Finished!

Well, for the one or two readers (both of whom are most likely in the UK) who are still waiting for the follow-up to Dragon Stones (which was once upon a time the #1 best seller on the Kindle fantasy lists in the UK), it is finally finished!  The new book, Shards, is part one of a two-part fantasy series, and clocks in at about 111,000 words.  For those who are keeping track, that’s somewhat shorter than A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder or Dragon Stones, but longer than Night Watchman or Long Before Dawn.  Why release it as two books instead of one?  Well …

Blurb

So I realize I’ve been saying this for a while now, but book one of “Shards” really is, finally, entering its final development phase. At this point I’m not only editing, I’m also doing some layout work. I haven’t started looking for cover art yet, but I did pull a bit of dialog to serve as the blurb on the inside front cover:

“So what kind of character do you want?” Mercy asked.

“I don’t know.” Bernard inspected the options. “What’s a rogue?”

“A rogue is like a thief.”

“What, you mean they go around robbing people?”

“Well, sort of, but not like a mugger. More like, you know, Robin Hood or Ali Baba.”

“Mmm. What are you?”

“I’m an elf sorceress.”

“Of course you are. I’ll be a human rogue. Male. Good.”

“Good? You can’t be good.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a rogue.”

“So?”

“So you’re a thief. You burglarize castles. You waylay people and take their stuff. Does that sound like good behavior to you?”

“You just said rogues weren’t muggers.”

“It doesn’t take any skill to be a mugger. All it takes is a weapon. Rogues are like, like, like gymnasts. Acrobats who steal. Cat burglars. They jump around, they run along tightropes, they climb up walls.” She had no idea if this particular game actually presented rogues that way, but she was getting a little impatient. “Trust me, you’ll love being a rogue.”

“Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe I should be a scout. What would a scout do?”

“Help old ladies across the street. Oh, come on. Live dangerously.” Before he could protest further, she had made him a neutral male rogue. The computer then prompted her for the character’s name.

She gave Bernard a sidelong glance.

“Can’t I just call him Bernard?” he said. “Maybe humans in that world just have regular names.”

“Regular names are boring. Ambrosia the Sorceress is not going to pal around with someone named Bernard.”

“Well, I can’t think of a name,” he said, sounding cross.

“Fine, I’ll make one up for you.” She typed Brannoc and accepted the character; the screen went black for a moment, then returned to Ambrosia standing alone and motionless in the forest, as if she’d started down the path and then forgotten where she wanted to go.

“Where’s my character?” Bernard asked.

“He’s probably sitting around somewhere complaining about his name and wondering if he should have become a scout,” Mercy said.

None of my other books has used just dialog as a blurb, but I thought this was a good paragraph for establishing the personalities of and dynamic between my two main characters. Will it make anyone want to read the book? We’ll see …

Happy New Year! And Yes I’m Still Here!

And yes, Shards (AKA “Big Book”) is still on its way. I recently switched from Pages to Scrivener to help manage it. As Peter O’Toole said in “Creator”:

Evolution

Yes, I’m still here! I’ve been reworking my fantasy novel Shards, AKA “The Big Book”, since mid-December. At this point I should have Part One available within a few months, to be followed (in another ten or twelve months, based on how long it has taken me to rework Part One and on the fact that Part Two is longer).

Why is it taking me so long to finish editing Shards Part One, you ask? Well, I finished Shards quite a while ago (“quite a while” being at least a decade) and when I finally went back to edit it … well, when you go back and read something that you wrote that long ago, what immediately strikes you is that it’s terrible. That’s what happens to me, anyway.

But They Love Me In The U.K.

So last week I got a message from Amazon.co.uk that they were going to be depositing a royalty payment into my account. I wasn’t really aware that I had been making any sales in the UK, so I went to take a look at my Kindle e-book reports and was startled to find that I had sold hundreds of copies of Dragon Stones the week before. Then I visited the Dragon Stones product page, and was even more startled to see this:

Scene of the Month: Dragon Stones

The votes are in (although about half the time this month I forgot to include the poll in the weekly post) and the winner by a landslide for the next Scene of the Month is perennial favorite Dragon Stones! Will The Wolf ever come out on top again? Who knows? But the moral is, werewolves shouldn’t mess with dragons, on account of dragons breathe fire. At least my dragons do.

Scene of the Month: Dragon Stones

The votes are in and the winner for the next scene of the month, by a landslide, is “Dragon Stones”. This is sort of a good thing for all you fans of “The Wolf” as it lets the anticipation drag out a little longer, given that “The Wolf” is less than half finished and would run out of scenes long before “Dragon Stones” will. (Hey, I’m trying to think positive thoughts.)

And now, here is a random scene from “Dragon Stones” for your reading enjoyment!

Memorial Day Giveaway

It’s Memorial Day and I’m feeling lazy, so I figured I would just do another giveaway.  You may remember a while back I posted the full PDF of Dragon Stones; so I thought I would follow that up with the full PDF of Long Before Dawn.  Because, you know, nothing says “Memorial Day” like a bunch of vampires trying to overrun and destroy a small town in upstate New York. And so, here it is, Long Before Dawn!

Of course, Long Before Dawn and my other published books are also available in dead tree, Kindle, and generic e-book versions as well, if you prefer to spend money instead.

Don’t forget to vote for the next scene of the month, coming next week!

“Crows” Now On Kindle!

We’ve got company this week so I’m trying not to do so much blogging (and I already blew an hour or two on Dennis’s Sunday Awards and Meme show), but I just wanted to let everyone know that A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder has been approved and released on Kindle. Get yours here — only 99 cents! And of course no post about Crows would be complete without an excerpt to whet your appetite …

“Flock of Crows” Coming Soon For Kindle!

I just finished reformatting A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder for the Kindle, so within a day or two it should be available for that device for the low, low price of $0.99! As usual it will be DRM-free and text-to-speech enabled. If you have a Kindle, or use the Kindle reader for your computer or mobile device, check it out! I will be putting up the link to the Kindle edition once it has been approved by the gatekeepers at Amazon.

To tide everyone over until the Kindle edition is available, here’s a randomly-selected excerpt from the book: