Hello from Hollow Stone Towers.

I started writing The Sunset Chronicles in November of either 2015 or 2016. I'm genuinely not sure which. This tells you quite a lot about my relationship with record-keeping, and probably also about the state I was in at the time, which was: enthusiastic, caffeinated, and absolutely winging it.

What I had was a vague idea. Sci-fi horror, set on Europa, the ice moon of Jupiter. There would probably be monsters. Actually, there would definitely be monsters. That was more or less the entire pitch. I did not have a plan. I did not have an outline. I had 30 days of November, a word count target, and the specific energy of someone who has not yet realised just what a can of worms they'd just opened for themselves.

What followed was, depending on how you look at it, either one of the great creative adventures of my life, or a years-long demonstration of what happens when someone with ADHD and an overactive imagination decides that actually, single contained stories are for cowards, and wouldn't it be more interesting if there were also characters in Nigeria, and China, and Texas, and also the moon.

Do you know what, it is more interesting. I stand by every terrible decision I made.

And now, after five seasons, more words than I care to count (it's actually half a million, dear reader), and at least three separate occasions where I nearly packed it all in and became someone who goes fishing instead, we are here, at the end of Season Five. A true reckoning.

It's not The End; there are still two seasons to go, after all. But this season and its conclusion marks the part where everything I've been quietly setting up for the last few years starts to pay off. It's more like the moment the music changes and everyone in the room realises the night is just getting started. Basically, imagine the DJ's just dropped Bulls on Parade. You'd better get your arse to the dancefloor.

Wyn's father, Oban, has had enough of silence. Burned, broken, and with nothing left to lose, he walks into a room full of the world's press and says the thing Sunset has been killing people to keep quiet. Whether this is brave or catastrophically stupid is, honestly, not going to be much of a surprise. Yan and Bong have found what they came for inside Sunset's Atlanta fortress, but also something they really weren't, and are now dealing with the considerably thornier problem of getting back out again. In Texas, Jules comes face to face with the last person she expected to see. And on the moon, something extraordinary happens that changes everything, for everyone, all at once.

The Minos is burning back through the sky. Sunset's ships are on the move. The most metaphorical of chickens are coming home to roost.

Oh, and while I've got you....

MORE NEWS!

Dark Horse, the sequel to my vampire novel Darkness Come Alive, is coming out on June 25th, and you can preorder it RIGHT NOW, which I would very much like you to do.

Lucy Barker is still in York, trying to pull herself back together after all the, well, let's say... unpleasantness. She's putting it all behind her, even her feelings for Adam. But when a new vampire arrives in the city with a centuries-old score to settle and absolutely no interest in keeping things quiet, everything bit of herself that Lucy has put back together is suddenly very much at risk.

If Darkness Come Alive was about pulling back the curtain on what's lurking beneath the cobbled streets of York, Dark Horse is about what happens when you've seen what's under there and you can't make yourself look away. The city has history in its bones, the kind that doesn't stay buried, and it has a habit of catching up with people whether they're ready for it or not.

And at the centre of all of it is Adam. The vampire Lucy thought she understood. The question she isn't sure she wants answered. Can she trust him? Should she?

Dark Horse is, at its heart, a book about holding onto someone when you can't be entirely certain who they are. Which, now I write it out like that, sounds a bit bleak. It's also got vampires in it, which helps.

That'll do it for now, then. Until next time, happy reading,

Paul