I'm pleased to announce that the next Nightscape novel, The Alchemist & Azriel, will be published in winter 2017. The story concerns a group of Americans shipwrecked on an isolated atoll in the Solomon Islands. The castaways are made prisoners of a philosopher-adventurer heading up an illegal gold mining operation. They must survive cruelties inflicted by the miners, aboriginal unrest, a torrential storm and an unexpected supernatural threat in order to have a chance to return home. This action-horror novel will serve as a sequel to the soon-to-be-released progressive hard rock concept album, To Sin Against Our Mercies.
A bit of backstory: I made fair progress on this book back in the late-1990s. Back then, it was a straightforward action-adventure novel titled Noble Lies. It was originally conceived as a fresh twist on the castaway premise in the vein of a Nelson DeMille yarn. I've now begun revising the original manuscript to give its philosophical and supernatural elements greater weight. I've also planned some parallels to my all-time favorite novel, Moby Dick, as there's a similar Manichean dynamic at work.
I'm about 54K words into the novel so far and expect the final MS to run somewhere between 85K to 90K. As usual, I'll post periodic updates, including excerpts, in the weeks ahead.