My A-Z theme this year is a guide to my trilogy of novels called ‘The State Trilogy’. Set in an unnamed island country known only as ‘The State’, in the imagined near future, the books follow the intertwining stories of a number of characters, principally a State police detective named Danny Samson and an assassin, Gabriella Marino, over a period of six years. It begins with the assassination of an elected official and spirals into revolution and civil war. Part political thriller, action story, war story and dystopian science fiction, the trilogy took three years to complete and the books are available to read now – you can find links to purchase them HERE

In The State Trilogy, ‘V’ stands for:

The Village: The unnamed encampment in the wilderness where Danny Samson eventually ends up after fleeing the city and wandering for a couple of years. This camp is representative of a few holdouts in the wilderness. In these villages live citizens who have refused to be relocated by the State to live inside the walls of the mega cities. The mega cities were formed to allow nature to thrive and revive in the rest of the country, with the land given over to the wild. Those who refused to leave, or who fled to live outwith the city are illegal, but after sporadic attempts by the State to force these villages to conform, they are now left to their own devices. Because of their stance, they receive no State aid or support and must provide all their own food and water. Raiding parties do travel to the cities where they try to acquire necessary objects, such as medical supplies. They manage to survive in their own commune. In the village that Danny ends up in, there are a group of village elders who are in charge of making any major decisions. They are benevolent and welcoming of strangers, although they find it hard to trust newcomers, such as Danny, who turn up from the city, always wary of a State agent infiltrating their community.

Verona: A member of Danny and Gabriella’s band of warriors in the civil war. A young woman, Verona is taken under Gabriella’s wing when she joins them. Only a schoolgirl when the civil war broke out, Verona’s brother became radicalised when the family were forced to live in an encampment for refugees made homeless by the war. When her brother is killed in the fighting, she sets out to find the bands of mercenaries she has heard about living in the city, who are not on any side in the war, but who seek to help those citizens in need. Thanks to her experiences and Gabriella’s tutelage, Verona has become a tough fighter in her own right.

Video: For ‘State Of Denial’ and ‘State Of War’, I made a short video trail for the release of each book. They were fun to do and a lot of marketing advice recommends them for your book launch. I don’t. They make not a blind bit of difference to sales or exposure, and very few people bother to view them, so save the effort for your writing instead! I still think they were pretty decent trailers though – if you want to view them, they are on You Tube HERE.

Next up – W is for: Weather, War, Wilderness and Writing

All the entries in the A-Z of ‘The State Trilogy’ can be found HERE

The books are available from a wide selection of online retailers, including AMAZON