Season's greetings, everyone! As a special present, I've released the video trailer for The Ascension... You can find it on YouTube or on this site's Features page!

Yay! I've finally given the Characters page its long-overdue overhaul... Lots more info (not too many spoilers, you'll be pleased to know), plus... bigger pics (and in some cases the pics are brand-new)! Not to mention that I've recently added eight new characters to the page!

Reader John Olson has created his own "Animoto" for Quantum Prophecy: The Awakening!

Click here to see this great piece of animation in action!

Good news: The first Advance Uncorrected Galleys of The Ascension arrived with this morning's mail!

No matter how much work I put into a book, I never quite convinced that it's going to happen until I see a physical copy (like most writers I've had more than one book make it most of the way only to have the whole project fall apart right at the very end).

The Ascension is a nice hefty tome that clocks in at 382 pages (57 pages more than its predecessor, Super Human). It's scheduled for publication in the USA next June. Not too long to wait!

New reviews of Super Human, from Pink Me, BC Book Talk, Lunar Hunk and Sbyteens!

Judge Dredd Megazine #302

Older readers might like to check out the latest issue of Judge Dredd Megazine, which features a nine-page story written by me and illustrated by Tiernan Trevallion!

The story is called "A Judge's First Duty," and it's one of the Megazine's "Tales from the Black Museum", an irregular series of stand-alone adventures set in Judge Dredd's universe (in fact, this is my second Black Museum story: the first was published in Megazine #298).

Coming in summer 2011: The Ascension!

Featuring the return of (most of) the main characters from Super Human! In The Ascension, the characters suddenly find themselves in an alternate world, where America is ruled by the Chancellor, a ruthless dictator obsessed with extending his control to the rest of the world...

The Ascension approaches the world of the superhumans from a new angle, and - finally - some questions about the nature of the superhuman abilities are answered!

Now, I know that a lot of people will have questions about this new book, so I shall attempt to anticipate them here:

  1. Yes, this book is a second prequel to the original trilogy!
  2. The book has been completed and delivered, and pretty much 99.99% of my work on it is done.
  3. The cover has once again been illustrated by the incredibly talented Shawn Martinbrough!
  4. No, there are still no polka-dotted giraffes.
  5. Eight, or twelve depending on how you count them.
  6. Because if he did, he wouldn't be able to bring it back to the store.
  7. Two in the front, two in the back.
  8. What's going on? This doesn't make any sense!
  9. Yeah, these aren't answers at all - he's just filling space!
  10. And there's still three more lines of this rubbish to go. I wonder if we'll get a real answer before the end?
  11. I doubt it. Look, here it comes now...
  12. Yes, Lance and Abby do show up in The Ascension.

My Superhero Costume Generator has been updated! Yes, now anyone - regardless of talent or lack thereof - can create a multitude of badly-dressed superheroes at only the click of a button! (And another button, probably, and maybe quite a few more after that...)

As before, the Superhero Costume Generator features some secret buttons, including one to create a costume at random (it's carefully hidden away in the bottom-right, below the "D" in "Design").

And don't forget there's also my Name Generator, Superhero Name Generator and Fantasy Title Generator!

The New Heroes Forum is now fully functional after a minor snag that prevented new members from joining... So sign up now for discussions, chats, arguments and speculation about the New Heroes / Quantum Prophecy series!

Finally, after much forgetting, I've put a sample chapter of the third book (Absolute Power / The Reckoning) on-line! I've also updated the books pages a little, and...

... wait for it!...

You also get a sample chapter of Super Human!

Wait a second... Aren't Abby and Lance on the same side?

(If you don't yet know who Abby and Lance are, then you haven't read Super Human!)

About 70% of the e-mails I receive regarding the Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes series have one question in common... "Do you intend to finish the story of Colin, Danny and Renata?" If you've been wondering this, the answer can be found on the Questions page!

I also receive a lot of questions about writing, so I've added a new section to the page that should, I hope, answer most of these!

Check out Amazon.com for a brief but (I hope) informative Q&A session with yours truly about Super Human!

Super Human has been out almost two weeks now, and more reviews are coming in. So far, they've all been very positive. See the latest review on Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books!


Tomorrow - May 13th - is the official publication date for Super Human, the first prequel to the Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes series! To mark this occasion, here are two brand-new Wallpaper images to adorn your computer's desktop!

 

Super Human will be hitting the bookstores all across America in the coming week... I'm a little nervous about that: It's the first new Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes novel in three years (the third was first published in the UK in 2007 - albeit in a slightly different version to the US edition).

Recently I've received a lot of e-mails asking when I'm going to continue the original series. If you've been wondering about that, please check out the Questions page before sending me an e-mail - that's what the questions page is there for! I'm not saying I don't want to receive e-mails - I do! - but I'm getting bored with answering the same questions over and over. ;)

Only three weeks now until Super Human is published, so perhaps it's time I gave you a few more hints about the book... (Some of these you may already know!)

#1. Super Human is a prequel to the Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes series. What this means is that it is set before the events of those books. About 23 years before the main storyline, in fact (so that's about thirteen years before the books' prologues). This means that none of the main teenaged characters from the QP/NH series appear - so there's no Colin, Danny or Renata.

#2. Instead, the book's main protagonists are five brand-new teenaged characters. But that's not entirely true... :) Of those five, only one has never appeared before in the QP/NH universe. Who are they? Well, their names are XXX XXXXXX, XXXXXXX, XXXXX, XXXX XX XXXXXXX and let's not forget XXXXX XXXXXXXXXX!

#3. Aside from the main characters, there's a lot of familiar secondary characters too. Some of them appear only briefly, others are only mentioned, but at least three of them are very important to the story.

#4. Super Human has been designed to be a stand-alone novel: it is NOT necessary to read any of the other books first. If you're completely new to the series you can enjoy Super Human without worrying that you've missed out on something important... And you can then go on and read the rest of the books. Likewise, if you're already familiar with the series there is still a heck of a lot to enjoy in Super Human!

#5. All of the scenes in the trailer for Super Human are taken directly from the book (well, more or less...), and all of the main characters in the book appear in the trailer. You have watched the trailer right to the very end, haven't you?

#6. And speaking of the trailer... Here's some stuff you might not have noticed:

The Vile Desire to Scream My friend and fellow writer Oisín McGann has just released a free short story called "The Vile Desire to Scream" on his website.

Oisín writes: "This is a short book set in the world of the Wildensterns. It takes place between Ancient Appetites and The Wisdom of Dead Men, but it's a stand-alone story, so you don't need to have read either book to read this one."

You can find the story here, but I strongly recommend that you do check out Oisín's other books!


Top artist Shawn Martinbrough - who illustrated the cover for Super Human - has posted some early designs on his Facebook page - check them out: I'm sure you'll love them as much as I do!


Prototype 1		  
Revised illustration		  
Final cover


And the winner - the only person to get all the answers correct - is...

Owen Michael Jow

Congratulations to Owen - his book will be in the mail very shortly! The names of all the other entrants were put into a hat, and one was drawn at random to receive a copy of The New Heroes: Superhuman... So a big hand please for Michael Albertelli!

Thanks also to everyone who entered - I hope you all had fun finding the answers!


The Super Human Competition is now closed... Many thanks to everyone who entered - now I wish I hadn't included so many questions, because I've got to compile all the answer sheets and work out the winner. This is going to take ages!

I'll be posting the answers later today, as well as the names of the winners... Keep checking back!


Time's running out for the Super Human Competition!

Hmm... Maybe the questions are a little too tricky! Tell you what... Even if you can't find all the answers, send whatever you have and you might win a prize anyway! After the competition is over I will put all the entrants' names into a hat and pick one at random: whoever's name is picked will win a signed copy of the limited-edition short-story collection The New Heroes: Superhuman!


Can't wait until May 13th for your copy of Super Human? Then click the above title to enter this great competition and you could be reading the book a lot sooner than you expected!


Upcoming events (updated!)


Paragon
Judging by e-mails I receive, Paragon is the most popular of the series' older characters, and lots of people want to see more pics of him (especially after the recent release of the trailer for Super Human). So, being the kind and generous person that I am, I shall oblige - click here!


Upcoming events: Busy, busy, busy... And it's looking like the summer is going to be even more busy! But for now, here's a list of the events in which I'll be participating over the next couple of months... I'll post more details on each event as the dates approach.