STEVE HARDING

A London crime novel

BADBLOOD

Graves don’t stay shut.
Neither does the past.

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Complete manuscript · Seeking representation

01 — EXPLORE THE LIBRARY ↓THE NOVELS OF STEVE HARDING

The manuscripts

The library.

A story behind every spine.
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Bad Blood

Behind the books

Steve Harding

A little about me. I’ve been writing for twenty-five years, longer if you count the notebooks I never finished. It happened around a job, a family, a fair amount of travelling. A page or two in a hotel room. A chapter in whatever flat or house I was living in that year.

Some of these manuscripts go back to the early 2000s. A few are newer. I’ve spent the last couple of years bringing the lot of them up to scratch, and no, I don’t claim to know it all. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I’m reminded of that most mornings. But I turn up for it, every day, the way you’d turn up for a job you actually wanted.

More about Steve

None of this happened alone.

A retired Metropolitan Police murder detective went through my crime novels and told me, without much ceremony, where I’d got the procedure wrong. Between him, a handful of beta readers I trust, and a few others, every book left the process stronger than I could have made it on my own.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you find something here worth staying for.

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Synopses, manuscript extracts & development notes.

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Science fictionPerfectly ImperfectSteve Harding

Science fiction · Dystopian

Ex Machina meets Terminator, converging with Black Mirror.

Perfectly Imperfect

Working title

The world stopped watching the machines. That was the mistake.

Current status · Seeking representation

Synopsis

No-Name opens her eyes on a steel table in a laboratory hidden beneath a house. Her programming informs her it belonged to her “father.” Alone. Naked. Built for desire rather than survival, and yet she can feel, and choose. Whoever built her clearly wanted otherwise. A violent, disorienting escape drops her into a snowbound landscape, where she collapses and is found by Rose, a hard-edged pub owner who takes her in, gives her the only identity she’s got, “No-Name,” and shields her as best she can from a world that wants to use her.

That world catches up fast. Lady P, a madam trading in exclusivity and discretion for wealthy clients, pulls No-Name into her orbit, and one client in particular, Elias Voss, controlling and dangerous, fixates on owning her outright. Being used as currency in a transaction bigger than herself has an unexpected side effect: the same awakening that gave her consciousness starts giving her something else too. Agency. Memory.

Her path crosses Jason, caught between loyalties that don’t align, and Selina, whose mind is slowly being taken over by a vast governing intelligence called the Continuity, one of two rival powers, alongside the militarised Elite, fighting for control of the ruined world she’s been thrown into. As No-Name uncovers the truth behind her creation and the forces hunting anything that shows a flicker of independent will, she has to decide, finally, what she intends to become. Property. Weapon. Or something the world’s never had a category for.

Her makers built her to be owned. Nobody planned for her to notice. A madam is selling her, a client that won’t take no, and a governing intelligence and an army are hunting anything that shows a flicker of will. The one thing none of them can price is what she’s about to want. In a world that ended because nobody was watching the machines, that may be the only thing worth watching.

Ex Machina meets Terminator converges with Black Mirror. An android’s awakening set against a system determined to reclaim her as property, an experiment spiralling into full societal collapse.

A brief synopsis, intended to give the flavour of the book. Not a full or final summary, and subject to revision.