Warren Ellis has signed up for a couple more novels; his previous Crooked Little Vein was published by HarperCollins in 2007. His new publisher is Mulholland Books:
I don’t think HG Wells and Raymond Chandler ever met. I don’t know that they would have had a lot to say to each other if they did. Perhaps Wells might have gloweringly reprimanded Chandler for being mean about his friend AA Milne’s detective novel. Or perhaps he might have asked for a go on Chandler’s wife, I don’t know. But I like to imagine that an interlocuter bringing them together – perhaps in 1940, Wells’ twilight and Chandler’s emergence – would have explained why they should talk.
First up will be something called Gun Machine
In GUN MACHINE, I’m writing about a disruptive event: a small sealed Manhattan apartment filled with hundreds of guns, each one used in a single unsolved homicide. But what I’m talking about is money, the acquisition of power, the deals we make in the name of security, the unique soul-killing exhaustion that comes of caring too much for too long, and the faces madness take in our lives.
Over on his blog, Ellis has a bit more:
Somewhere along the way, it became a two-novel deal. So I live at Mulholland Books now. Which suits me. The imprint, and the book itself, will give me the space to explore a bunch of ideas in any way I want, in any depth I want. So long as someone gets shot every now and then. But that’s my bias, not theirs. I just like killing people. The chances of finding an imprint editor who likes and can quote from FELL and DOKTOR SLEEPLESS at will were pretty fucking slim, but here I am. And the space between those two books, undiluted, is pretty much where I am with GUN MACHINE.
As novels take a bit of time to write, Ellis expects to cut back on his comics writing — a few projects at Avatar and Image and one monthly book for Marvel. Ellis had previously planned a follow-up to Crooked Little Vein called Listener, for HC, but the manuscript was lost in a computer crash.
Image by R. Stevens.
