“Serpent of Malice” – my next novel

My next novel ‘Serpent of Malice’ is now scheduled by the publisher for February. Since I generally write fairly voluminous books, but Torsten Low Publishing  only publishes  somewhat thinner – or at least normally sized – books, the story is now split into two parts.

Well, that’s not new to me: My book ‘World Raiders’ is already divided into two parts, Part 1 ‘Invaders’ and Part 2 ‘‘Abductors’.

My novel “Gefangene des Panthers” (Captive of the Panther – so far only available in German) also is divided into two parts: “Verräterinnen” (Traitresses)  und “Monden-Feinde” (Moon Foes).

Sometimes I wish my first books had also been split into more tomes. That would have made them more manageable.

2 parts “Obsidian Secrets”
3 parts “Dreams of Salt”
2 parts “Beyond the Merry-go-Round”
2 parts “Wings of Stone“.

 
If that had been done I would now have a nine book series (Series titled “Steam Age Quest”).

But back to “Serpent of Malice”.

The year: 1887 The place: Cambridge, England
Elinor’s plans go awry when she is not accepted by Girton Ladies’ College, but by Royston College, a Wizards’ Lodge disguised as part of Cambridge University. Here they teach arcane sciences: in other words – magic.
Elinor’s fellow students include humans and hybrid beings with Fey heritage, unpredictable and dangerous. Elinor has to prove that she is at least as good as her male fellow students.
This isn’t made any easier when she is hunted by a giant serpent, while at the same time a group of inquisitors from a religious fanatics’ secret society arrives at Cambridge to wipe out forever anything they deem demonic (Fey) or heretical (magically gifted).

And of course, among all those men, there are some that Elinor likes more than a little. But as the only female student, she has to keep her distance. – This turns out not to be  easy and indeed sometimes impossible.

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The book will be presented first at the Leipzig Book Fair, once at a ‘whisky reading’ (which I’m particularly looking forward to) on the Wednesday evening before the fair begins  and then again at the fair itself.