Update: VOTING IS NOW CLOSED!
At 23:59 GMT on Friday July 13th, 2012, I closed the voting for the next book... By a rather large margin, the winner was Hunter!
This is unfortunate news for those people waiting to find out what happens next for Renata, Danny and Colin, but that's the deal with voting: you don't always get what you want. (But you should always vote anyway: you never know when that one vote might make a difference!)
Thanks to everyone who participated - it was quite thrilling watching the votes come in, especially early in the week when it looked like Crossfire was taking the lead, and then, gradually, Hunter crept up and took over!
All going well, Hunter will most likely be published in early 2014. I know that seems a very long time away, but it'll be worth the wait! And it's not like 2013 will be completely devoid of new Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes material... But more than that I will not say for now!
As many of you will know, I constructed the overall plot of the New Heroes / Quantum Prophecy series many years ago... And while I was doing so I was very much aware that the publishing industry doesn't dance solely to the author's tune. In other words, just because I make plans doesn't mean that those plans will work out!
So I built a large number of trapdoors and secondary paths into the plot in case things had to change. Which of course is what happened when the original publisher decided not to continue the series beyond the third book: I took a plotline that would have appeared in book four as a lengthy flashback, and turned it into the prequel Super Human. That turned out to be one of the best things to happen to the series, because it allowed me to create a whole new "jumping-on" point for new readers.
It has always been my intention to return to the New Heroes and wrap up the story, and I've been working toward that: I recently completed Crossfire, the seventh novel, and it does indeed carry on from the end of Absolute Power / The Reckoning, while also tying up many of the plot threads from the prequels.
As I was working on Crossfire, I had a new idea for another prequel... I won't say exactly what that idea is, but I reckon it's potentially one of the best I've ever had! Trust me, this is a killer idea, and if I can make it work, it'll knock your socks off! The working title for this book is Hunter (and that's all I'm going to say about it for now!).
However, there's a problem. For Hunter to work, it absolutely must be published before Crossfire.
I know from the e-mails I receive that a lot of readers are very keen to find out what's next for the New Heroes, but since Stronger was published a few weeks ago my inbox has been flooded with mail about the series, and it seems that a lot of people want to see more of the prequel characters.
So what do I do? Abandon my great new idea and just go ahead with Crossfire, or delay Crossfire for a while and go with Hunter? This is where you get a chance to have your say!
To vote, select your preference below and click the "Send Your Vote" button. (Please bear in mind that I haven't started writing Hunter yet, so if that one is chosen, then it almost certainly won't be published before early 2014.)