Anna Butler

That’s the likely publication date for the first Taking Shield book, Gyrfalcon.

I am beyond excited. Ridiculously so! It feels real again, after the inevitable time of waiting in the editing queue. Well, I still am in the editing queue but soon, my pretties, soon.

I’m not entirely sure what to expect when the editing starts. The two short stories I’ve had professionally edited had very little changed. Commas, mostly. I think I over use them so I strike the wriggly little tadpoles down. The editor tuts at me and puts them back. I’ve never had a content edit done and I am rather nervous. I can only hope the editor loves Bennet and Flynn as much as I do.

Anyhow, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Shield (that is, those of you I haven’t managed to bore witless about it yet), let me tell you a little about it.

Shield is set in an alternate universe where Earth’s a dead planet, dark for thousands of years; lost for so long no one even knows where the solar system is. Her last known colony, Albion, has grown to be regional galactic power in its own right. But its drive to expand and found colonies of its own has threatened an alien race, the Maess, against whom Albion is now fighting a last-ditch battle for survival in a war that’s dragged on for generations.

It’s not certain anyone has ever seen a true Maess. They have seen drones: cyborgs animated by a small neural node of organic cells. The first drones the humans met (more than a century previously) were not humanoid in shape but, as the war progresses, the Maess start to produce human-shaped drones.

Taking Shield charts the missions and adventures of Shield Captain Bennet, scion of a prominent military family. Bennet, also an analyst with the Military Strategy Unit, will uncover crucial data about the Maess to help with the war effort. Against the dem

ands of his family’s ‘triple goddess’ of Duty, Honour and Service, is set Bennet’s relationships with lovers and family. When the series opens, Bennet is at odds with his long term partner, Joss, who wants him out of the military and back in an academic, archaeological career. He’s estranged from his father, Caeden, who is the commanderof Fleet’s First Flotilla. Events of the first book, Gyrfalcon, in which he is sent to his father’s ship to carry out an infiltration mission behind Maess lines, improve his relationship with Caeden, but bring with them the catalyst that will destroy the one with Joss: one Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, who, over the course of the series, develops into Bennet’s main love interest

Over the Taking Shield arc of six novels, Bennet will see the extremes to which humanity’s enemies, and his own people, will go to win the war. Some of it is not pretty.

The next big step after editing will be the cover design, I think. Sadly, I don’t think it will look like this. But a girl can hope.

Grins at you all.  Writing is fun, isn’t it?

Partly, of course, because Spring is springing away madly – warm sunshine in grimy old London today, folks – and this time of year always fills me with hope and purpose, and I want to get on and do things. The sap must be rising, or something.

But mostly I’m light headed and happy because ten minutes ago I took the plunge, and submitted Gyrfalcon to a publisher –  a mainstream SF publisher, as it happens. Because the Shield series is genre sci fi and an intense love story where the characters just happen to be gay, and is not m/m romance as that genre is currently defined, I’ve decided to try my luck with trad publishing. I suspect that Shield will still be impossible to place into a neat genre, and that for reason (irrespective of the publisher thinking I suck!) I am not exactly hopeful here. It’s also an odd set up in that I won’t get a rejection letter, just silence.  So in four months, if I’ve heard nothing, I can assume they don’t want it. So, check back here on… counts on fingers…  29 June, and I will probably be lamenting. But I have to take the plunge, right? If you never try it, there’s no possibility.

And in spring, I’m all for possibilities. Sap rising, remember?

Happy Spring Sunday to you all.

Over at my website I've been ruminating on the Power of the Name, and how important it was for me to find the right names for my characters in Shield. It's all, I have to say, the fault of Feniman Cooper and Jane Austen...