Good news isn't what you expect at 5.30 on a Friday afternoon, unless it comes with the welcome approach of beer o'clock or a promising weekend weather forecast.

But it was at 5.30 yesterday that I learned the people running Bloomsbury Reader (both in Britain and America) are very taken with The Lazarus Prophecy. They're going to publish it both here and there. This means it will be out not just on Kindle but on all the available e-reader platforms. I don't know when yet but I do know that this is a welcome breakthrough for a novel I finished as long ago as June of last year.

I've been keen to get it into the public domain because I honestly think this is the one that could attract a wider readership than I've so far achieved.

I read something recently by Wool author Hugh Howey to the effect that any book has a chance of becoming successful at any time. And he's right - they're not perishable goods with a limited shelf-life. I've always believed this deep down and never really been discouraged, while knowing that some novels naturally have a better chance than others.

In Edmund Caul, The Lazarus Prophecy has the most frightening villain I've created. He's a lot more sinister than Klaus Fischer or Harry Spalding or Patrick Ross. And I believe the section of the novel set in London in 1888 to be the strongest and most atmospheric piece of fiction I've written.

Prophecy will also come out as an audiobook. The Colony audiobook has done surprisingly well in America so I've high hopes for that too. And I sincerely hope the brilliant Scottish actor David Rintoul is the reader again. The job he did with The Colony, with its large and diverse cast of characters, was uncannily good.