This is probably where we are at present:

Book the First: Dark Reading Matter

Swindon-based Literary Detective Thursday Next is embarking on her eighth and final adventure, Dark Reading Matter, and she is well aware of the fact. The problem is, others are too. Old foes and new are plotting a terrible revenge: to disrupt the narrative and make Dark Reading Matter not just unreadable but unpublishable. Thursday can't let that happen and needs to use all her guile and narrative trickery to unmask the antagonists.

It won't be easy. The Martians have broken out of their HG Wells novel and threaten both the real world and the Bookworld. Agents from a higher reality want unfettered access to the Dark Reading Matter, the realm where deleted books and unrealised literary ideas end up. A Gateway to Hell has opened up at Wantage's Shakesmania, the nation's second-worst Shakespeare theme park, and the cosy world of Enid Blyton has been hijacked by Ultra Right Wing Nationalists. With Reality Field Distortion experiments going haywire, a partially redacted donkey, a Bookworld on the brink of losing its imaginative energy to Big Tech and a murderous stamp collector with Philaticide on their mind, Thursday has to navigate a tightrope of borderline unusable narrative devices to bring the series to a satisfactory conclusion.

It's a tall order, but Thursday has several secret weapons: her own adaptability, her husband, Landen, a host of stalwart friends and ultimately the most loyal compatriots she can call upon: her readers.

Published in the UK and US October 2026. Hodder in the UK, Soho Press in the USA.

Book the Second: Shelbert Poody is Someone Else Satiric comedy along the lines of Early Riser and Constant Rabbit. Who are we really? Shelbert Poody, professional Other, has to navigate a difficult world where no-one - or nothing - is what it seems, and the only reality that matters is the one he can build for himself.

Writing 2026, published 2027.

Book the Third: Shades of Grey III: Wild Blue Yonder Third and final in the Shades of Grey trilogy. With Eddie and Jane free to live normal lives away from Chromatacia for good, the old country and those they left behind exert a strong pull - is it possible to return, and should they?

Writing 2027, published 2028.