There are two distinct threads to this topic: books that I’ve read and books that I’ve written.
If you’d like to find out more about the kind of books that I read, be aware that this is a pretty broad subject, not least because of the amount of reading matter I’ve managed to get through in my life so far – fiction and non-fiction. I may have to change this if it starts to overtake everything else, but I plan to generate individual posts, categorised under the one heading. See how we get on.
If you’re interested in the e-books that I’ve written and self published on Kindle, right click on this link and select “open link in new tab / window” to view bibliography on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/James-Lever/e/B01F9IG4AM
Sci-Fi / Fantasy
The 3 titles of Magesty appear here because they represent my first serious attempt at creative writing. They were two years in the making before I considered them to be ready for publication.
The primary function of the site is to provide insight and background to my books. They already appear on my Amazon Author Page with marketing blurb and keywords, so I don’t intend to replicate that here. I had fun writing them, spent many hours researching and refining them and I’d like to share some of the background with anybody interested to learn more. But it’s more than that – it also contains a few blogs about what I get up to when I’m not busy beavering away at the keyboard. Writing fiction is hard work and rewarding – even when people are reluctant to give reviews.
When I set toner to paper, a novel is about something I want to create -you may think it’s a selfish act because the books are essentially for me: it’s an expression of what makes me I tick; what interests and amuses me; characters and plots that I create and picture inside my head and develop subsequently; and a focus for acquiring new knowledge in pursuit of accurate background information that I wouldn’t otherwise have. Maybe I’m odd in one respect in that, always constrained by the plot, the story line evolves with the characters, taking me with along with it as I flesh it out – I live the characters.
Something I haven’t had to contend with yet is writer’s block – the keyboard takes on a life of its own as I try to commit to the page as many of the ideas buzzing around inside my head as I can before they become subsumed by new ones. It’s only afterwards when the hard work really begins – the delete key is the one that shows the most wear; and I spend infinitely more man hours editing my books than I do writing them.
So I’ve discovered that writing a Blog is quite an alien concept to me – I have to try and put myself inside other people’s heads (real people, not characters) and try to conjure up a blend of topics that hopefully appeals to others. And, no doubt, I’ll quickly find out if I’ve been successful or not!
The Serpentine Labyrinth is the second trilogy about arcane magic which, although not intended to be a sequel does follow on where Magesty left off. The three books are nothing like as long as those of their predecessor and are crafted as page-turners – thrillers if you like. The setting spans modern-day Earth (UK – the Cotswolds and the US – Pharaoh Lake Wilderness, New York State) and the Five Kingdoms (the same distant planet where Magesty is set).
Crime / Thriller
After some success with At The Crossroad as a crime/thriller, and also with some of the short stories contained within Little Gems, I penned The Camouflage Jacket – a crime thriller based on a missing person plot.
The paperback is scheduled to be published towards the end of August 2025.
The Camouflage Jacket
I tried to avoid creating a detective character that would ever demand yet another case to solve, but to be honest, amateur sleuths aren’t much different, except that they can avoid all those awkward and essential aspects of police protocol. As a one-off storyline, the amateur sleuthing plot worked for me, but I have to recognise that, as a plot for the box in the corner (or as like as not the 98” wall mounted TV screen), it’s unlikely to get off the ground. Why? Because one-offs do not make good fodder for the celebs… or for their agents either. I mean, The Camouflage Jacket Remake could well be mistaken for a BBC Sewing Bee production.
The Camouflage Jacket kicks off with a spontaneous gathering of ex-student housemates, who are still in denial at the disappearance of their fourth housemate some two years previously following the death of her boyfriend – the hit-and-run victim of a fatal prison convoy, high jacked by organised crime members.
The events are set in the UK – Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire and the North East mainly – with a short spell on the Isle of Man and also Ireland.
After two years, a second police reconstruction of her last known movements, encourages her old university housemates to seek closure by trying to piece together clues about her disappearance and possible fate. Their worst fear is that their friend has become the victim of an organised crime gang, involved in drugs, trafficking, organ theft and prostitution.
Meanwhile, a spate of recent and unsolved murders continue to challenge various crime agencies who are anxious to interview a witness observed at each of the known crime scenes – a person of interest, each time seen wearing a camouflage jacket.
As her friends slowly piece together aspects of Anita’s chequered background, there is a growing suspicion that organised crime members have successfully infiltrated the ranks of the law enforcement agencies; and as the amateur sleuths try to keep one step ahead of their relentless pursuers, they come to the conclusion that they are safer operating on their own – nobody else can be trusted any more.
The paperback is scheduled to be published towards the end of August 2025. The novel is presented in three parts – 1. Find Anita 2. The Fall & 3. The Camouflage Jacket.
The Military Road
A second crime novel, The Military Road, was self-published in 2024, but has not yet been submitted for publication in paperback form. It is very different from The Camouflage Jacket.
The book opens with a brief episode on Camber Sands, Rye, East Sussex. A group of students are enjoying a late evening soirée on the beach midway through a one week holiday prior to their return to College at the start of the next academic year.
After the weekend, two riders exercising their horses on the beach before the 8 o’clock curfew, come across a canoe that looks as though it’s been brought in by the tide. The body hidden from view in the well of the canoe turns out to have belonged to a young girl – a girl from the same group of students encountered earlier.
This is a detective-based novel, but probably not like the kind you might be more familiar with. The detectives are inexperienced, being led at arms length by an up and coming DI, but left with considerable leeway.
There are twelve other students in the group, who had rented chalets at one of the holiday camps and it turns out that they all have some kind of previous history or personal interrelationships that need to be flushed out; and in a couple of cases, family backgrounds that require detailed investigation.
While the interviews are taking place, a prime suspect emerges from among the non-student population of Rye that demands more serious police investigation, suspicion heightened when the body of another one of the students is found on a patch of waste ground in Hastings. This time, it’s rape and murder.
As the crime story evolves, we observe how the young detective constable matures into making the grade to become detective sergeant, teasing out the interplay among the students and other persons of interest and, in doing so, builds an effective crime team.
A third thriller entitled The Roundel, is still in the research phase.
Watch this space as events unfold…
Other Books
Little Gems comprises ten short stories with no particular theme except that the storyline or the title is based around gemstones and their crystal lattices. A metallurgist by profession, crystal structure is something of a passion with me and within their pages are horror, intrigue, ghostly happenings, murder, the bizarre, romance and the supernatural. The other thing they all have in common is there is a twist in the tail. Although short stories do not sell very well, I really enjoyed writing them.
Dicing with Death is a spin-off from one of those Little Gems – a longer version of A Girl’s Best Friend. My hairdresser complained that the original story left things hanging (something that many belonging to my generation prefer as it leaves things to one’s own imagination – the very essence of reading a book as opposed to watching a film) and so this version provides multiple endings which the reader decides on the roll of a die.
The Unlock Code is somewhat unique with regard to my usual genres of book. A romantic novella (somewhat explicit in parts) which started out as something of an experiment to test the waters for what kind of book sold the most copies. I enjoyed writing the book (which involved plenty of research) but my hypothesis that it was sex that sold books turned out to be wrong. Mind you, I don’t publicise my work, so maybe one day The Unlock Code will be “discovered”.
Updates
I haven’t updated this page for sometime – been too busy writing new ones, I guess, or revamping existing books – and a million other things besides.
After self-publication of the Magesty / Serpentine Labyrinth series on Kindle, I thought it would be interesting to write a prequel to backfill historical events, but turn this into a novella in its own right, as opposed to a disjointed series of flashbacks. Thus “Magesty – A Beginning” was born – a slimmer volume to the novels that would subsequently follow on chronologically – narrating events that define that part in the history of the planet, Eden, before The Five Kingdoms came into being.
Prequel: Magesty – A Beginning
In fact I created a PowerPoint animation depicting graphically on a map, images of the individual nations merging together into a single corporate whole (see ‘Paresia’). Clever stuff; or at least I thought it was – at least for me.
One of the problems with a prequel is the constraint on the writer to conform to subsequent events already in the public domain; further, there is the added risk of compromising something that’s buried within the 1 million plus words that the author somehow managed to overlook. Despite this, I believe it was a worthwhile undertaking, providing opportunity to explore new scenarios while fleshing out some old ones, in a series of plots where arcane magic is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.
Exciting things and also some things that may shock the reader. Worth remembering that The Five Kingdoms was a violent place – neighbouring countries warring against one another, political intrigue, not to mention the insidious menace of the blood witch covens seeking samples of their victims’ DNA!
Later, I played around quite a bit with the Serpentine Labyrinth to merge the three books into one. The first two books (At the Crossroad and Warrens) already overlap somewhat, with common events narrated from the viewpoint of two different principal characters. So, I interleaved aspects of the overall plot and crafted a storyline presenting itself in chronological order. This wasn’t an easy undertaking by any means and necessitated the use of instruments which I don’t usually approve of – a Prologue; Flashbacks and also, where dialogue was not possible, in order to maintain continuity, I made use of a personal log (diary). The end result is good, I promise you.
I also attempted to convert At The Crossroad into a film script, but ended up converting the entire Serpentine Labyrinth. It was damned hard graft, I can tell you, and I now have immense respect for scriptwriters – believe that, like the writers, they should receive more credit in the film world – certainly more than the celebrities that play their characters on film. OK, the celebs pull in an audience, but that’s because the film industry chooses to sell the actors rather than the story. But how many times have you heard the phrase, “It was brilliant, but not as good as the book.” That’s the same public whose choice in books is usually defined by the author, not by the cover of the book!
Surely it would be more interesting for TV audiences were the presenters to interview truly creative people rather than the individuals that happen to look good on celluloid and who also have pushy agents, hell bent on finding / making opportunities to last their clients into a wrinkly old age.