I got quite excited earlier this week. I was browsing Amazon, and decided to search for my book title (which, let's be honest, I've done sporadically ever since it was first picked up by Voyager) ... and lo and behold, there it was! No cover art as yet, but all the same: my book is now a real book. You can preorder it on Amazon.* I'm not just dreaming this whole thing.

I've been designing a set of Darkhaven-themed bookmarks to go in my fabulous mailing list giveaway. Originally I'd hoped to have them completed by now, so I could share them with you, but that didn't happen because … well, life. But I have drawn the basic designs, so I thought I'd talk a bit about them now and post again when they're done.

(That way I get two blog posts out of it as well. Cunning, eh?)

I've been tagged to take part in the My Main Character blog hop by John Ayliff, author of sci-fi novel Belt Three (coming from Harper Voyager next year). I'm really looking forward to this book being released – it sounds brilliant! If you missed John's behind-the-scenes introduction to his main character, Jonas, you can read it here.

The idea of this blog hop, as the name suggests, is to say a little bit about a book's main character. Yet I have a slight problem with this when it comes to Darkhaven. Because the truth is, Darkhaven doesn't have just one or two viewpoint characters. It has seven. And it's not even epic fantasy!*

I know, I know. I should have my author's membership card revoked.

Still, if I had to play favourites with my characters (which I don't like to do, because it makes them cranky) I guess Myrren Nightshade would be top of the list. So let's ignore the mutterings of the other six and focus on him.

A couple of weeks ago, I was tagged by fellow fantasy author Kate Jack to take part in the WIP Blog Hop. So after thoroughly gorging myself on last week’s Chocolate Bar Challenge, I’ve taken up this new opportunity with alacrity! No chocolate in this one, I’m afraid, but you will get to find out a little bit more about my writing … oh, OK, and I’ll open a box of truffles at the end.

First, a word about Kate: she is a wonderful writer of young adult fantasy, a never-failing supporter of other authors and one of the founding members of the Alliance of Worldbuilders. You can find out much more about her and her excellent books at kateannejack.wordpress.com. Please do pay her a visit!

So, now to the challenge. The idea is to answer seven questions about my current work in progress, but I’m going to cheat a little bit. My actual current WIP is the first sequel to Darkhaven, but talking about it would reveal a fair bit about Darkhaven itself – which I really don’t want to do, seeing as it hasn’t even been released yet! So instead, I’m going to talk about Darkhaven. I think we can count it as a WIP right up to its publication date, right? ;-)