Release of Nanteos: The Dipping Pool postponed

Like so many projects, plans to release the sequel to The Shadow of Nanteos have had to be changed. Originally to be launched during the week of the National Eisteddfod in Tregaron, 2020, with the festival postponed until 2021, Plas Nanteos hotel closed and Y Lolfa the publisher 'working from home', we are waiting to test the market temperature (pardon the pun!) before releasing the book.

It's been 5 years since we published The Shadow of Nanteos, set in the haunting Georgian mansion of Plas Nanteos, and Nanteos: The Dipping Pool is its companion. Both prequel and sequel, The Dipping Pool has a longer narrative arc, starting and finishing 6 months before and after the first Nanteos novel. The scope is wider too: whereas The Shadow of Nanteos is focussed mainly on the gentry family living in the Ceredigion mansion in the 1750s, the second book explores the living and dying of workers in the mines, mills and farms on their huge estate. Characters who appear only briefly in the first novel come into focus for the second, and events important to the plot of both are seen from different perspectives. Readers and critics of the MS are looking for a name for this type of literary project - no one has come up with an official term yet, so I'm calling it a 'parallel' or 'sister' novel.

Though the hotel, bookshops, museums and tourist information centres selling The Shadow of Nanteos are temporarily closed, the novel is still available widely online including from major sites such as Waterstones, WH Smiths and Amazon (ordering it directly from Y Lolfa helps that small business get more revenue however!). Though I've worked hard to make sure each book can be read as an independent entity, it's much more rewarding to read them together as the back story is developed and the fate of the characters revealed.

In the meantime, I'm going to be on here posting material about the background to the books and about Ceredigion history - please join me and keep in touch, it's always heartening to know there are readers out there waiting to get their mits on my book! Safe times, everyone, Jane