JINX is finally here

Well, it’s been a journey — but at long last, JINX is out now.

Five years, in the real world that you and I inhabit, have passed since the previous KESTREL book, TOLL. And in that time, of course, the world has changed.

When the pandemic hit, my wife and I had recently made a major life decision, and when lockdown came into effect in March 2020, even though we hadn’t told anyone yet, she was pregnant.

The next six months were as bizarre for us as they no doubt were for you and everyone else, but we had the additional element of hospital visits where I had to wait outside in the car, and a whole additional vista of concern regarding what consequences there might be if we caught the virus. When the time came for our son to enter the world, we had drama there too, with a last-minute dash to the operating room. I even got to wear scrubs. But it all worked out in the end.

The following three years were honestly the toughest I’ve ever experienced. My son is healthy and happy, and the world today is at least superficially much more like it was before that strange, eerie year or so when everything stopped. Our lives have changed irrevocably, of course, but we’ve settled into that too.

Suffice it to say that I apologise for the delay in bringing this book into the world, but I definitely had my reasons.

The first book in the KESTREL series, CHANGER, came out in June 2016. The second instalment, TOLL, arrived in December 2018, but let’s go back to CHANGER for a moment. The lead up to a book’s release involves a lot of small — and often annoying — tasks, and they take time, because many of them rely on things beyond your personal control. A month or so before the first book came out, I remember spending my days fiddling with promotional copy and web pages, waiting impatiently for paperback proofs to arrive, juggling the logistics of handling autographed copies that were going to every part of the world, and so on. But I had a little break on a Saturday in the middle of that month of May, because my wife and her sister (and a few friends) were going to a concert.

We live in Edinburgh, but the gig was in Glasgow, so we drove across and went to the west-end city home of the parents of one of my sister-in-law’s friends. It was a beautiful townhouse, certainly worth millions, and I kept myself to myself as the women went through whatever elaborate rituals of preparation they felt were needed. Then, when they all went out to attend the show, I stayed behind — entirely alone — in this unfamiliar place, because I’d be driving myself and my wife back to Edinburgh in the early hours of the morning once they’d all returned from the concert.

I had some dinner, and I walked around a little, but I felt a bit like an intruder and so ultimately I confined myself to the wood-panelled, high-ceilinged, very long living room. I think I had the choice of about fifteen sitting locations, including multiple sofas, but the place I chose was all the way towards the rear, at the bay window which looked out onto a tree, and some wrought iron railings, and not much else. There was a little table there with two chairs, and I think they must have used it for playing cards or something. I took my MacBook Air from my bag (the only thing I’d brought with me, besides my jacket, wallet, keys, and phone), and I sat down to write.

At the time, I had a weekly newsletter for members of my website, and I was working on the following week’s issue. I finished it quickly enough, and then I got up, stretched, and went to the kitchen to get some coffee. When I returned, I went to the bay window and looked out for a while, then I turned back to the table, properly taking note of its contents for the first time. I remember them clearly. There was a frilly tablecloth, upon which was a cheap black pen. There were two placemats, white with blue detailing. And there was a USB flash drive of bright green plastic; the kind that has a transparent cover on the top, with a slim piece of card behind it that you can slide out and write on, to label the drive’s contents. Someone had already done so, in black biro — presumably the same pen that was sitting there. I read the label.

JINX, it said.

I had my MacBook right beside me, ten centimetres away. It had a suitable USB port. I was alone in the house. I was intensely curious… but I was also raised to believe in respecting other people’s privacy. I didn’t plug the drive into the computer. I did, however, take a photo of the drive sitting on the tablecloth with the pen. I have it to this day, and I remain intensely curious about it, but at this point any actual revelation would surely be a disappointment. Whatever digital payload was encoded onto the solid-state storage, I think my version is more interesting. Probably.

I knew at the time, having just finished CHANGER and pondering future adventures for the KESTREL team, that I would one day write something about that flash drive. It turned out to be an entire novel, in the end, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you have the chance to read it at last.

It’s an interesting book, this one. I’m not saying so from a self-congratulatory perspective; that’s not what I mean. Because of the huge span of time that it’s been (at least vaguely) in progress — Middleshade Road in its entirety bisected the writing process for JINX — its nature has changed a bit along the way. It’s a very contemporary story, but it also picks up right after the events of TOLL, and takes things in some interesting new directions. More than anything, this book is for the fans of the series, giving the reader a chance to see more of KESTREL themselves, learn more about them, and flesh out their world.

I’d like to thank my wife, Lauren Gemmell, for her support during the writing of this book. I’d also like to thank her for not just giving me my son and new best friend, Calum, but also for physically manufacturing him as part of the process. That’s more amazing than anything I’ve written about by quite a large margin.

As ever, I’m extremely grateful to my first-born (and canine) son, Whisky the labradoodle. He’s kept me company, and kept me going, through the whole struggle. As I write this, he’s on the floor at my feet, dreaming his dog dreams, with twitching paws and the occasional muffled bark at things that only exist in his subconscious.

I’m grateful to Stuart Bache for continuing his excellent work on the KESTREL series book covers. It’s a note of pleasing serendipity that, despite my design brief being vague to the point of only mentioning the city I wanted to feature, he ended up choosing a background photo of a specific street that my wife and I have been along many times.

To my family and friends, thank you for walking the tightrope of knowing when to ask how the book is going, and when not to. Now would be a good time.

Enormous thanks as always to my treasured proofreaders, who don’t have to work often, but who do work very hard when the time comes. I’m exceedingly grateful to Lee Fyock, Regine Horteur, Anders Kierulf, and of course Lloyd Nebres. All remaining errors and inelegances are mine alone.

Most of all, dear reader, my thanks go to you.

You can find out more about JINX, and buy a copy, right here.