Author Clive S. Johnson
My Latest Speculative Fiction Novel
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When Denzel and his fellow trader Winston lead their pack-ponies home from the small Lancastrian port of Bolton, he's amazed when he finds the strangely wrapped body of a girl floating in a pool beside the track. This turns out, though, to be only the first of many mysteries involving Denzel and his Gaian College at Wallsuches.
What's behind the longstanding animosity between the neighbouring hamlet of Horwich and the fishing port of Chorley? Why has it recently spilled over into bloody conflict? How might this threaten Denzel's College and its remote Gaian Foundation in the Lancastrian capital of Clitheroe? And what part, if any, does the enigmatic girl found in the pool play in all this?
Set in a future Lancashire, after climate change, we follow Denzel as he's dragged not only into a search for answers, but into a fight against a legacy from his world's cataclysmic past. And against all this upheaval, can Denzel finally fulfil a promise he made many years before to his lamented younger sister?
My Latest Historical Fiction Time-slip Novel
When hospital doctor Peter Buchanan goes through his case notes for his following morning's clinic, he doesn't expect to be transported back four hundred years. There, he becomes caught up in one of Tudor England's most intriguing mysteries: a Catholic attempt to topple Queen Elizabeth that became known as "The Hesketh Plot". Nor did he expect that the lives of those so long ago would become as real to him as those of the twenty-first century. So real that, after being returned to his own time, he's determined to go back to the sixteenth century, to follow the fate brought down on those left in the plot's wake.
The very last thing Peter suspected was that his slip through time would also bring him love, something he'd long since dismissed as a lost hope. A hope that would then be denied him by time itself. But Peter has always been stubborn, the more so when confronted by the seemingly impossible.
My First Historical Fiction Time-slip Novel
It's 1976, and hippie student Colin and his new girlfriend, Kate, begin their life together during that heat wave summer. But something - or someone - intrudes into Colin's mind and won't go away. It leads them to unwind an extraordinary tale, taking them back to events some 500 years ago, to Jusuf, Rodrigo and Gwenna.
Who are they, though, and what is their link with Colin and Kate? And what's the sinister mystery at the heart of their story that threatens the very existence of Colin and Kate's own world?
A fresh and original time-slip novel of romance, revenge, religion, and redemption, where twentieth-century England's North West and fifteenth-century Cornwall are unforgettably evoked with colour, richness and wit. If you like beautifully engrossing tales of mystery and intrigue, you will love The Forebear's Candle.
A straight SF novel in the old-school style
Morgan is a lecy-eng, one of an elite group that has responsibility for maintaining the vital systems of Rundkern. When a circuit in Agri-Prod is suspected of being responsible for a valuable crop's sickening state, Morgan gets to discover more about the lowly agri-engs than he ever imagined.
His tale becomes one of intrigue, love and an unexpected but frankly unbelievable discovery. But before Morgan knows it, he's committed himself to agri-eng Stephanie and her own people's long-held hopes about a place that seems to him little more than a pie-in-the-sky dream.
Can there really be a "Promised Land", and if so, will it ultimately snatch Stephanie from him? For the Promised Land is somewhere to which no lecy-eng can ever journey. But then, nor can Morgan be left behind alive in Rundkern knowing of its existence.
A far-future speculative fiction novel with a difference
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From the rose of a late Summer's eve to the very stars above
This is an epic six book mystery series set within the exquisitely realised "created-world" realm of Dica. At its heart is a story spanning the millennia - from ancient myth and legend to the realm's turbulent present - all seen through the intimate vision of its idiosyncratic characters. These are folk who'll become as real to you as friends and family, and whose revealing and somehow contemporary story will stay with you for ever more.
It's the kind of fantasy you might have expected from the pen of Mervyn Peake, peopled with fully fleshed-out characters reminiscent of those so joyously created by Terry Pratchett. The story at times, though, may seem to owe more to CS Lewis, as it weaves its way through a rich, deep and multi-threaded tapestry of a plot that would have pleased the science fiction master Olaf Stapledon. And of course, there's one character who mustn't be overlooked, and that's the Realm of Dica itself - so real, immediate and all-embracing that you could be forgiven for thinking it had sprung from JRR Tolkien's own hand.
All the series titles, and all my other books, are available in hardback, paperback and e-book formats - click on the cover then click on the appropriate Amazon link on each book's page.