Oberon’s Dreams is the Kindle Daily Deal!

My first traditionally-published novel came out back in May, and it’s had a little trouble gaining traction. I suspect it has mostly to do with the branding, mainly because the reviewers are saying so.

Seems it’s not the story they thought they were getting (a sea-faring pirate tale), and somehow my Dragonprince fans aren’t getting the word that there’s another story they’ll probably like.

Admittedly…there’s no dragons in it. But there’s action. There’s adventure! There’s a charming rogue thrown back through time and caught up in a war between two ancient gods!

Anyway, it’s been languishing in obscurity for a couple months now, but it’s got a good chance to break out of that because today it’s been selected by Amazon as one of the two Science Fiction/Fantasy titles in the Kindle Daily Deal.

The Kindle Daily Deal is a huge promotion that has a habit of vaulting books onto the bestseller list. Oberon’s Dreams could certainly use that treatment, so wish me luck!

And if you haven’t read it yet, grab a copy during the promotion. You can save a couple bucks and help me climb the charts at the same time.

New Release! Oberon’s Dreams (The Godlanders War, #1)

I have a new book out! I’ve been talking about this one for a while, but Oberon’s Dreams is now available. It’s the first book in a new adventure fantasy universe that I’m really excited about.

Corin Hugh thought his mission had come to a highly profitable end. But King Oberon made sure his quest was just beginning…

After a three-year search, Corin has found the lost city of Jezeeli. The dashing, quick-witted pirate promised his crew that they would be rewarded with a treasure beyond their wildest dreams, but the ancient ruins hold no treasure—only stacks of strange books. Left to die in a fire set by his mutinous crew, Corin is mysteriously rescued and transported back in time to a city ruled by King Oberon.

Only Oberon has the power to send Corin home. But the tyrant Ephitel–a brutal god whose name strikes fear even in Corin’s time–has designs on Oberon’s throne. Can Corin defeat the mighty Ephitel and change the course of history?

With a supporting cast of mystical druids, a gentleman thief, and a banished courtier from the House of Violets, Oberon’s Dreams is an action-packed, richly imagined adventure fantasy.

Oberon’s Dreams is the first book in the Godlanders War. Get your copy in ebook, audiobook, or paperback at Amazon.com.

The Dragonprince’s Legacy

a-darkness-in-the-eastNote: The following is a cleverly concealed new-release notification. If you’d prefer to skip straight to the good stuff, click here.

I just re-released The Dragonswarm (The Dragonprince’s Legacy, #2) with a new Afterword. I thought my regular readers here might find its contents interesting, so here you go:

Welcome to the end of The Dragonswarm. Since you’ve made it this far, I’m going to act as though you enjoyed the story. Now I need to take a moment to tell you how to keep enjoying the story.

I originally wrote the tale of Daven Carrickson becoming the Dragonprince–everything you’ve just read in two volumes–as a single mega-epic novel called Taming Fire. That was fifteen years ago, and the story has changed a lot since then, but it always started with Daven meeting Othin on the little hill outside town, and it always ended with him battling Pazyarev in the skies and then sending the king packing.

Back then, I expected Taming Fire to come with a sequel–a story that’s now available as The Dragonprince’s Heir. It skips ahead fifteen years from here, and finds the dragonswarm mostly subdued, but Daven has been lost (as in “missing in action,” although most everyone does assume he’s dead), and the story is told from the point of view of his first-born son.

I published The Dragonprince’s Heir in June 2012, six months after The Dragonswarm, and it completed the original trilogy. If you’d like to read the story as my original artistic “vision,” that’s your next step. Grab a copy of The Dragonprince’s Heir and discover the ultimate conclusion to the story that started when Othin confronted Daven by the little brook.

However, I also always intended to spin out some additional (maybe supplemental?) stories about the time between this novel and the next one. But when I skipped fifteen years and changed protagonists, I forgot that my readers didn’t know my secret intentions.

Because of that, The Dragonprince’s Heir elicited a minor outcry from fans who wanted to see more of Daven in action, who wanted to see how Daven used the powers and resources gained in The Dragonswarm to overcome the tide of dragons, who wanted to meet the “famed dragonriders” who get mentioned in the final book but are already lost by then.

We live and learn. So now, before you jump ahead, I can give you that warning. I’ve outlined ten novellas exploring those stories (which will eventually be collected in The Dragonprince’s Arrows and The Dragonprince’s Blades), as well as an additional feature-length Daven novel (The Dragonprince’s Odyssey), all of which take place between The Dragonswarm and The Dragonprince’s Heir.

And, even better than a warning, I can give you an opportunity to sample those stories. The first of the ten novellas, A Darkness in the East, is available now! It picks up the thread a few months after the end of The Dragonswarm and starts with Daven riding into battle on the back of the mighty Pazyarev.

He’s also a little concerned because he hasn’t heard anything from Vechernyvetr since that fight. And now there are rumors of really terrible things happening in the shadow of the mountains that Daven and Vechernyvetr briefly shared as a home.

The novella works as a standalone story, but it also introduces some of the plot and much of the story dynamic that will drive the other stories in the collections. And I won’t lie; it’s pretty fun to see the Dragonprince in action. Daven kills a lot of dragons in this piece.

Check it out. And thank you for reading. I really hope you’ve enjoyed the experience.

And, because it’s so much easier to embed a functioning hyperlink in a blog post than it is in an ebook, I’ll go ahead and give you the link (in addition to the name). Click here to grab your own copy of the new Dragonprince novella for just $2.99!

An Excerpt from “A Darkness in the East”

I’ve mentioned my upcoming Dragonprince novella several times now, but I don’t know if I’ve ever called it by name. It’s called A Darkness in the East, and takes place immediately after the events of The Dragonswarm.

Last week I was drafting a work request for my cover artist and he needed a description of Daven’s sword and magic effects. I had just finished a new action scene in the novella, so I carved that out for him.

Just before I sent it off, I was rereading it, and thought, “Man, I’ll bet my readers would like to see this!”

So here you go. It’s a sneak peek at my upcoming release, A Darkness in the East:

No matter their intentions, friend or foe, these men had made themselves an obstacle to Daven’s goal. Daven meant to save the people of this village, and six men with sharp-edged swords were not enough to stop him. He nodded to the door and ancient oak writhed beneath his will. It uncurled, shrinking back from the crafted iron bolt, then of its own accord the door swung wide.

A monster of a man blocked the open doorway. He wore a soldier’s chain and tabard and carried a huge two-handed sword. He fixed his eyes on Daven now without a trace of fear or hesitation. The sentry slung his sword in a vicious arc aimed straight at Daven’s collarbone.

But Daven didn’t flinch. He caught a gust of wind out of the sky. He bundled up a thousand little threads of air within his will and stabbed them past his left shoulder and down into the house. Focused, living wind caught the sentry like a battering ram. It hurled him back and crumpled him upon the floor.

Then, for the first time, Daven had a chance to see within the room. He could not tell at a glance the whole situation, but he saw within the house what he’d expected: one wide open room, a knot of women and children on the far wall, and six strong men arrayed against him.

Well, five now.

Still standing on the threshold, Daven flexed his right hand–borrowing power from the monster high above–and summoned up a sword of living stone. Grains of elemental earth almost too small to see swirled up in an inverted whirlwind, gathering first in his palm, taking the shape of a sword’s hilt, and then rapidly coalescing into the shape of a blade. The sword looked something like a rapier, but it shone the perfect black of obsidian and gleamed along an edge as sharp as starlight.

In the same breath, Daven summoned wild fire into a ball around his left hand, the power of a blacksmith’s forge contained, constrained, but anxious to explode. It glowed the angry red and dull black of a smoldering coal and cast long, flickering shadows into the crowded room.

From his place on the floor, the fallen giant groaned out, “Don’t just stand there. Kill him!” To Daven’s great surprise, the men complied. They surged forward as one. Daven shook his head and went to meet them.

The Next Big Thing

My friend and fellow fantasy author (and now collaborator) Joshua Unruh asked me to write about my next project as part of a chain blog. He spent a lot of his own post talking about writing in my world, so it would be rude for me to ignore his request. But, then, I’ve struggled so much with my “next project” that this has felt like a really difficult post to write.

The thing is…long before Josh tagged me, I already knew that this was the post I needed to write. And it’s been difficult that whole time. That’s why I haven’t said a word here for two months now (and why that last word was some nonsense about cookies).

Here’s the thing: One year ago, I quit my day job to be a full-time writer. I spent five months completing my masters degree and capping off an epic fantasy series that I’ve been working on since I was a teenager. Every bit of that was a dream come true.

Then I published The Dragonprince’s Heir, and in the time since then I have wanted to do anything but write.

Those words are painful to say. It’s especially painful to share with you, my strongest supporters.

There are a lot of reasons. There was a vocal negative reaction to The Dragonprince’s Heir, but that’s probably the smallest reason of them all. I’m used to criticism, and I’m not under the impression that anything I write right now is pure gold. I’m still learning, still developing as an artist, so the books I’m writing now are just stepping stones to the really good stuff I’m going to work on next year.

I believe that now, and I hope to keep believing it with every passing year until I run out of them entirely.

No, most of what’s getting in my way is stress and obligation. See, I didn’t just quit my job last year. I also started an indie publishing company and hired a couple editors and a marketing guy. You probably know them all by name. They’re all fellow authors and good friends of mine, and it was our plan to put together a flood of awesome fantasy for you guys that would leave you begging for even more (and, in the process, fund Consortium Books to hire and train even more authors).

It…didn’t quite work out that way. We got a good start with the release of Courtney’s epic fantasy Rethana’s Surrender and Joshua’s noir viking saga Downfall, but the weak point in our plan was me.

I had boring day-job work to do. Not for my old government bosses, this time, but for my own organization. There was so much work to do, and now several families’ livelihoods depending (at least partially) on my business acumen. That’s a lot of pressure (and not a small amount of tedious paperwork).

On top of that, for lots of very good reasons, I signed a three-book publishing deal with Amazon’s 47North. I owed them the first novel in a new trilogy on November 1, but when I started hiring people in June and planning our schedule, November looked a long way off. As it turned out, I just had time to deal with the first, most urgent mountain of corporate paperwork before I had to dive into the 47North project with a desperate urgency just to hit my deadline.

And, of course, after I turned that in I found myself facing a new mountain of chores that had piled up while I was frantically writing. And then, when I realized they still needed me for consulting on promotional materials and reviewing edits and revising the manuscript, I discovered there was still a surprising amount of work to do on the novel I’d just delivered.

Somewhere in there I had a root canal, watched dad campaign for and then unfairly lose a bid for State Representative, caught pneumonia for six weeks or so, and survived two major holidays with all the family commitments those entail.

That’s how I’ve spent my dream-come-true so far: exhausted, overwhelmed, and behind schedule.

So! The challenge for this blog post was to tell you about my current writing project. The sad fact is, it’s the same one I blogged about last July (and promised by the end of summer). I’m working on a novella set in the world of the Dragonprince, featuring Daven and taking place immediately after the events of The Dragonswarm. Six months now, and I’ve got a little over 6,000 words written.

I’m actually really excited about the story. It’s Daven in all his power fighting a vicious (and frighteningly clever) dragon brood out in the eastern plains. It’s full of exciting action and tense drama and some surprising revelations with regard to the dragon bond.

It also sets the stage for the collaborative novellas Joshua was talking about in his post. A Darkness in the East is the first chapter in a five-piece collection called The Dragonprince’s Arrows. Among them, those stories will reveal how Daven came to have an army of dragonriders behind him and introduce some of the more interesting riders.

Unlike the one I’m still working on, those stories are already written. Or…drafted, anyway. Joshua and Jessie agreed to collaborate with me on them, so I’ll get to introduce you to Joshua’s break-neck plot and Jessie’s endearing characters, all wrapped up in the huge and fascinating setting that is Daven’s dragonswarm.

In other words, the next big thing is huge. It’s awesome, and I can’t wait to share it with you. I just have to get over myself first, get out of my own way, and learn how to write for fun again.

Wish me luck. I’ll let you know the moment the story’s done.

Working for the Man

I’ve mentioned more than once that I’ve been working on a book for 47North, a science fiction and fantasy publisher owned by Amazon. I even wrote an article for Unstressed Syllables explaining how to submit a book to an Amazon imprint. That has been one of my most popular posts there.

But I don’t think I’ve ever shared the story of how I ended up with a traditional publishing contract. There are some restrictions in the contract as to what details I can share, but the story’s mine to tell. So here we go.

Submission guidelines

I told the story in the aforementioned article, but last January I decided that I wanted to get something published by 47North. I’ve really loved the control (and profit) available through self-publishing, but the one big thing I lack is advertising. I’m making enough revenue now that I could afford to pay for some promotion, but I wouldn’t really know what is worthwhile. And I don’t want to spend the time on trial and error.

Meanwhile, several of the standouts in the self-pub community were crowing about their deals with Amazon imprints. Amazon is far more responsive to author needs than New York publishers. They offer much fairer contracts (in a lot of ways) and pay approximately twice the royalties you’d get from anyone out of Manhattan.That’s not sharing secrets from my contract, that was the buzz about Amazon publishing before I ever heard from them.

So I decided to do a deal. As I said, I’ve been most satisfied with self-publishing, and I had no intention of quitting. Instead, I hoped to sell a book or two to Amazon, experience the traditional publishing process for the sake of my bucket list, and then watch while their promotion spilled over into new loyal readers (and more profit) for all my other books.

As it happens, nothing came of my carefully-crafted submission. It got lost in the slush pile. Instead, someone from Amazon contacted me spontaneously in May because they’d noticed how well Taming Fire was selling. He was clearly surprised to hear that I had contacted them way back in January.

Still, everything worked out. We had a phone call to discuss what they could offer and what I was looking for. I took care to stress my commitment to Consortium Books, and they had no problem with that. None at all. Obviously they’d hoped I would want to republish my proven series through them, but when I said that was impossible, they were still just as interested in hearing what else I had to offer.

And that was…nothing. Between Consortium Books and Draft2Digital, we’ve gotten really good at publishing, so everything that I had ready to publish was already published. I did mention a new property in a new universe that I had started for a class last spring.

It was 15,000 words (which would qualify as a short story) and an outline, but that was enough to interest them. They didn’t even ask to see the pages. They signed me to a three-book deal on an outline.

That’s a big deal. It happens all the time for big-name authors–guys like Stephen King and James Patterson–and sometimes for midlist writers who’ve been working with the same publisher for a long time. But mostly publishers won’t even start to talk about a contract until they’ve seen a complete manuscript.

And here I got a three-book contract on an outline. I’m still a little bit in shock at that. I’m big time.

Deadlines

Of course, that meant I still had to write the book. And I had to write it good enough to justify the advance they paid me back in June. I had no doubt that I could do it, but that was still a stressful pressure hanging over my summer.

My busy summer. See, in June I hired my first (paid) employees at Consortium Books. We have an Acquisitions Editor and a Senior Editor, plus a Marketing Director hired in September. So I spent my summer on such inescapable chores as payroll taxes, group health insurance, and pursuing our nonprofit status.

I planned to get that stuff hammered out quickly, then set my employees to work while I turned my attention to the book. I figured if I took two months on chores, I’d still have two months to write the draft (August and September), and all of October for revisions before I mailed the book off for my November 1st deadline.

That…didn’t quite work out. I started June with 15,000 words of story written, and when October rolled around, I still had 15,000 words.

Even then, I was slow to start. Day after day slipped by when I had no more than a couple hundred words to show for all my effort, and I needed to be doing about 2,000 a day for all of October.

As I fell further and further behind, I kept trying to jump start my process. I would dedicate more and more hours to writing (or, as it so often turned out, not writing). I rebuilt my outline repeatedly. I spent a lot of time psycho-analyzing myself and tried a dozen different solutions.

My wife just kept reminding me, with more faith in me than I’ve ever had in myself, “You’ll get it done at the last minute. You always get it done at the last minute, and it’s always wonderful.”

And, of course, she was right. Look for Oberon’s Dreams on bookstore shelves in May. And watch for updates here in the meantime; I’d love to do a cover reveal once we have final art, if they’ll let me.

As for me, I’m going to keep putting in the long hours, now that I’ve found a schedule that works for me. I’m really hoping I can write and publish at least two new books in the time it takes Amazon to publish the one I just delivered.

Any votes on which two new books I should write?

Afterword

Dear Readers,
This is not the end. It’s an end, but there’s still plenty more to tell.

The final book in the Dragonprince Trilogy has been available in e-book form for most of a week now. Within a few hours of its release, it was on the Science Fiction and Fantasy bestseller list at Amazon. It’s already sold nearly a thousand copies, and thanks to my fans who requested Advance Reading Copies, it boasted a bunch of customer reviews from day one.

Unfortunately…they’re not all friendly reviews. Some of them are genuine critiques of the story’s style–“The ending felt rushed” or “This minor character seemed totally pointless” or “I hated the protagonist”–but overall, the resounding complaint boils down to this:

“You didn’t tell the story I wanted you to tell.”

That is agonizing feedback for a storyteller. It’s almost impossible to fix. My readers like my stories because of my style, and part of that style is choosing the boundaries and progression of narratives. When I choose how to tell a story, I always think long and hard about everything that goes into it, and I choose the method that will make the most interesting story I can possibly tell.

In this case, I chose to tell the end of the Dragonprince story from the perspective of Daven’s son Taryn, fifteen years after the events of The Dragonswarm. I knew that would be a surprise to my readers. I hoped it would be a good surprise (and as of this writing, most of my reviewers say it was). I’m certain it was a necessary one.

Because I wanted to tell the story of the Dragonprince. I wanted to tell the story of the boy who rose to power, chose to use that power fighting monsters instead of men, and then followed through on that commitment, whatever the cost. I could have told that story from Daven’s perspective, but as you’ll know if you’ve read the book, it would have been a tortuous and miserable experience.

But I don’t think very many of my readers are frustrated with how I chose to end the story. Mostly, they seem to be frustrated that I ended the story. Maybe it really did take fifteen years before we saw the true conclusion to the story that started when Othin challenged the shepherd swordsman in front of his friends. Maybe the story of the end needed to be told from Taryn’s perspective. But that doesn’t mean I should have skipped straight there. Right? What about all the interesting things that happened to Daven in between?

Some readers have suggested that The Dragonprince’s Heir is really Book Four (or Book One in a new trilogy about Taryn), and they’re going to hold out hope for a real Book Three.

I understand the frustration my readers might have felt thinking that this was the last story I would ever have to tell about Daven. I’m sad to think how few of those disappointed readers will ever make it here to read this. I wish I could have done a better job communicating my long-term intentions, but I will make what amends I can.

I promise you this:

I’m not finished with these characters.

It has always been my intention to develop a separate “Dragonriders of the Tower” series within the fifteen-year gap between The Dragonswarm and The Dragonprince’s Heir. You will get to see Daven wielding some of that incredible power he’d harnessed by the end of Book Two.

You will get to see Lareth convince Garrett Dain to risk his life in an attempt to reproduce Daven’s bonding experience. You will get to see the high-flying, action-packed adventures of the men and women who spend five years battling the dragonswarm until there is not a waking wyrm anywhere in the whole Ardain.

But I can promise this, too:

Daven’s war with the dragonswarm is not the most interesting story I have to tell.

It’s a good one, but it’s just a drop in the bucket. I also have stories to tell of the FirstKing (who built the nation Daven fought so hard to protect), and of the primitive people who first invited evil (and, with it, great magic) into the world.

And Daven’s sons are going to change the world. Among themselves, Taryn, Damion, and Isaiah shape much of the next thousand years (with the help of Caleb’s Order Knights, of course).

I’ve been dreaming up the stories of this world my whole life, and I’d be happy to spend the rest of it writing them down. Before the summer is over, I’ll have another Daven story for you (if only a novella).

This is not the end. It’s just a handful of beginnings. Thank you for joining me on the voyage.

Sincerely,
Aaron Pogue

It’s Out!

I know a lot of you have been anxiously awaiting the news, so I’ll go ahead and share that right up front:

The Dragonprince’s Heir (The Dragonprince Trilogy, #3) is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can read the official release announcement here. (And if you’re interested, you can sign up for new release notifications so you’ll get those announcements by email.)

Rethana’s Surrender

You might have noticed that this release is a little crowded. I’m busy talking up the much-anticipated release of the conclusion to my fantasy trilogy, and I also keep mentioning my friend Courtney’s book at the same time.

That’s by design. I was sitting in a publishing meeting with the other staff at Consortium Books last January talking about the June release of this book, and I said, “Let’s publish Courtney’s at the same time.”

Everyone looked at me and said, “You’re crazy. That’s too much work.”

But here’s why I suggested it:

  • The book is good. Really good. Better than anything I’ve written yet.
  • Only a few hundred people have ever heard of Courtney Cantrell, and getting noticed as a writer is hard.

Courtney needs to be noticed, and you guys need to read her book. This isn’t a marketing thing; it’s an Art thing. The world needs more high fantasy the way Courtney does it.

So pick up a copy of Rethana’s Surrender while you’re grabbing The Dragonprince’s Heir. We’re selling Rethana’s Surrender super cheap, so it won’t set you back much, and in exchange you’ll get to meet some rich, engaging characters and take your first steps into a fantasy world that promises to be fascinating for years to come.

Finding Art

Last week was a frantic one for me. Well…that’s barely an interesting statement, because all my weeks are frantic. So let’s focus on the particular theme that dominated last week’s frenzy:

Art.

Specifically cover art. I’m publishing two books on Tuesday–one of my own, and one of my friend’s that was hugely influential to me. There’s a lot riding on the success of these two books, and when last week started, I had no cover art for them at all.

That’s terrifying. Publishing a book is a different beast from writing a book, and within that process, the cover art is probably the most challenging element. It takes time. It takes skills that I don’t have. And to do it right, it really takes enough different skillsets that it usually requires coordination among several talented people.

In our organization, we usually have an “illustrator”–often a painter or a photographer–to make the beautiful background, and a “designer” to choose the crop, the title elements, the “trade dress” that turns a work of art into a book cover.

Rethana’s Surrender

We’d planned to hire a somewhat famous professional cover artist for Courtney’s book, but over the course of May, that plan unraveled. Between problems with his availability and our business model, we had to abandon the partnership at the last moment. That left us scrambling to find a replacement who would not only do professional-quality work, but who could do it in three weeks.

In the end, the art we received was gorgeous, but our artist had to cancel or postpone a lot of existing work to meet our needs. (And we had to pay way more than we wanted to because of the rush.)

The Dragonprince’s heir

We hit similar problems with my own book. We’d made arrangement last December with the artist who’d done my previous covers–Courtney, as it happens–but between the demands of getting her book ready and other complications in her life, she wasn’t able to complete it.

She did a breathtaking landscape for me as a background, but she never made it to the foreground–adding Caleb and Taryn, who were supposed to be the main focus of the scene.

It was Tuesday when I received the digital copy of that painting. Tuesday…one week before the book was supposed to come out!

And the artist who made that beautiful painting for Courtney was all used up. Lucky for us, she was able to recommend some friends, and among them I found someone willing and able to do the work on such ridiculously short notice.

Oh, and he did ridiculously good work, too.

Fan Art

But the whole time I spent searching through these fantasy art galleries, looking at fan art from a hundred universes I’ve never heard of, I kept thinking how silly it was that I was working so hard to find someone who could do my stories justice.

I have thousands of fans devouring the series. Surely there’s someone among them with those same talents–someone who already knows these characters and the stories’ themes nearly as well as I do (and probably visualizes them even more vividly than I can).

Maybe it’s only because I got my start working in an artists’ cooperative, but I love the idea of using fan art for covers. That might be tricky for unreleased works, but one of the big advantages of digital publishing is that it’s cheap and easy to release new editions. If I had the art to use, I could put out new editions of Taming Fire with a featured-cover-of-the-month.

So consider that a standing offer. No, a plea! If you’re a fan, I’d love to see your art (whether or not you want to let me use it).

If you know an artist who might be interested, get them hooked on my books. We can make my job easier and make the World of the FirstKing a prettier place. What’s not to love?

In the meantime, treat yourself to a browse through Adele’s and Lane’s gorgeous galleries, and let them know what good work they did on our covers.

And come back Tuesday. That’s when the magic happens.

Advance Reading Copy of The Dragonprince’s Heir!

For several weeks now (primarily at my Facebook page) I’ve been promising to provide some some Advance Reading Copies of The Dragonprince’s Heir (The Dragonprince Trilogy, #3) to my fans. As you may know, that effort has been delayed a little bit, but I think I’m finally ready to follow through.

I’d like to allow everyone a little time to make their requests (which will also give me time to finish this round of edits and build the files I’ll need to send out). So if you’re interested, leave a comment (with a valid email address) on this post before the end of the day Tuesday, June 12th. If you don’t know what to say, “Me too, please!” will probably do the job. It’s not an essay contest.

I only have digital copies available, but they should be readable on whatever you’re using to read this blog post. On Wednesday, I’ll send review copies to the first hundred people who commented below. All I’d ask in return is that you write me a review at the digital vendor(s) of your choice. Blog posts are welcome too, of course.

Please note that this is a separate offer from the one we made at KickStarter, but everyone who made a pledge there before the end of the day on May 31st should also be getting their ARCs this Wednesday.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, definitely check out our KickStarter campaign! It’s a good cause, and it’s an easy way to pre-order a signed first edition of the paperback.

Update from the Comments

Congratulations to everyone on the list so far! You’ll be hearing back from me on Wednesday. And, of course, there’s still room for more!

I just wanted to pop in and respond to those of you who’ve mentioned how desperate you are for an ARC because you’re all out of reading material. At the risk of sounding like some soulless salesperson, I should mention that I do have some other stories available.

Maybe you’ve already read them all. If so, I can still introduce you to some great new writers. You can’t go wrong with anyone from Consortium Books.

Update from the 100th Responder

We just got our 100th request! Sorry to anyone who missed out, but you’ll only be waiting a couple weeks. The book will be available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble by Tuesday, June 26th.

Can’t wait to hear what you all think! Thanks for the enthusiastic response!