Bastet

Bastet

A New Knights Novel

An ancient God in chains. A world shattered by unfathomable war. The sands shift. Love endures.

Who remembers when a God is forgotten?
What does love cost, when the stars flicker out?

3000 BCE, Ancient Egypt. The time of the Titans is ending. Bastet, one of the last pure-bloods, walks a realm slipping from divine to human hands. As the Pharaohs rise and the Titans ascend beyond understanding, those left behind must grapple with their place in a world as magick fades and greed begins to rule. A world of betrayal, exile and shifting sands.

1923, Cairo. Linda Loache, forging her way through a man’s world scarred by the effects of War, learns of a discovery in the desert. An ancient tomb, one untouched by grave-robbers – and drawing lots of interest in the golden age of adventure. But she knows more. She knows what lies beneath may ignite revolution and reshape history.

Sometimes what is buried should remain so.
No matter the scars on our hearts.

Across oceans of time, their fates entwine once more. Ancient grudges awaken, and cosmic forces rise. The return of a forgotten Titan draws Bastet and Linda back together, into a battle that will decide the fates of more than empires. In myth and memory, in sacrifice and survival, a legend returns – and tragic, timeless love binds two souls for all eternity.

The sands may shift.
Though love endures.

Bastet is an aeons-spanning, epic tale of love and loss across a sand-washed landscape. The forgotten story of two women in history, facing an unforgiving cosmos and the harsh truth about legacy: you write your own story, so that others may tell it.

The Soundtrack

Bastet is an old tale told through a modern eye, the sound of sitting around a campfire and discussing the myths and legends of yesteryear. But it’s also a story of two women, fierce and powerful, raw and honest. It could have felt right to go with sweeping orchestral notes, or jazzy rip-roaring twenties tunes. But the soundtrack, like the novel whose namesake it bears, is defiantly anachronistic. Two fingers in the air, I’ll let you imagine which two.

The soundtrack showcases a range of talents, across the spectrum of tones and vibes but all with a singular emotional thread – we are here. We are strong. And no justification is needed. I love this soundtrack, listen to it on more occasions than simply when writing the book. It uplifts me, it makes me hope. And, yeah, cry. Because love and life hurt, but that’s no reason to not keep living.

When the world tells you – female, trans, queer, or just plain different – that you should be one way, tell them all to sod off. Then crack open the book, or pop on these tunes. This world is ours. All of ours.

What You’ll Find in This Book

A fierce goddess caught between honour, destiny, and a world slipping from divine hands.
A lush, living Egypt shaped by war, myth, and the shifting sands of empire.
A timeless thread of mystery guiding Bastet from battlefield to cosmic crossroads.
The human cost of rebellion, loyalty, and the stories power tries to bury.
A sharp, wry narrative voice balancing epic scale with intimate emotion.
The first quiet sparks of a love destined to echo across millennia.

A Short Excerpt

Check Here for a Snippet

She was a Titan. A title she earned and commanded respect for, long before our stories ever intertwined. She took a longer time to believe it compared to others, but she got there in the end. She believed there was no such thing as a no-win situation and was both proven right and wrong through reality’s paradox.

Listen to the stories of the heroes we believe in. And recognise that they are not, for all their divinity and all their strength, heroes through birthright, or through deification, or fate. Listen to their stories, listen to my story, listen to hers.

They are heroes because they love us.

Because they choose to love us.

She chose us.

Behind the Story

I love Ancient Egypt, always have. I know, surprise, surprise, right? The Ancient Greeks and Ancient Egyptians get all the love. And don’t get me wrong, I get that it’s sometimes problematic – especially being a British author. The history between our nations hasn’t always been smooth, to say the least – and we were definitely in the wrong. But politics and colonialism aside, Ancient Egypt is just fascinating. But it wasn’t the pyramids or the tombs that got me really, it was the Gods. Ancient, dysfunctional, warring, loving, contradictory Gods. You read the myths and you realise, they may be battling giant serpents in the Duat or ripping out people’s hearts, but they kind of remind me of when the family get together for a do.

With that as the starting point – Gods as a dysfunctional family – the rest sort of came from itself. Bastet has always been one of my favourite deities, and criminally under-represented in stories. And Linda, oh Linda, whose epoch-spanning and martini soaked life was always going to have to be explored further at some point after Avalon. Why, her being both in Ancient Egypt and 1923 Cairo just seemed…right, somehow. Once I challenged myself to get over it and write a sapphic love-story – previously paralysed by fear that as a gay man, I’d offend or misrepresent – I found my favourite love-story I’ve ever told.

The moral of the story? Tell it. I did. And I’m never going to be afraid to do so again.