The end is nigh...or is it? Nah! For Joe Hunter it's all steam ahead.

Something just struck me hard!

No it wasn't a phantom missile launched from a nuclear submarine off the Californian coast (anyone been following the news?) but the realisation that it's the second week of November already. Not only that but it's the second week of November 2010. We are only a few weeks away from the cusp of 2011. Can anyone believe it? It seems like no time since we were all anticipating the New Millenium, and all the doomsday stories were doing the rounds. Remember the Millenium Bug that was supposed to crash all of our computers, revert us back to the end of the nineteenth century or even the dark ages, or cause a chain reaction that would annihilate the entire world in a thermo-nuclear holocaust?

Now that the Noughties are about to end, and we enter the Teenies it brings to my mind the new doomsday prophesies (OK, they're not new if you ask a Mayan) and that the world will end in just over two years time in December 2012. Blooming typical, isn't it? I wait all these years to achieve my dream as a published author and then the world is going to come to a cataclysmical ending!

Not that I buy into the stories, mind you.

But just in case there is any truth in it, I'd better get a move on with my writing because (here's the real reason for this post), I can now announce that Joe Hunter will continue and I have agreed  to deliver books 8 and 9 in the series to my UK publisher, Hodder and Stoughton.

I am over the moon at the prospect, and I hope that you, my readers, are too.

So, between now and doomsday you can watch out for the upcoming Blood and Ashes (JH 5), Dead Men's Harvest (JH 6) and No Going Back (JH 7 - working title), and - hoping those Mayans were just blowing hot air - books eight and nine shortly afterwards.

Oh, and there's also good news for my followers over in the USA: my publisher there - the esteemed William Morrow and Company - have picked up Cut and Run and will be following the current three book run as well.

So, you can count on Joe for many more adventures to come, and nothing short of a direct nuclear strike will stop me from bringing his tales to the page.

Now...where did that mysterious missile go? Uh...