While I wait to hear back from editors about Sam Hawke's submission (yes, it really does take that long!) and other clients are busy reworking their scripts - I can announce that I've signed up a very exciting author to my list. 

Nick Setchfield is the features editor at the UK's bestselling genre magazine SFX. For years I've been asking him to write a book and he finally sat down and did it. I think there was probably quite a  lot of blood, sweat and tears went into it but it was well worth it. Currently called The War in the Dark, it's a thriller set against the Cold War with a touch of the demonic about it. The novel reads like the love child of John le Carré and Susanna Clarke with a dash of Ian Fleming and a soupçon of Ben Aaronovitch.

With a main character that feels like a mix of James Bond and Indiana Jones, an incredibly strong female partner who could kick his ass and anyone else's into the middle of next week (who I, of course, just loved); and enough pace, action and tense plotting to keep the most demanding of thriller and genre readers engaged, this is a book that just kept me turning the pages voraciously. 

The War in the Dark

Europe. 1963. And the true Cold War is fought on the borders of this world, at the edges of the light.

When the assassination of a traitor trading with the enemy goes terribly wrong, British Intelligence agent Christopher Winter must flee London. In a tense alliance with a lethal, mysterious woman named Karina Lazarov, he’s caught in a quest for hidden knowledge from centuries before, an occult secret written in the language of fire. A secret that will give supremacy to the nation that possesses it.

Racing against the Russians, the chase takes them from the demon-haunted Hungarian border to treasure-laden tunnels beneath Berlin, from an impossible house in Vienna to a bomb-blasted ruin in Bavaria where something unholy waits, born of the power of white fire and black glass . . .

It’s a world of treachery, blood and magic. A world at war in the dark.

Nick Setchfield is a writer and features editor for SFX, Britain’s best-selling magazine of genre entertainment in film, TV and books. A regular contributing writer to Total Film, he’s also been a movie reviewer for the BBC and a scriptwriter for ITV’s Spitting Image. Combining a lifelong love of spy thrillers, international adventure and occult weirdness, The War In The Dark is his first novel. He lives in Bath.

I'm absolutely thrilled to be representing Nick. I think he's a terrific writer with a fresh and sophisticated voice and I can't wait to start sending this out to editors.