The h-index - an academic horror

My second novel is coming soon, to be published by Morfa Press. Here is the blurb:

Five academics arrive at a remote Welsh farm for a month long writing retreat. This is their opportunity to launch, or relaunch, careers with the publication that will earn them status. What they find instead of creative solitude is Storm Aurora, a restored wetland that shouldn’t have been disturbed, and something ancient rising from the peat that has been waiting for exactly this confluence of conditions. As the coast road floods and the power fails, the group discovers that their h-indices, their methodologies, and their carefully constructed academic identities count for nothing against something that has been here far longer than any institution. The H-Index is literary horror at its sharpest — a darkly comic, genuinely terrifying novel about five scholars who came to write about the world and instead find themselves fighting to stay in it.

I decided to lean into my academic background with this one. Write what you know eh? I am also a big advocate for writing retreats (indeed I wrote a lot of this novel about a writing retreat in West Wales, while on a writing retreat in West Wales). I'll share some of the opening chapters in another post.

In the first novel I really needed to find out if I could actually write a novel. Having decided that I could, this one came much easier. The characters led the plot very smoothly, and I'm really rather fond of them. Even the pompous ones.

(Image - Latin small h)