WIN A COPY of The Black Madonna – watch this space

Next week (beginning June 16), we’ll be running a competition for five lucky people to win an advance copy of The Black Madonna by Traci Harding.

The Black Madonna completes the Mystique trilogy begun with Gene of Isis. The book comes out in July — but you could get it sooner …

Watch this space for details on how to win a copy!

Mia Montrose, archaeological linguist, has discovered that the Black Madonna is a code used by secret societies throughout time for the lost key to an ancient power source: the Sphere of Amenti. Kali, inter-dimensional Queen of the Anunnaki -now fully merged with the youngest Dragon Queen, Tamar Devere – has less than a year to rehabilitate her Fallen kindred who desire inter-galactic domination. Ashlee Granville-Devere, and the Dragon Queens must pool their talents to open the twelve Stations of the Signet Grid and unlock the Halls of Amenti lest the Fallen succeed in using time-travel technologies to destroy humanity. From the ancient past to the distant future, from Montsègur to the way-stations of the universe, from the Underworld of the Kali Rift to the Otherworld of the Ranna Time Flow – the inter-time war must be won for the sake of the future.

Writing the Poetic Apocalyptic – Kim Westwood guest blogs

The Daughters of Moab — my first novel, out in August — began with a single luminous image that sat in my mind a long time, unexplored. That image I knew was post-apocalyptic: a lonely railway line spearing through a devastated landscape, and two figures working on it, padded against the elements. In it I saw danger, and hopelessness, and camaraderie.

Engaging fully with the scene was like stepping onto a passing train — a train that wouldn’t release me back onto the platform until the journey was done, the tale told to its unknown end. From there the story unfolded in bright, perplexing pieces thrown like lures from my subconscious, asking me to bite. And so I did, writing each initially as a fragment of poetry without knowing how it might connect to the rest, but trusting I would find out. Then the Eureka! moment would arrive, and that which had always lain beneath the surface appeared as a pathway through the narrative, calling me, This way! This way!

A while ago I coined the term ‘poetic apocalyptic’ for my writing, because many of my short stories reveal a preoccupation with humanity’s capacity for destruction and equal instinct for survival, while the rhythms and nuances draw inspiration from the language of poetry. And so I see The Daughters of Moab as a poetic work stretching across a long narrative arc, but retaining a certain spareness — my aim being to limn the heart of that world, not interrogate its every corpuscle.

The journey has been beguiling, all-consuming. Just as events and experiences from the ‘outside’ have worked their way into the fabric of the story, the ever-developing lives of those inside it have bled through to superimpose themselves on external reality, leaving me with a sense of floating perpetually between the two. But finally the train is nearing the station. And now is the moment of stepping onto the platform.

Kim Westwood

The Daughters of Moab is out in August 2008. You can also get an early reading copy by signing up to the relevant Books Club at www.booktagger.com