I’m thrilled to announce that Destiny’s Tide, the first in my new trilogy of naval historical novels set in the Tudor period, will be published by the lovely people at Canelo on 26 June! It’s now available for pre-order, and there’s lots of information about it both over on the home page of this site and on my blog.
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I’m giving talks in some fantastic locations during the next few months. Pride of place goes to my appearance in late June at the Historical Novel Society North America conference at the Gaylord Resort, Maryland (on the outskirts of Washington DC), where I’ll be sharing a platform with the eminent author Jeff Shaara, of Gods and Generals fame, to talk about ‘The Way of the Warrior’ – details can be found here. I’m delivering academic papers at Bangor University in July, and in both Rostock (Germany) and Vlaardingen (The Netherlands) in September. But I’ll also be doing a ‘mini-speaking tour’ in my old stamping ground of south-west Wales, talking to Llanelli Community Heritage about the fascinating Sir John Stepney on 11 June, and then about Nelson’s tour of south Wales to a conference in Swansea on 14 June.
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The current situation with regard to the publication and availability of my fiction is a little complicated, so I’ve covered it in detail in a post on my blog. Please check that for further information!
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My current non-fiction project is as the co-editor of a book on naval ideology, 1500-1815, along with Alan James and Gijs Rommelse. I’m contributing the chapter on the seventeenth century Royal Navy. I’m also completing work on my long-delayed book on the Stepney family, baronets of Llanelly House, and hope to publish this some time in 2019-20 – watch this space, but in the meantime, go to the ‘Future Projects’ page on this site for further information!
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Those with an interest in the late seventeenth century Royal Navy might be interested to know that there’s a research group investigating the history of the Stuart royal yachts, and that it has a website, to which further information will eventually be added – www.syrg.org.uk. The group can be contacted via info@syrg.org.uk. I’m hoping to have a guest blog about the work of the group on this site in the near future.
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Finally, a quick plug for the first book by my ‘significant other’ Wendy Berliner, the ‘LadyQJ’ of my Twitter feed! Titled Great Minds and How to Grow Them: High Performance Learning, this went immediately into the Amazon bestseller lists on the back of her Guardian article, which summarises the main arguments of the book.