Love Bytes is happy to welcome to the blog author Jon Wiltshire talking to us about new release “The Bright and Hungry Future of Hawks (More Heat Than The Sun Book 9)”.

Welcome 🙂

Author John Wiltshire’s thoughts on completing the

More Heat Than The Sun series.

 

Writing More Heat Than the Sun has been an exceptional journey for me.  It has bridged three decades, two hemispheres, jogged alongside ‘real’ jobs going on in the background, as well as meandering through family changes and challenges.  When I started Love Is A Stranger, Russia was at war with Georgia, and now it’s at war with Ukraine, so it’s nice to know that whilst everything changes, it still somehow manages to stay the same.

 

Am I glad the journey is over?  Well, yes and no. I’m delighted that I’ve finally achieved what I set out to do.  This last book is always where I intended to take the boys, and is definitely my favourite of the whole series. The rewriting of some of the events in Love Is A Stranger from Nikolas’s point of view was part of the intent of starting the series in the first place.  It’s why Book 1 is from Ben’s perspective and there’s little explanation of some key plot moments.  As I say in the foreword to the new book, it might be worth readers revisiting the first before embarking on this final chapter in the saga.

 

The whole premise of the series is an exploration of secrets and the almost impossible attainment of real love when its foundations are built on the fragility of an all-encompassing lie.  However, I strongly believe that an author’s main business is the art of making the impossible possible, so there was never any doubt in my mind where Nik and Ben would end up.  So although the adventure is over, everyone is where I intended them to be, which is extremely satisfying.

 

Another major theme in the series which comes to its resolution in Book 9 is redemption.  I’m a huge believer in it, and clearly Nikolas is not a natural hero in anyone’s estimation, even his own.  Can love redeem the truly irredeemable?  Clearly, I think it can, so I set out to prove it.  I hope you agree I was successful.

 

But on the downside of finishing the series, I will miss the boys more than I can express.  Their life has been as real as my own sometimes.  They went to places I’ve been and had some of the adventures I’ve had.  Many of the people in their life are in mine too.  But I believe in leaving on a high note—I’ve seen too many of my favourite series ruined by authors’ inability to call it quits when they really should.  I like the idea of Nikolas and Benjamin forever spiralling around in each other’s arms under the flame-lit dome of their glass house, timelessly in love.

 

I’ll miss the wider family as well.  Squeezy, particularly, is a favourite of mine.  We should all have an utterly amoral enigma in our lives.  Radulf, of course, is irreplaceable.  He actually has his own story to tell about the events of Book 9.  His great starring moment was entirely glossed over.  Why were his paws bleeding?  And PB—where was he for a week?  These ought to be the issues we are focusing on.  Should you give any credence to certain rumours floating around that I’m only ending the series because Radulf is now thirteen years old, too old for any credible wolfhound, then let me scotch those rumours now.  Radulf (as with his fictional inspiration Timmy) lives entirely in his own floating timeline.  He is a dog who will forever be a little bit arthritic, secretly incontinent, questionably blind, and yet always heroically loyal.

 

In ending the series, I realise that Molly, too, will now never grow older.  She will remain perpetually three.  For those of you who have gone through the horror of satchels and music lessons being cast off in favour of pink hair and nose studs you may appreciate this.

 

Dartmoor, of course, will forever remain just as it is: perfect. In my memory it will always have short, sheep-nibbled grass sweeping up to granite tors, and will, for all time, smell of bracken under warm sunshine.  Maybe one day I’ll be able to return to the valley where the glass house sits alongside Benjamin Falls and Lake Aleksey under Horse Tor.  Perhaps, like little eight-year-old Aleksey, I’d better fashion my own sailboat: it’s not looking likely any other way.

 

Outside of the books themselves, I’ve met some wonderful editors and publishers over the decades I’ve been writing.  I’m grateful to you all.  I didn’t foresee the privilege of having audio versions of the books when I started, but I’m especially thankful to Decent Fellows Press, Isobel Starling, and especially Gary Furlong, the narrator, for making these wonderful additions possible.  I find my own characters extremely amusing, but never so much as when listening to Gary bring them so skilfully to life.

 

We readers are a very select bunch.  As with dog lovers, I’ve never met an avid reader I didn’t like.  I’ve very much enjoyed all the feedback, speculation and comments about the books and the characters—please keep it coming. (Sorry about the lack of lube, by the way. I had no idea people would want such staggeringly intimate details about other people’s sex life.)

 

I must just mention that I will particularly miss all the many and constant begging letters asking me when Book 9 would be out.

 

Honestly.

 

So, we’re done.  We’ve have journeyed together through tsunamis and cannibals, hurricanes, sexually frustrated elderly librarians, and more death-defying injuries than any two bodies, however superb, should have to endure. We’ve survived.  We’ve thrived!  I hope you all enjoy The Bright and Hungry Future of Hawks.  You’ve helped in the creation of each book by being so encouraging and supportive.  I wish you all the best for the future in these turbulent and troubling times.  While we still have books, and authors who try to make the impossible possible, there is hope.

 

Be well.  Keep reading.

 

John Wiltshire

The FINAL book in the addictive, best-selling “More Heat Than The Sun” M/M Thriller series

Ben and Nikolas know that if they were to compare recollections of their life together, they’d remember things very differently. Ben never asks about their time together in the Department, because he doesn’t want to hear Nikolas lie. Nikolas never talks about those early years, because he can’t afford for Ben to know the truth. After all, some old secrets, like hidden traps, lie rusty but ever eager to spring shut and destroy the unwary. But Nikolas, in love, truly happy, forgets to be vigilant. He takes a very serious misstep. For the first time since their strange meeting in Whitehall fourteen years ago, Ben is forced to rethink his claim that nothing Nikolas could ever do would make him stop loving him

This book contains graphic M/M content.

Amazon Buy Link

 

About John Wiltshire