Welcome

William Campbell Powell is an author of SF, LGBTQIA+ and other genre fiction. He is based in the UK. By day he writes software and in the twilight he sings tenor, plays guitar and writes songs.

William's latest novel is Teardown - Kai (no pronouns) is the drummer in a small-town blues band. In two weeks the band tours Germany, with a recording studio booked for their return. Then their singer quits…

What's in the pipeline?

This morning's post brought a nice surprise - a copy of Radical Magic by Kate Macdonald. I had the pleasure of beta-reading this a few months back and I'm looking forward to reading it in its final form. It's set in a more magical early 19th century.

Staying in the 19th century, my work-in-progress STRIKE (I'm sure that name will change) has finished a long revise-and-resubmit process and is now back on submission. We'll see who bites. That didn't stop me trekking down to the London Metropolitan Police Museum (in Sidcup) to engage in a bit of actual historical research on the early Met Police - all the way back to 1834. I've discovered Historical Crime. As a writer, that is - I've long been a fan of the genre as a reader. So I got to handle some primary sources from the period. You'd think that police accounts, general instruction manuals and the like would be quite dull, but I discovered a few fascinating details I hadn't known, but nothing that is going to cause a rewrite.

So in theory I should be able to get back to MAGISSA (again a provisional title) which is a portal fantasy set in the time of COVID. It's sitting at novella length, and it's reached a nice intermediate point - a pause for breath before the protagonist tackles the *real* problem before her, which is saving the universe. All in 60,000 words.