Ultimate satisfaction...that got you reading!

With The Book of Life, Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy comes to a close, and what a close it is. The All Souls trilogy has always been a many layered story. At its heart the forbidden relationship between our supernatural Romeo and Juliet, Matthew and Diana, and the battles they fight to remain united and protect their family; the greater tale of relationships which span history, the globe and supernatural species; and the war between tradition and progress - two disparate entities which, with every page turned, come closer and closer to each other and the truth.

The Book of Life brings all aspects of the trilogy to a climatic and incredibly satisfying resolution, but leads us through woods thick with ghosts, body-littered caverns, genocidal torture chambers and top-of-the-line scientific laboratories en route. Without giving away any spoilers, our favourite characters will all be changed by the experience in this volume - their world will never be the same again. And not just their world, the world.

By reading this series you won’t be the same either, because the essence of this book will weave its way into your blood like rosemary and rowan incense, sharing a real-world truth that we all know in our hearts - whether witch, daemon, vampire or human, we are all the same. We all live, hope, dream and die.

I know every book has this message in one way or another - the criminal loves his mother, the saint still feels jealousy, the serial killer still laughs at looping gifs of kittens tumbling - but the Book of Life is beautifully written and the supernatural element takes away the sense of soapbox. It holds the mirror up to modern society with a subtlety and a flair for the dramatic which is inspiring. 

The depiction of power is also a thing of wonder. In the All Souls trilogy, both sexes are warriors, scholars, scientists, soldiers, strategists, geniuses, feral and caring. And isn’t that how it is and how it's meant to be? And I can't help but adore the fact that the most powerful character in the book magically becomes a natural redhead! It feels like a fictional finger gesture for the women throughout history who have been unfairly ostracised, tortured and killed purely because of the colour of their hair...

Deborah Harkness will enthral you with her web of words, open a velvet surrounded window into another world and show you the truth of living. It doesn’t matter if you’re a witch, a vampire, a daemon or a human - everyone will love the All Souls trilogy. What are you waiting for? A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night are already available, The Book of Life is out on the 15th of July.

I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Above the shit and the piss...

I'm currently working on something which is set in a small city, has time-traveling witches, ghosts, vampires and mediums... You would think I wouldn't have time to miss some of the characters from the first novel and a half I wrote. But I do and so I indulged in writing a scene which I probably won't come back to for at least a year...

Lucielle and Raven almost have a thing. They are both magic users and are part of a dysfunctional magical society in a city which is pretty much London. Lucielle's only living relative, Henri, is a powerful witch, impatient and frustrated aunt and has a terminal diagnosis. Go scene...

* * * * *

Raven took the hospital stairs three at a time and wasn't even breathing hard when he reached the roof. The emergency fire exit had been propped open with a lump of concrete and he kicked it out of the way as he stepped onto the flat cigarette-butt strewn asphalt, hearing the door slam shut behind him.

She was standing on the low wall surrounding the roof, her feet bare, her dark hair drifting in the wind and half-hiding her face from the city. Beyond her the sky was bruised with storm clouds, making the street lights glow like fireflies far below them. Raven stopped, clenching and unclenching his fists, mentally calculating the distance between he and Lucielle, between the edge of the roof and the pavement. The maths were not good. He took a deep breath and took a step towards her.

“Lucielle... Get back onto the fucking roof.”

She tilted her face towards his voice, her eyes shut behind her hair.

“Fuck, Raven. I thought you'd be faster, I could have stepped off this edge a hundred times already.”

He clenched his teeth, taking a step towards her.

“So why haven't you?”

Lucielle laughed but the sound felt brittle. “I'm fairly certain that's not the kind of question you're meant to ask.”

She raised a half-empty bottle to her lips, the label frayed and torn where she'd been picking at it. Raven frowned. The alcohol complicated things, it always did with Lucielle.

“Get back onto the roof and we can talk about this.”

Lucielle turned towards him, her body stiffening, her face tight as she grimaced.

“Who said I wanted to talk? And even if I did, why the fuck would I talk to you? Christ, Raven. You could have at least sent Sophie...”

“Sophie’s in the ward. With Henri.”

The words landed like blows and for one moment Raven thought she would fall, just topple backwards like a windswept leaf and drift out of sight. Lucielle sagged and stepped forward onto the roof, her legs crumpling beneath her as she sat on the wall. The wind lifted her hair from her face and Raven could see the smudges of make up streaked down her cheeks, see the grey pain around her eyes.

“Lucielle, she needs you...”

Lucielle shook her head, distracted and then determined, the bottle returning to her lips.

“What good am I right now? How exactly can I help? It’s not like I can cure her, or even help... All I ever do is fuck up and make things harder. If I’m around she’ll just worry about me rather than actually looking after herself. This is MY FUCKING FAULT!”

She threw the bottle at Raven as she shouted. It flew wide and smashed on the tarmac near the door. Her arms dropped limply to her sides, her fingers brushing against the loose chips of gravel and bird crap. Raven took a step towards her and sank to his knees, his eyes searching for hers.

“Luce... It’s not your fault. How could this be your fault?”

The tears were running openly down her face, dripping onto her bare arms and feet. She lifted her hands to cover her face.

“If I hadn’t been fucking up, if she’d not been freaking out about Chase and Sophie... She’d have realised that there was something wrong. She’d have been...operable...”

Raven could feel his throat tightening and he tried to swallow, tried to find his voice. A growl of thunder dragged itself across the city and he waited for it to pass but Lucielle spoke before he could.

“Did you see her face, Raven? When she asked what the treatment was and the doctor, he just looked right at her and said there was no course of treatment. She looked so scared, it was like her face had slid aside to reveal her soul... I saw her, I really saw her and she was lost. I saw her hope wither, her strength crushed... She was like a child, like a lost child...”

“Luce...”

“I did that, Raven. I stopped her from realising she was ill... and now, now the Conclave are already hounding her, demanding I leave the city... What good have I been? With everything that has happened... My parents, Sophie, the fucking knife, Chase... What good am I? I just make people die. Where’s the grand fucking scheme in that?”

She stood quickly and turned back to the wall, lifting one pale foot to rest on the smooth grey concrete. The first drops of rain began to darken the stone around her foot in big coin-sized circles.

“Lucielle?” Raven asked, his voice flat and hard like the pavement way, way below.

She stepped up onto the wall and turned away from him, raising her voice so he could hear her.

“So what I really want to know is, if I’m meant to be so fucking special, from such an esteemed bloodline; if destiny and fate are bending over backwards for me to fuck them up the arse, then surely I can’t just step off this fucking wall and stop being such a total fucking fuck-up...”

Raven took a step towards her already knowing in his gut that he was too far away from her, that he wasn’t going to be fast enough. He called her name but his voice came out strangled by fear, buried beneath another rumble of thunder.

She didn’t look back, she just took a step forward into the rain and dropped out of sight like a stone.

Raven screamed her name as lightning scorched the air and for a moment he thought he’d been struck. His breath was knocked from him as he rolled across the roof, feeling the stone chips embedding themselves into his jaw and one cheek. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, feeling his heart pounding against his ribs like a punch, his whole body shaking and all the time unable to tear his eyes away from the last spot he had seen her in. That rain drenched roof edge, with the city lights beyond.

As he shuddered, his brain numb and his eyes stinging from the rain, he became aware of a sound, a buffeting of wind, like the slowed down whomp of helicopter rotors. Raven glanced around, seeing only the rain and buildings jutting up into the tomb dark sky and then movement caught his eye.

It was a flicker of black, peaking over the edge of the roof. It appeared again after a second, the sound of pushing air accompanying it and then Lucielle’s face appeared above the concrete.

She rose majestically, lifted by a pair of ebony wings which seemed larger than her small frame. Raven scrambled to his feet and approached the edge of the roof as her feet reached for the wall. She landed awkwardly, the wind tugging at her wings before she could fold them and Raven reached out to grab her hand, holding on tightly, anchoring her to the rooftop with an iron grip.

“What. The. Fuck...”

Lucielle glanced over her shoulder at the folded feathers and then met Raven’s gaze and there was steel there. Strength and conviction and what-ever else came to mind when you looked at someone who had just discovered they had the power to change the world. Lucielle squeezed Raven’s hand.

“I didn’t know I could do that...”

Raven stared at her wings. “I don’t think many people can... Probably not that fast either...”

“You know what this means?”

Raven’s eyes dropped to their clasped hands for a moment. “Destiny, fate... It seems you are fucking special after all... Maybe you have a chance of helping Henri?”

Lucielle smiled softly. Behind her the rain was easing off and shards of pink and golden light were spearing through the grey and licking at the city.

“First things first; it means we have a way off this rooftop after you kicked the door closed.”

Raven looked over the side of the building, his eyes widening.

“You can’t mean...”

Lucielle unfolded her wings with a shiver, wrapping both hands around Raven’s. Her wings dipped, the lift pulling her up onto her tiptoes. She grinned at Raven and pulled him towards her, his arm just wrapping her waist as her wings thrust down again.

“Oh hell yeah...”

Colds and damp sand

If anyone out there has the cure to the common cold, stop being selfish and share... I think I've either had one cold for five weeks or two colds humping each other for the same duration... I'm getting to the point where I'm prepared to either napalm it out with alcohol and curry or marry the damn thing - Table for two Mrs Twistedwitch-Cold?

Whatever... The last couple of weeks have been a harvest festival of book reading and dvd/tv watching; I cruised through the Steig Larson trilogy, read a couple of urban fantasy titles, a children's fantasy, a horror proof I've had kicking around for about three years and am now ignoring all else for a proof that just may be the next big thing... I'll let you know when I've finished it. Tv-wise, we've just finished watching the final episodes of Lost and 24 and one was really cool and the other was a meta-physical shambles. I'll leave it up to you to decide which was which.

Whilst we haven't made it to the cinema for a few weeks, we keep catching up with films on dvd and Holmes has to be the most recent viewing of note. I have to admit, I wasn't impressed by the trailers at the time, but Downey Jnr really stole the show. The film was a tangental re-telling of the essence of Sherlock Holmes, were he too self absorbed to be socially aware, smug with his incredible intelligence and somehow charming and utterly irritating at the same time... Like House in a frock coat really... The whole film looked authentic enough to soot up your eyeballs and Downey Jnr yet again proves that he's more than just a clothes horse for a cool costume.

Writing... I've done some. We're working on Cheesemint scripts at the moment and I have a short story to try and cobble together in the next week mixing myth and military, so wish me luck. But here's some of the random writing practice that came up in the last week - it started off really nostalgic and golden and turned swiftly towards the sitting-in-the dark-rocking-and-babbling with very little warning. Sorry about that. I'll try and curb that next time...

Deeper Than Damp Sand

The rope trails down the rock face and frays into nothing miles away from the waves kissing stone below. I could remember when there once used to be a path here, little more than a wish clinging onto the cliff and you hung onto the rope for dear life as you crept around the corner to get to the beach beyond. The beach that couldn't be seen from land or sea.

I glance behind me, thinking I hear footsteps scuffing the impacted earth and there's no one there, only the breeze shaking the brambles. I keep looking back, expecting the faces from twenty years before to tumble around the corner, sunburnt and their hair salt-styled from the sea... Somewhere above me I can hear a bird singing, its song mixing with the sea and wind into a perfect moment of summer.

The tension in my gut draws me back to the frayed rope and I grab it, feeling the years coiled in my hand. As if with one pull, the world could cast off years, the path would scramble from the sea to cling to the rock, the lines would fade from my skin and the air would be full of familiar laughter.

“Just jump in, stop wasting the summer...”

I hear him, just like he's there and I spin round, the smile already on my face. But the path's empty, just bramble shadows and dreams.

I look back at the sea and lean over the end of the path, holding onto the rope as I watch the waves below. The water looks less blue now, like grey metal buckling a long way away. My knuckles are the colour of bone around the rope and my skin looks wrapped tight enough to split, all scars and lines.

The singing bird darts out from the hedge behind me and flutters out over the sea, swooping in its song. Before I know what I'm doing, I've kicked off my shoes and jumped. Feeling the wind rush to encourage me, the sun sparking off of those giggling waves.

The water is a cool slap, knocking laughter into bubbles as it pulls me into its blue embrace. I fight to the surface and let the laughter peal, hearing it bounce off of the cliff and ringing back at me like a memory. I tread water, surprised at its warmth, glad that the summer heat has been seeping into it for months. I flip the hair from my smile and start swimming for the curve in the cliff and the beach beyond.

The sea laps my ears as I turn the corner doing a careful breaststroke and there it is, the beach where we used to spend most of our summers. Apart from the path, nothing has changed, the cliff's shielded it from erosion and it remains a sweep of golden sand, with a few boulders bathing in the shallows.

I find the sand beneath my feet and wade through the water to the dry sand, hot and oozing through my toes. I turn, taking it all in, the shelves cut into the cliffs by the sea, the perfect sand, the sky like a polaroid from every summer that ever was. If I close my eyes I'll be eighteen again, standing here at the start of the summer, waiting for the magic to happen.

I open my eyes and walk over to the closest rock, sitting with my bare feet in the water and feeling the heat in the stone drying my clothes. I sit facing the cliff, trying to remember, where it was, where to dig...

My knees sink into the warmth of the sand as my fingers burrow deeper, into the damp layer abandoned by sea and sun, digging until my nails hit metal. The biscuit tin is heavy with emotion as I pull it from the sand, the red paint infected with a crust of rotting wet metal. I go back to the rock, back to the sunlight and rest the cold metal on my lap, watching the sea and listening to the melody of the coast.

I don't need to open the tin to know what's inside it, we each left something behind that summer; my battered yellow Walkman, Rory's horror book he was reading at the time, Paul left the folding knife he'd only just bought, Joe, the watch he'd had since he'd been twelve. And Si...Si left something else, something too big to fit in the tin. Si left his boat, buried in the sand beneath, like a warped Viking funeral, the oaks tucked beneath the seats beside bottles of water, wine and salt, and a bloodied travel blanket.

The thing inside the blanket we all left. A friendship ended, an accident, a body – whatever you'd call it. Our secret. Our oath to silence. Our lives forever changed by dumb bad luck, too many drunk teenagers on a boat and a friend caught in the undertow and washed up on our favourite beach the next morning.

I close my eyes and tip my head back into the sun, listening to the seagulls fight high above the waves. The tension in my stomach has gone now. It wasn't nostalgia dragging me back here, just guilt and sadness buried deeper than damp sand.

I go back to the hole and brush the thin layer of sand from the blanket, feeling something shifting beneath, things that were once joined, now rattling loose like promises in a tin. I put the box back and fill the hole, smoothing the sand flat with slow hands. Then I lay down and let the sun sink into me, lulling me to sleep as I wait. If I wait long enough the tide will wrap me in its whispers. If I wait long enough I'll be eighteen again, surrounded by friendship that could last forever.

If I wait long enough I won't care that there's no way off of this beach.