More rejected proposals, well Abaddon books never actually even replied....

DIS NIVEN (ZOMBIE / HORROR / WAR)

In an Edwardian world where 'spiritualism', is the driving force in a new industrial revolution, and ghosts are forced into 'ectoplasmic sweat-shops' to power literally 'satanic mills': Dis Niven, a professional 'bodysnatcher' and retriever of the dead, is [like a modern cult deprogrammer] the one man grieving families can call to get their relation's corpse back from the medical students or their soul back from the spiritualists with equal skill. When a crucial middle-european vote is disrupted by the death of the elector-general of saxony, only his Dis Niven's skill can harrow the new iron hells, to prevent a European war in which the Iron Ghosts of the High Germanies will sweep across Europe. [The hook for a series here can be that Dis, fails in the first book to prevent the war leading to a Sven Hassel like series of Great War horrors.]

THE SUNDERED ISLES (FANTASY, ALT HISTORY)

A fantasy series, in which the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was fractionally earlier, hitting mainland America and leaving a shattered set of Lost World archipeligos, where natural selection and the alien energies of the asteroid's fragments have written strange new stories, and taken bizarre paths. We begin with Erik the Red and a party of berserks finding not the new world, but Islands full of Reptile-men relics, and hunting saurians. Then with the magicks they find the Vikings reave back through Europe, overturning the Empires of the West,and coming into conflict with Islam and China. Books can be set during the exploration of the Sundered Isles, then the conflicts in Europe, and finally war with the Sun Dragons of Asian! [Note it would be possible, by making the asteroid a source of cavorite to lead to a dimensional/time war - via Einstein's time experiments - between the eventual Odinised Earth of the Sundered Isles, and the Steam-Punk Earth's British Empire who would see in the 'magic' of this world a further source of cavorite...it could even be possible to make the Rulers of this earth's china, the satraps or pawns of those in your stream-punk world.]

Simon BJ
2005