Unpublished (so far) novels:
# 'Your Horse Sees Dead People
# Spider on the Web
# Empire of Dust
# Between Wind and Water
# The Midnight Rose
# The Outsiders (Red Man's Shadow / Dancing With the Past)
Published stories:
The Oracle is Never Wrong
The Jet Set
The Urbane Fox
Mirror Mirror
Baron Boscov's Bastard
The Jewel of Locaria
Aunt Agatha's Agency
Unpublished Stories
I don't write all that many. You can read a sample if you are brave enough
Jacey Bedford - Writer
You can contact me at jacey at jaceybedford dot co dot uk.
These are novels currently in submission or under construction.
I've always written, but I didn't get really serious about the craft until about eleven or twelve years ago, just before I sold my first short to an anthology in the USA. Since then I've been writing and refining (and selling more shorts). The Outsiders duo, (Red Man's Shadow and Dancing With the Past) the first two novels that I wrote, may not ever be publishable. You make your mistakes on the first one and hopefully fewer mistakes as you write and learn. They started out as one book, got too big and ended up being split into two. There's a potential third one in my head if they ever sell.
I feel that Empire of Dust, The Ballad of Tom Ling and Sea Witch and Rowan-Kind - a magic pirate adventure quest novel - are much more likely to find (and worthy of finding) a publisher, as is the novel I'm currently working on, Spider on the Web, a political fantasy with magic and sex in which some damaged characters are trying to make good.
And while still finishing the first draft of Spider I got an idea for a children's book currently with the working title of 'Your Horse Sees Dead People'. It's probably for the 10 - 13 age range and will likely end up at 50,000 words. As of January 2009 I've written 20,000 of those words.
I'm currently hunting for the perfect agent. Of course the agent doesn't have to be perfect, just perfect for me.
The following are short blurbs for works in submission and works in progress. I write mostly fantasy and science fiction, mostly for adults with one YA novel doing the rounds and a children's book in the oven.
Your Horse Sees Dead People
The working title of a work very much in progress.
by Jacey Bedford
Estimated finished length: 50 - 60,000 words
I've written 20,000 words of a potential 50,000 word book for the 10 - 13 age group. Set in rural northern England in more or less the present day, it's got magic and horses (not magic horses), one missing father and another driven mad, local disappearances and a burgeoning attachment - innocent romance, perhaps - between the two main characters Tiv (Tivoli) and Ryan). Oh yes, Mum's a witch, and on top of that it's got demons, more witches and adepts, not to mention a secretive magical organisation full of good guys - or are they? There's even mention of a school for the magically inclined, but Hogwarts it ain't.
On top of moving house and horse to a new village Tiv's trying to cope with the disappearance of her father and the melancholy moods and mad ideas of her mother. (Opening a witchcraft shop in rural Yorkshire - Mother, puh-lease!) Her main worries are will the boy next door think she's too young for him and what will moving to a comprehensive school be like after attending a sheltered private school, but when Ryan's delinquent horse proves to be psychic enough to throw a fit at the site of something no one else can see, Tiv and Ryan get involved and find out why Mum really bought the house at Hawkshill.
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Spider on the Web
by Jacey Bedford
First draft almost complete at approx 100,000 words
Jarek - the disgraced bodyguard whose king has been killed on his watch: Lind - the assassin - product of an abused childhood with more hangups than your average wardrobe' Mirza - the gypsy witch with a power she doen't want and a duty to a ghost. All of them are trying to redeem themselves in some way, but when the country of Telanna starts to go to hell in a handbasket after good king Ammadei is assassinated, what can they do? The answer might lie in Ammadei's widow, secretly pregnant with his son, but wisely, she's run away from the new king and his wizardly advisor. Who ordered Ammadei's death. Our trio has a good idea, but even Lind doesn't know for sure, and he was the one who got paid for doing the deed. Oh, yes, whern Jarek finds out who killed his king it isn't going to be pretty. And he will find out. The setting is quasi eastern-european, possibly somewhere not unlike Poland, in the early to mid 17th century.
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What I'm working on :
# 'Your Horse Sees Dead People
# Spider on the Web
# Empire of Dust
# Between Wind and Water
# The Midnight Rose
# The Outsiders (Red Man's Shadow / Dancing With the Past)
Between Wind and Water
by Jacey Bedford
92,000 word novel
Status: Complete and being submitted
A magical pirate adventure quest novel in which cross-dressing, widowed pirate captain Rossalinde Tremayne, known to her enemies as 'Redbeard,' inherits a brother she didn't know she had a quest that she doesn't want. A magical elf-oak box has to be opened, but how and why? What's inside it? What does it do? The answer lies hidden behind skeletons in her family cupboard and Ross must uncover dark secrets before she can free herself from a ghost, learn to trust a shapeshifter and right an ancient wrong.
-o0o-
What I'm working on :
# 'Your Horse Sees Dead People
# Spider on the Web
# Empire of Dust
# Between Wind and Water
# The Midnight Rose
# The Outsiders (Red Man's Shadow / Dancing With the Past)
Empire of Dust
by Jacey Bedford
128,000 word novel.
Status: Complete and being submitted.
Forget the oil wars. In the future, platinum is what everyone needs.
The Trust and Alphacorp, rival, mega-corporations with economies bigger than whole planets, are expanding. Their colony specialists are an elite task force of psi-techs, implant-enhanced humans with abilities ranging from telepathy to the meshing of mind and machine.
When psi-tech, Cora Carlinni, uncovers corruption in Alphacorp she ends up on the run from a neural readjustment facility, believing that she's made her break before they started messing with her mind... but did she? Hoping to find a bolt-hole for a couple of years by signing on for the new Galileo colony set-up mission she hooks up with Trust Commander Ben Benjamin, however she not only takes her old troubles with her but also finds a host of new ones when she gets there and it turns out that the planet is heavy-metal-rich - a target for pirates.
If only she could work out who to trust, she might be able to steer out of trouble, but trust is something that's in short supply all-round. The settlers don't trust the psi-techs. The psi-techs don't tust their boss. Ben doesn't trust Cora. Cora doesn't trust anybody, especially herself, but if she doesn't learn to trust somebody, soon, the Galileo colony is going to get wiped out and all the psi-techs along with it.
This is a fast-paced novel of cross and double cross spanning star systems.
When it comes to the final confrontation Cora must face her fears and her trust issues. With her mind unravelling like an old cardigan and enough false memories surfacing that she doesn't know whose side she's on any more, Cora has to sort out reality from construct to save Ben and the colony. Of course, saving the colony doesn't necessarily mean she can save herself.
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What I'm working on :
# 'Your Horse Sees Dead People
# Spider on the Web
# Empire of Dust
# Between Wind and Water
# TThe Midnight Rose
# The Outsiders (Red Man's Shadow / Dancing With the Past)
The Midnight Rose
by Jacey Bedford
A YA novel, 70,000 words.
Status: Complete and being submitted.
When eighteen year old Jenny unwisely attends a drunken campfire party on New Year's Eve and meets an unusual young man she doesn't realise that she's already stepped over the line between Middle England and Faery. But the underworld of Faery is a long way from Walt Disney and the young man is not as young as he looks. Jenny's caught between two worlds and struggling. Until now she's been cocooned in the safety of home, loving parents, music and final exams, but all of a sudden her best friend wants an abortion, her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer and her boyfriend's bound for Hell unless she starts taking advice from a very shady gypsy lady. Can she solve everyone's problems or is two out of three the best she can hope for? Maybe she might have stood a better chance if she hadn't got pregnant herself... and anyway, is her baby even human?
-o0o-
What I'm working on :
# 'Your Horse Sees Dead People
# Spider on the Web
# Empire of Dust
# Between Wind and Water
# The Midnight Rose
# The Outsiders (Red Man's Shadow / Dancing With the Past)
The Outsiders — Volumes I & II
Red Man's Shadow and Dancing with the Past
by Jacey Bedford
108,000 word and 111,000 word linked novels
Status: Complete as a pair
Possible third book on hiatus until Books One and Two find a publisher
Book One
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Book Two
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Book Three
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The story of Ria, a foundling who proves to be 'different' in a very dangerous way. Ria is one of the 'esper' a small group of people linked by their telepathic bond in a world where psi-abilities are rewarded by death in the firepits.
Despite shrouded origins she makes her way in the world through a country torn apart by war. Meeting, losing and finally settling with the love of her life, Coriam, and producing a preciciously talented esper daughter. But eventually her past catches up with her in the shape of the Red Man. He knows who her real father is and wants to use her, and her daughter, to destroy him.
In the meantime Coriam is trying to build a refuge for the hunted espers of Jamundi. Something has to be done to protect them from stupid and cruel laws and if he can't work inside the system then he'll attack it from the outside. But when is terrorism justified?
This pair of books comes to a climax with Ria and Coriam's final struggle against the Red Man to save their daughter and to keep the espers' growing organisatation secret. These are complete in themselves.
In the third possible book - not yet written - Ria and Coriam will take their struggle for justice all the way to the ruler's court. Ria will confront her past, face down her father and Coriam with broker a deal for the espers to give them a new chance to live free of fear.
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