The New Novel: Life Drawings

Within the next two or three weeks I hope to release my new novel, Life Drawings. Like all my novels, it is a story about real people in real situations. I love exploring what it means to be a human being. It is always my aim to write ‘truth’. A truth, not the truth. I love reading science fiction and fantasy. Although the best of these also reveal some kind of truth about us as a species, and each of us as individuals, they also allow us to escape our everyday reality. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately) that is where most of us spend most of our time. I am grateful that I have not faced any major catastrophes or tragedies in my life, at least so far. I am grateful for that because ordinary, day to day life is generally enough of a challenge. In this novel, as in my earlier work and as, I hope, in books yet unwritten, I seek to shed just a little light, on just one little corner, of human life.

I have prepared the following brief blurb for the book:

Tom and Diane are two young misfits who embark upon a timid relationship. Supported by friends and family, harassed by an increasingly disturbed Anglican priest, they begin an exploratory journey, discovering themselves and each other. But a dark secret from Diane's past is slowly closing in on them. 

Do Tom and Diane have a future together? 

Who will live, and who will die?

For me, there is as much tension and suspense in wondering what will be said next in a conversation, in wondering whether two people will make it together, as there is in wondering whether Bruce Willis will again foil the bad guys; or in wondering whether Robert Langdon will again solve the mystery, just in the nick of time. More, actually, since we pretty much know the outcome of those scenarios from the beginning. And because, although I am probably not going to be called upon to save the world (again), I probably will be expected to engage in another conversation sometime soon! 

So there it is: the first little taste of what is to come. And below, also, is a first glimpse of the cover (or what probably, may, could be, will be the cover). Stay tuned for more news!