Today I’m going to talk about a couple of forthcoming pieces of writing. I’m hoping that the first of these will be ready for release before the end of October. The second is lagging behind a bit, but should be ready by the end of the year.
Both are being published under the banner of Matteh Publications (http://mattehpublications.datascenesdev.com/). Matteh is the ebook publishing wing of DataScenes Development, based in north London. DataScenes is also responsible for some mobile and tablet applications relating to the ancient world (http://apps.datascenesdev.com/). So far the most popular of these is a version of the ancient Egyptian game of Senet. This is considered by many people nowadays as an ancestor of backgammon, but in Egypt seems to have had a religious dimension as well as just entertainment.
Back to the forthcoming books. The first is a short story called The Man in the Cistern, set in the same community as In a Milk and Honeyed Land but about ten years on. It describes how Damariel and Nepheret have to tackle the arrival nearby of a group of migrants trying to settle near the town of Kephrath. For those who know a little of the archaeology of the region, it also proposes an explanation of the occupancy of a particular village.
The second item is the long-awaited PhD thesis Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian. Turning this into ebook format has taught me a great deal about how (and how not) to handle complex matters of layout and font display! Issues that word processing packages handle very easily turn out to be rather more fiddly when you are producing an ebook. This thesis explores cross-cultural issues of poetry in the earliest parts of the Hebrew Bible, and provides an academic foundation for the romantic spark of creativity enjoyed by Damariel and Nepheret.
More news about both of these in the coming weeks. In the meantime, whet your appetite – or that of a friend – with a copy of In a Milk and Honeyed Land! To find out where to buy it online or in the real world, check out http://www.kephrath.com/WhereToBuy.aspx.