New Book!

It’s been a while since I posted here. Mostly, I’ve been working on an academic book which has an actual, official deadline, so I’ve not been thinking all that much about fiction. Nevertheless, at long last, a new book!

The Lady of Darkness is available now at Amazon, in Kindle format, and (after a short delay) also now in paperback. It follows Cagtlan and Flannyrd back into the Everdark, on a mysterious and dramatic adventure into a lost city ruled by an ancient queen….

The Lady of Darkness is part 1 of volume 4 in the Swords In Darkness series. It’s a short, full-length novel. So why 4 part 1? A couple of reasons.

First of all, there will be three parts in total, following different characters. This one follows Cagtlan and Flannyrd. Part 2, The Chapterhouse of Elith, follows Avren. And Part 3, which has the working title The Dancer, follows Riobard. The events are essentially simultaneous, but they don’t overlap almost at all. So I thought I’d do it as a single volume in three parts.

But, second, I discovered that each tale really demanded its own style and structure, which means that the final complete volume (working title: The Big Book of Working Titles) won’t read like a normal novel. At the same time, each tale is relatively short, just barely over the line into official publishing-house “novel” territory. And because each is very much its own thing, they don’t flow into each other neatly from a writer’s perspective.

So what to do?

The Lady of Darkness is, as I say, available now. I hope Chapterhouse will be available in a month or two, and Dancer a month or two after that. When all three are complete, I will re-release a single volume (presumably with a proper title!), which will have all the hefty-doorstop goodness we expect in a modern fantasy novel.

A note on pricing and binding: the three volumes as independent paperbacks are coming out in a slightly different format (5x7.8 in. instead of 6x9), and I’m pricing them about as low as I can under Amazon rules. The complete Volume 4 will be published in 6x9 format, matching the other volumes in the series, and will be priced based on a single unit. Obviously every collector will just have to have both versions!

Anyway, run run run over to Amazon and grab your copy of The Lady of Darkness!