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My very first novel in mass market paperback format, Lucy’s Blade”, has been published this Xmas by Baen. It is a strange sensation. I first wanted to be a novelist back in my early teens. I devoured Saint stories, James Bond, Len Deighton, Modesty Blaise and a wonderful sixties spy series called the Bang Bang Birds – or something similar. In a long and varied career, I have had published more than seventy five scientific research papers, three popular history books, a couple of radio plays, half a dozen computer games and many, many articles aboutgame playing – but never a novel.

So here we are, forty years on from when I lay in the sun in my family’s back garden in Newquay reading a purloined thriller from my mum’s collection and I have a paperback under my own name.

You know, the most important quality for success in life is persistence.

I have just finished my sixth short story for a Baen anthology. It’s called “Beauty is a Witch” and features an anti-hero, the crooked, devious wicca, Rosalynne.

You can find a free extract of “Lucy’s Blade” here:

http://www.baen.com/

If you want to be a writer, write!

John Lambshead