I know I should be working harder, or more on Lord of Poison but I just had to get this out there because I’m entirely too excited about this!

As you know, XENOCHRIST and Lord of Poison are part of the Of Man & Machine anthology series, and I always knew there would be a book that needed to sort of add some closure to the first book. This won’t use any of the first two books’ main characters or even side characters as the main one, but will heavily feature them because the story will involve them in some way that I’ll reveal once Lord of Poison comes out (eventually, whenever that might be).

For now, however, I will present to you Ave Plague.

Ave Plague will tell the story of a bounty hunter some years after the ending of Lord of Poison and just from the outlines I’ve been drafting I get the feeling this book will be in the 150k words area if not more. There’s just so much I want to do with it, but for now I have main plot points and main character down.

Following the naming convention of the first two I knew I needed to go with a religious theme, but with a sinister twist. I truly feel like this will be a huge payoff for everyone reading XENOCHRIST and eventually Lord of Poison. Where XENOCHRIST pays homage to death metal, and Lord of Poison with famed artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, Ave Plague will have classical-era (think Baroque etc) music and composer homages. The book will also feature very strong themes of faith and religion. Not that it’ll argue that you must believe, but more about a look into what faith is and how the main character explores it albeit in a cyberpunk future.

And as always I have a teaser cover for Ave Plague:

I don’t have an expected release for this outside of anytime around 2022 possibly. I think this’ll be my biggest book yet so it could take longer, but if I can get Lord of Poison finished by spring 2021 I’ll start working on Ave Plague around May/June and hopefully have it finished within a year from start.