New Direction

The Black Death was not an accidental event. The virus responsible for killing half the world was genetically engineered. It was a deliberate attempt to undermine earth and its civilizations concocted in the laboratory of a fourteenth century alchemist.
No, I haven't turned into a conspiracy theorist. That's one of the revelations in my novel The Summoning, in which it's revealed that a world the mirror image of ours has been waging a clandestine war against us for centuries.
But they're different from us. While we had the Age of Enlightenment and rationality, they never differentiated between science and magic and their use of the latter is their great weapon in this secret struggle.
If that all sounds a bit young adult, then great. The Summoning has teen protagonists and is deliberately intended to appeal to younger readers. There's peril, darkness, courage and quite a lot of history. I like history, as readers of my fiction will already have gathered.
There's something incredibly liberating about seeing events through the eyes of someone young enough to have energy and hope and no fear of failure because that's something they've never experienced. And the characters in this story need courage.
They're not just witnessing history, they're trying alter the fate of our world.
If things go according to plan, The Summoning will be published later this year. Though some pretty horrific scenes occur in it, it's probably more fantasy than horror. And I'd be quite happy for my teenage son to read it.