SUMMER END PAGES

The final sstep before 'The Demi-Monde: SUmmer' is put to bed is to provide the artwork for the endpages - that's the inside of the covers. Those of you familiar with the hardbacks of Spring and Summer might recall that these showed blueprints of, respectively, a steamer and a Zeppelin, but as most of the action of Summer takes place in the Coven - the Sino-Japanese sector of the DM - Nigel Robinson (who does the DM artwork) came up with a WarJunk, the 'blueprint' done Chinese style.

This is a representation of the ship that the Coven use to fight the ForthRight's Monitors, the inspiration being the Battle of Hampton Roads during the Covil War in America when the USS Monitor fought the CSS Virginia. Unfortunately I become TOO focussed on this and I missed a trick: in the book I refer to the Coven's ships as IronClads - the name that Nigel came up with, 'WarJunk', is so much better. Ah me.

MOVING HOUSE

I've been very delinquent regarding my blog during February and the reason is that Nelli and I have been looking for a new house. We only came to Derby so that Kit and Ellie could take up the scholarships they won at Repton and we've never really settled here. So when the kids went off to university we decided to decamp to somewhere within better striking distance of Oxford and London. After a few false-starts we've plumped for a house in Daventry which is only 70 miles from London. It's a small town but with good amenities so I think we'll be fine there. The house we've chosen is pretty unprepossessing from the outside - bunkeresque - but inside it's really very nice indeed all open plan and split level.

Chez Rees

All-in-all I'm looking forward to the move - especially as there seems to be a very active writers group in the area!