There are a small group of poor, poor people who have been roped into doing a blog tour to tie in with the launch of Aftershock. They have absolutely no idea what they’re letting themselves in for but, if you want to see just how deranged I am just head to http://www.bloomsbury.com/Mark-Walden/authors/3230/article/9683 and you’l be able to see which blogs I’m defacing. I warn you in advance, it’s not pretty….

I’m just starting to get first word of copies of Aftershock arriving for people who pre-ordered them on Amazon. Hopefully copies should also be appearing in your local bookshop very soon!

Other than that I’ve just been busy with the secret project (more news soon, I promise) and getting ready for a blog tour that I’ll be doing some time in August. I’ll post more details of where and when I’ll be posting as the time approaches. Should be good fun!

In unrelated geeky news, I thoroughly enjoyed X-Men First Class and I have to say that Michael Fassbender is surely the front runner for the next James Bond if Daniel Craig gets bored of the gig. Bored of being James Bond? What on earth am I talking about? That’s not humanly possible!

Time to get back to the cupboard under the stairs…..

Well, the edits on Aftershock are now complete so the next time that I see it will be when it’s wrapped in its lovely sparkly new silver cover. It also looks like the release date in the UK will be moving forward slightly and it should hopefully be hitting your local book shop some time in August. So, not too much longer!

I’m now cracking on with super secret project (catchy name huh?) and I will hopefully be able to tell you a little bit more about what it is before too long. That’s if I can drag myself away from Portal 2 for long eno…..errrr…..I mean if I’m not exhausted from working so hard. Yes…that’s it.

Mark

Hello!

I’ve got something really cool to show everyone today, the brand spanking new covers for the HIVE series! You’ll find them all below, including the cover for Aftershock. These are all going to be printed on holographic foil so I’m afraid that your monitor won’t show them all in all their shiny glory but let me assure you that they look even cooler in the flesh. I’d just like to say a big thanks to all of the lovely people at Bloomsbury who’ve been working really hard on these. They should be hitting the shelves of your local book store around the time of Aftershock’s release in September.

Click any of the images below to embiggen. Hope you like them!

Mark

Hooray! Aftershock is done! Just the editing to do now, so my lovely editor Ele will, no doubt, be cracking open a brand new shipping container of commas even as we speak!

In other news, if you look just to the right of this post you will see a link to the new and improved HIVE forums. This should help with the infestation of Spambots that plagued the old boards and give everyone a shiny new place to find the deranged ravings of the forum loonies. Just kidding guys, you know I love you all really

I’m also hoping that over the next few days that I might be able to put something else that’s new and improved and very shiny up on the blog……

Stay tuned.

Mark

As the more observant browsers of Amazon may have already noticed, the title of HIVE book seven has been announced. It’s going to be called Aftershock and will be released in September 2011. Assuming of course that I actually finish writing it! No cover images to show you guys yet but as soon as I have one I’ll post it here. Back to the keyboard…..

Hope that everyone is prepared for the usual over-indulgence over the course of the next few days. I plan to consume my own body weight in mince pies. Trust me, that’s a lot of pies.

Below is a little something that people who subscribe to Bloomsbury’s HIVE newsletter will have already seen but I thought I’d post it for anyone who hasn’t. It was originally written for a scheme called 24/7 where the challenge was to write a story in only 247 words. What follows was my attempt to produce something HIVE related in that word count. Hope you like it

In the mean time I hope that everyone has a villainous Christmas and that you manage to acquire great big piles of ill-gotten loot.

Mark

247

“Self destruct sequence activated,” a computerised voice said calmly, “three minutes remaining to
reach minimum safe distance.”

The tuxedo clad man ran through the underground control centre, towards the raised platform at the
rear of the room.

The man raised an eyebrow as he looked down at the screen displaying a digital countdown of the
time remaining.

266

265

264

He reached into the inside pocket of his immaculately tailored dinner jacket and pulled out a slim
silver cigarette case.

“All the time I need,” he said with a slight smile and opened the case, placing it on the command
console. The tiny display hidden inside the case lit up and flashed up a message reading “system
shut down initiated”. The man smiled to himself, within sixty seconds the self destruct sequence
would be aborted and the vital intelligence contained within this secret facility would be his.

249

248

247

Without warning, the enormous explosive device buried deep beneath the alpine castle exploded,
destroying the entire building and leaving a fair sized crater in the side of the mountain it had been
built upon.

***

On a mountain ridge, a safe distance away, Raven lowered her binoculars as the mountain-side
disintegrated, plumes of black smoke billowing into the air.

“That was a little early wasn’t it,” she said.

“You didn’t really think I’d have a self destruct system that would activate at zero did you?” Doctor
Nero replied with a wicked smile…

Well, I just got back from holiday and I’m cracking back on with the seventh book.  I’m going with the provisional title of “Otto Malpense and the Penguins of Doom”.  You know, looking at it now that might not be such a good idea after all…..

Zero Hour has started to hit the shelves in the UK and I hope that everyone who manages to get their hands on a copy enjoys it.  If you want to let everyone know what you thought of it just click the Fan Forums link over there on the right hand side and join in with the highly condensed insanity that is the HIVE forums.

Finally, as promised, here are some higher resolution copies of the new covers for The Overlord Protocol and Escape Velocity in the US.  Click for full size!

I hope you don’t mind me quoting Hubert J. Farnsworth in honour of the triumphant return of Futurama but I have some good news for HIVE fans on the other side of the water.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Velocity-Mark-Walden/dp/1442413670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1278582581&sr=1-1

For those who can’t access that link, Escape Velocity will finally be released in America on April 19th next year.  The rest of the series so far will be released soon afterwards and when I have exact dates I’ll let you know.

The series is also being re-jacketed in America and if you click the link you can see the new covers for The Overlord Protocol and Escape Velocity.  When I get higher resolution versions of them I’ll put them up here.  Hope you like them, let me know what you think in the comments.

Mark

As some of you guys may know today is a general election in the UK.  I went to the polling booth and was very disappointed to find that there was no GLOVE candidate standing in my constituency.  Fortunately there were plenty of other evil people to choose from…

I’m gearing up for the next book at the moment and so I’m enjoying my last few days of sitting in the garden in the sunshine with Sarah and Meg before I’m sent back to the cupboard under the stairs.  I do promise to try and update more regularly while I’m locked in there but the rats chew at the laptop power cable so it may be difficult

Mark