Richard Abbott writes fiction written in several different genres. The first area is historical fiction set in the Middle East at the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200BC. The second is speculative fiction, set either in a historical fantasy world, or else in a near-future solar system exploring issues of high-tech crime and human-machine relationships.
His first excursion into historical fantasy is Half Sick of Shadows – a retelling and metamorphosis of the Arthurian tale of The Lady of Shalott. The book was awarded an IndieBrag medallion in December 2017.
His first science fiction book, Far from the Spaceports, introduces Mitnash Thakur and his virtual partner Slate as they investigate financial crime in the asteroid belt. A follow-up novel, Timing, takes place about a year later, and sees the duo travelling down to Mars and its moon Phobos to thwart a plot targeting AIs. The Liminal Zone moves the viewpoint another twenty years further on, and is more interested in life out at the edges of the solar system, and the possibilities of first contact.
Further books in this science fiction universe are in preparation.
His first book, In a Milk and Honeyed Land, explores events in the Egyptian province of Canaan. It follows the life, loves, and struggles of a priest in the small hill town of Kephrath.
A follow-up novel entitled Scenes from a Life begins in Egypt. It follows the journey of a scribe as he travels to discover his origins. down the Nile from Luxor and finally out into Canaan.
A third book, The Flame Before Us, is set in the middle of calamity. New settlers are arriving from the north, sacking cities and disrupting the established ways of life as they come. This story follows several different groups each trying to adjust to the new situation.
Richard lives in Cumbria, England, and works in the a family business, having left behind jobs in London’s IT industry. He maintains a keen interest in designing AI skills for Alexa and similar technologies. When not writing words or computer code, he enjoys spending time with family, walking, and wildlife, ideally combining all three pursuits in the English Lake District.
For fun, I entered the first few paragraphs of Scenes from a Life into the writing analysis web site I Write Like, and this was the result:
Author readings from both In a Milk and Honeyed Land and Scenes from a Life are available online as YouTube videos.
The short story The Man in the Cistern is set in the same location but around ten years later.
The short story The Lady of the Lions is set in the same location but around one hundred and fifty years earlier.
Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian is the ebook version of his PhD thesis which, for those who want the technical details, supplies academic underpinning for some of the ideas and plot themes followed up in fiction.