Buy The Battle for the Black Fen!

About Infinite Games, for agents and publishers

The four novels in my Infinite Games series—The Marshlanders, Fly Out of the Darkness, The Road to Beaver Mill, and The Battle for the Black Fen—are works of speculative fiction in a real-world setting, written for adults and young adults.

The fast-moving plots of the Infinite Games books pit self-reliant, practical characters against enemies motivated by greed. The setting is an invented but realistic world, based on the East Anglian Fens.  The time is the early modern era, when investment companies calling themselves Merchant Adventures sought to drain the fens for agricultural development. These invaders were fiercely resisted by inhabitants of the vast marshlands, who organized themselves as “Fen Tigers.”

In the series, cabals of merchants, ministers, and militias attempt to drain the marshlands by killing and torturing the inhabitants, who organize to out-trick them.

Seeking Agents and Publishers

I am seeking an agent and a publisher to bring these important works to an audience hungry for stories about self-sustaining communities standing up to environmental challenge.  My readers are looking for hope in a time of global warming.   They are young of heart, and passionate in their ideals. I have found that there is an emerging cohort of Millennials who resonate deeply with these messages.

Quick Synopses

In The Marshlanders, the heroes—Clare and William—are adopted as children by a community of marsh dwellers and coastal farmers. William’s father—a pharmacist—is murdered by an alliance of clergymen and apothecaries. Clare, at the age of eight, barely escapes with her life when ministers work up a mob to kill her during a public shaming of her mother.  Please see sample chapters as follows: Chapter 1: Clare’s Promise, Chapter 10:Beaver Night, Chapter 16: William and the Merchant Adventurers.

In Fly Out of the Darkness, Clare and William, relentlessly pursued by their enemies, flee north for safety. Clare, 17, finds herself pregnant and gives birth in the northern woodlands. 21 year old William barely escapes the dread Crocodile Militia and is imprisoned and tortured by his enemies. In despair over losing Clare, he decides to enter a monastery on the refuge island of Cedar Haven. Not only Clare, but her daughter Bethany as well, make it to Cedar Haven. Will she recover mentally? What about William’s vows? How can Cedar Haven sit idle when their Marshlander allies face destruction of their homeland?

In The Road to Beaver Mill, Bethany, who is almost twelve years old, takes flight on a winged pony from the island refuge where she has grown up. Furious at the demeaning sexism and harsh life at the fishing community where she has been sent to live, she rebels. She visits her milder-mannered cousins, where she learns about her natural father and stows away on a sailing ship to seek him. Meanwhile, her family and friends leave their island sanctuary and hear that she has been thrown into prison. They rush to her rescue.  Please see these sample chapters: Chapter 1: The Wind Riders, Chapter 8: The Crossroad, Chapter 10: Beaver Night.

In The Battle for the Black Fen, three companies set forth to gather their allies for battle. The Dunlin Company returns William to his beloved farm. The Marshland Company is led by Clare, and The Delta Company is by her mother Margaret. Years of planning consummate in a final battle.

Publication status today

Please contact me to learn more, and thank you for your consideration!

*”The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous. Infinite play resounds throughout with a kind of laughter. It is not a laughter at others who have come to an unexpected end, having thought they were going somewhere else. It is laughter with others with whom we have discovered that the end we thought we were coming to hath_children_playings unexpectedly opened. We laugh not at what has surprisingly come to be impossible for others, but over what has surprisingly come to be possible with others.”

—James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility