The Coming of the Dark

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Chris has written ten historical novels. The first, ‘The French Executioner’ told the tale of the man who killed Anne Boleyn, was runner up for the CWA Steel Dagger for Thrillers 2002, and has been optioned for the screen. Its sequel was ‘Blood Ties’. Having played Jack Absolute, he stole the character and has written three books on this ‘007 of the 1770’s’ – ‘Jack Absolute’, ‘The Blooding of Jack Absolute’ and ‘Absolute Honour’- short listed for the 2007 Evergreen Prize by the Ontario Library Association, all currently being re-released in the US by Sourcebooks. His novel about the real Dracula, ‘Vlad, The Last Confession’ was a bestseller in Canada and his novel, ‘A Place Called Armageddon’ was recently published in Turkish. All have been published in the UK, Canada, the US and many have been translated in various languages including Russian, Italian, German, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Serbian, Turkish and Indonesian. His adult novel ‘Shakespeare’s Rebel’, about William Shakespeare’s fight choreographer at the time of ‘Hamlet’, was released in the UK in March 2013 and in Canada August 2011.

His most recent adult novels for Century in the UK and Doubleday in Canada are ‘Plague’ and ‘Fire’. Tales of religious fundamentalist serial killers set against the wild events of 1665 to 1666, London, ‘Plague’ won Canada’s Crime Writers’ Association Best Crime Novel Award, the Arthur Ellis in 2015. In the Summer of 2016, both novels spent five weeks in the Globe and Mail Top Ten Bestseller list.

He has also written a trilogy for young adults ‘The Runestone Saga’. A heady brew of Norse myth, runic magic, time travel and horror, the first book in the series ‘The Fetch’ was published in North America in July 2006, with the sequel, ‘Vendetta’ in August 2007 and the conclusion, ‘Possession’, August 2008. They are also published in Russia, Greece, Turkey and Indonesia. His Young Adult novel ‘The Hunt of the Unicorn’ was released by Knopf in North America in March 2011 and also published in Spain. A loose sequel, The ‘Hunt of the Dragon’, was published in Canada in Fall 2016.

His new novel is in the editing stage and has a working title of ‘Girl on a Zeppelin’. It tells of Roxy Loewen, a 1930’s Aviatrix, a tough and sassy flyer who steals art from under Hitler’s nose at the Berlin Olympics and ends up on the Hindenberg. Look for it in May 2018.

Chris lives on Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada, with his wife, son and his writing partner, Dickon the Cat.