Character building

Edmund Caul isn't absolutely sure of who he really is.

Superficially, he's like any other man, though he's unusually physically strong and quite strikingly good-looking.

What separates him, is sobering. He came into the world fully-formed. He absorbs rather than reflects light, so he can't be photographed. He's arrogant, gleefully devoid of remorse and fluent in languages already dead at the time when Christ was born. Oh, and he doesn't age, though he has matured during the time of his captivity, before his escape, when my story concerning him begins.

That story is told in The Lazarus Prophecy, published as a Bloomsbury Reader e-book and Audible audiobook on September 9.

There's no point, I don't think, unless at the outset, every novel you write is intended to be the best you've yet written. Sometimes you succeed in this and more often you fail, but it should always be the ambition.

Ultimately it's for the reader to decide whether I've succeeded or failed in making Prophecy the best of my paranormal thrillers. The deliberations on that verdict will begin in about ten weeks.

I'm sure of one thing, though. In Edmund Caul, the good people called upon to confront him face the scariest and most formidable antagonist I've so far managed to create. He gave me a few sleepless nights. I can only hope he'll do the same for some of you.