t see out through the windows, or who was driving.
‘Fasten your seatbelt,’ Victoria ordered, climbing in from the other side. She shut the door and the locks clunked as they pulled away from the kerb. Gwenhwyfar’s stomach lurched, fatigue pulsing through her limbs. Victoria presented her with a bottle of water. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You need to stay hydrated.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Drink it. It’s a long drive.’
Gwenhwyfar accepted the bottle and held it in her lap. Victoria pulled another one out of the compartment between them and took a sip. A few moments later Gwenhwyfar did the same.
‘What took you so long?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been alone for hours. Is this what you usually do? When you abduct innocent civilians?’
Victoria produced a touchscreen tablet from the nearest seat pocket. Lazily she waved it on. ‘You have an aunt and uncle who live in the area,’ she stated. ‘Can you stay with them?’
‘Why would I need to stay with them?’ Gwenhwyfar eyed her with mistrust. ‘I thought we were going to sort this out.’
‘This won’t be resolved overnight,’ Victoria said. ‘You’re a minor, so you’ll need to stay with a suitable guardian. I expect your parents have a living will detailing who should be your carer in the event of their incapacity.’
‘Why don’t you just lock me up?’ Gwenhwyfar bit. She felt light-headed and her carsickness was getting worse. She took another sip of water. ‘Isn’t that what you do? Abduct people and throw them in a cell?’
‘You must know what we are.’ Victoria was observing her with amusement in her cold eyes. The corner of her mouth curled with a smile. ‘The New Moral Army is an anti-extremism cell, Gwen. What do you think that means?’
She didn’t know, couldn’t fathom it; was trying to ignore the unsettling sensation that ballooned within her and pushed her to lethargy. ‘I don’t feel so good.’
Victoria’s smile widened. ‘It’ll be all right.’
‘No, something… something’s wrong.’ She looked down to the water bottle in her lap, and then at Victoria’s, comprehending. She fumbled to open the car door but the lock was unresponsive. Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘What have you done?’
She was hushed. ‘Rest, Gwen. It’s a long drive, and you need your sleep.’
Victoria touched her hair and caressed her lolling head. Ink blotches picked away her vision, obscuring the water bottle that lay in her lap until darkness rolled across her eyes. All sound was indecipherable to her, and then there came night without time, without beginning.
* * *
Gwenhwyfar felt something cold pressed against her cheek. The angle of the wall seemed familiar in the low light, and for a moment she thought she was back in Swansea in her old bedroom. She half recalled a dream: light burning into the back of her corneas, questions, someone else giving answers through her own lips. As her senses returned she realised she was flopped over in a hard chair, leaning against a metal table. Her face ached as she struggled to sit upright, and she looked around.
The room was windowless, the smooth concrete floor punctured by a single drain. The beady red eye of a camera gazed at her from the lofty ceiling. To her left was a large mirror and a closed door with a dim bulb fixed overhead. She found her feet carefully, holding onto the table as the walls turned around her. The door flung open and the room was flooded with light.
‘You’re awake!’ a man barked. Slamming the door behind him he strode into the room. ‘I was just about to rouse you. How are you feeling?’ He offered her a crinkling smile that made the whiskers of his beard bloom. ‘I’m Richard. Richard Morris. I’m here to talk to you about your parents. Won’t you sit?’ He slapped the paper file he was holding onto the table between them. ‘I imagine you’re in shock. We had to chase your father into the garden. Did you know he had a plane booked to Mexico? From there he intended to go on to South America—to start again, I imagine. He was trying to flee with his own passport. Though, I don’t know, perhaps he was headed somewhere else. Perhaps South America was just a ruse. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.’
‘Where is he?’ Gwenhwyfar sat down as Richard did. The metal chair was still warm.
‘I can’t tell you that. Why do you think the New Moral Army arrested your father? Where he is now, is a matter of national security.’ He cupped his hands together and leant towards her. ‘Do you know where you are, Gwen? Do you know what you’re doing here?’
She watched him closely. His brown eyes were fixed on hers, his crow’s feet wrinkled with curiosity. Despite his amiable expression, Gwenhwyfar felt as if she was pinned in the gaze of a dangerous predator. Her heart pounded in her chest. Fight or flight. With nowhere to run, she had only one option. She drew a preparatory breath.
To be continued in The Future King: Logres, Book Two. Preorder it now from Amazon US or Amazon UK. Out May 5 2020.
The gripping second book in The Future King series. King Arthur meets high-school drama in this near-future dystopian depiction of the Arthurian legends.
The ruling party, New National, is expanding its power. Their new anti-extremism cell, The New Moral Army, threatens all who stand in opposition to the regime. Under the guidance of Marvin, self-proclaimed Merlin, afterschool club The Round Table is about to fight back. The year is 2053, and Britain begins to darken.
Teenager Gwenhwyfar must discover why The New Moral Army has taken her parents and what she can do to save them. Meanwhile, rival Morgan struggles to find her place among her peers. With Bedivere’s life hanging in the balance, a conflicted Arthur does what he can to keep the The Round Table alive.
Knowing that her only chance to save her parents is to discover more about the terrorist cell Free Countries, Gwenhwyfar searches for their leader. She must also navigate new dynamics: her wish for Arthur and Lancelot to make amends may soon one she regrets. With the New Nationals infringing on rights and a general election fast approaching, this is the thrilling second book to volume one of The Future King series.
Cover reveal for The Future King: Logres, vol. 1 book 2.
The gripping second book in The Future King series. King Arthur meets high-school drama in this near-future dystopian depiction of the Arthurian legends.
The ruling party, New National, is expanding its power. Their new anti-extremism cell, The New Moral Army, threatens all who stand in opposition to the regime. Under the guidance of Marvin, self-proclaimed Merlin, after-school club The Round Table is about to fight back. The year is 2053, and Britain begins to darken.
Teenager Gwenhwyfar must discover why The New Moral Army has taken her parents and what she can do to save them. Meanwhile, rival Morgan struggles to find her place among her peers. With Bedivere’s life hanging in the balance, a conflicted Arthur does what he can to keep the The Round Table alive.
Knowing that her only chance to save her parents is to discover more about the terrorist cell Free Countries, Gwenhwyfar searches for their leader. She must also navigate new dynamics: her wish for Arthur and Lancelot to make amends may soon one she regrets. With the New Nationals infringing on rights and a general election fast approaching, this is the thrilling second book to volume one of The Future King series.
As you know, I had to push back the release date of Logres 2 more than once, but am pleased to announce that it will be released on May 05 2020. After four years of writing, editing, formatting, and proofreading, it’s finally there!
For those of you who haven’t read Logres 1, there’s still time to catch up before Logres 2 comes out. I’ve even added a ‘sneak peek’ of Logres 2 in the Kindle file of Logres 1 (click here for Amazon UK & here for Amazon US) to give you a taste of what’s to come.
Logres 2 will also be available for pre-order – I’ll be putting up the links to the Amazon pages on the homepage soon.
I know it’s natural to be excited about one’s own projects, but I’m extremely pleased with how this book has turned out, and can’t wait to see how it fares once it’s released into the wild!
Cover Reveal for Logres 2 -scheduled April 5 2020!
I know it’s been a while since the last update. It was originally my aim to have Logres 2 released before Christmas, but a series of unforeseen events rendered that goal impossible – besides, to what deadline was I working? It was only my own. All the while I’ve had the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that my first book was released in 2015, which, given we are now in 2020, is suddenly a very long time ago.
But it’s not as if it took that many years to write the sequel to Logres. Most of that time was spent redrafting, editing, and formatting. In fact, I only finished formatting the paperback for Logres 2 a few days ago, and intend to format it for Kindle as soon as I’ve tweaked a few things with Logres 1 (drop caps, etc., for consistency). While doing this, I will have to resist the urge to make character amendments, scene cuts or edits, or even go down the rabbit-hole of reformatting Logres 1 (I could, I think, lose at least ten pages, and may well attempt to do so once Logres 2 is available for preorder). These little (and big) tasks always find ways of popping up, and slow down the writing process considerably – particularly as I prefer to work on one creative project at a time in order to give each one my full attention.
I’ve attempted to include enough ‘memory jogs’ in Logres 2 to ensure that anyone who hasn’t read Logres 1 won’t be completely lost, and hope that those who have read Logres 1 won’t have lost interest by the time Logres 2 comes out. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a taster of what’s up and coming in the next two months (see Events for more details).
April 05 – cover reveal & release date announcement, including a sneak peak of Logres 2 – I’ll be sharing an extract from chapter two on my blog at 10:30am, and this will also be available in the ebook of Logres 1.
TBC – Kindle Countdown Deal for Logres 1 – get Logres 1 for 99c/99p. This deal will coincide with the release of Logres 2.
I was originally intending to run a Goodreads Giveaway, but recently discovered this service is now hidden behind a (particularly steep) paywall. I may therefore find a way to run my own giveaway in the not-too-distant future.
Until then, thank you for your patience in waiting for the next book in The Future King series. Watch this space for updates about the upcoming release.
Five books ordered for Goodreads Giveaway!
The books are ordered, all five of them, ready for the giveaway and ready for me to sign. I’m still coming to terms with scribbling in books (I was always taught that defacing a book was hugely immoral), but I suppose that scrawling one’s John Hancock doesn’t really count. Then again, my ‘actual’ signature really can’t be counted as anything other than an irregular, scribbled mess.
Not so for my ‘author’ signature though – you know, the one you put in books – because I have been practicing on several scraps of paper to get something different than what I might scribble in a chequebook. Not that I expect anyone to forge said signature if I do include it in the leaves of my own book, but I’m sure that I once read somewhere that having an ‘artist’s’ signature is the thing to do.
What with my free trial of Amazon Prime, the books should all arrive via courier tomorrow; though I have experienced a certain amount of guilt as a result. It seems a tall task to print five copies of my novel, pack them up and then drive them over to their delivery destination in what is effectively 24 hours. I’m fairly certain that I’m not yet making enough sales for The Future King: Logres to be on the ‘print-and-stock-it-just-in-case’ list, so they’re probably being run off the printing press as we speak. With the novelty of being a published author still relatively new, I must admit that I am looking forward to handling so many copies of my ‘brain-baby’ at once.
In other news, I’m awaiting the moment when it’s appropriate to start spreading the word about my signed copy Giveaway on Goodreads (this will be a fairly labour-intensive task, I assure you), and have been struggling through writing the opening of book two (well, technically Volume One: Book Two, as Logres will be published as two instalments). It’s proving a challenge to get right. I think I’m going to have to accept that after all the polishing I did in the editing process of Book One, I can’t expect the prose for Book Two to be immediately as ‘perfect’. It seems I’m going to have to force myself to take my own advice, which is along the lines of, write and don’t stop. No looking back, no thinking it could be better, you can do all that later in your months of editing (which will inevitably take months) – just go for it, ignore that niggling in your head that it’s not quite there yet – ignore, ignore, ignore – until you get your groove back, get back into the flow of things, finish the story – only then can you go back and rewrite the whole not-quite-good-enough book (thrice, probably).
That said, it is natural to want to get the first few scenes absolutely right from the beginning so that you’re setting off at the right tone and pace. It’s exciting to be starting from scratch (despite the blank-page syndrome!), but writer’s block is still trying to unsettle me, and to top it all off a recent move means that I no longer have my old writing desk (everything is now done on the edge of a very cluttered dining room table).
But don’t despair, if you have read Logres: Book One and are looking for an indication of when Book Two will be on the proverbial shelves: the answer is soon, hopefully either the end of 2016 or near the start of 2017. To avoid the risk of getting myself into a George R. R. Martin-book 6-type scenario, I’m not going to promise too much too soon; but do keep checking back for progress, which I assure you I will undoubtedly post (probably in the form of word-count updates) as regularly as it’s worth.
In the meantime keep sharing The Future King: Logres, Volume One: Book One with anyone you feel might enjoy it, rate and review it on Amazon and Goodreads, enter my free signed copy giveaway on the 1st of Feb, and have a good, creatively embellished week. I will probably be sat at this dining table writing, then rewriting, and tapping out notes for The Future King: Logres, Volume One: Book Two.
M. L. Mackworth-Praed 