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The King Khan post

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King Khan cover

This is the post for my latest book: Spirit of the Century presents: King Khan. Frankly, this has been a little late in going onto my blog because the book published in the middle of my Kickstarter, and it became available at different times in different vendors and formats. Anyway, I think at this point it’s available everywhere.

What’s it about?

Spirit of the Century is an upbeat pulp fiction adventure setting about heroes (and villains) born on the change of the century who embody certain aspects of the century. The game materials feature wacky adventures against villains like an army of cloned intelligent gorillas, Ebenezer Scrooge, and “Der Blitzmann, Electrical Madman.” There’s magic, superscience gadgets, and whatever goofy thing you want to throw together.

KING KHAN was initiated as one of the stretch goals for this Kickstarter, and it features the good guy version of those intelligent gorillas as the hero. Here’s the pitch:

Professor Khan, learned ape, has traveled through time, fought psychic dinosaurs and shark-men, visited Atlantis, and battled across the sands of Mars. He has seen it all-—until an arrow shooting out of the sky sends him to the strangest place yet…

Hollywood!

The story features shrinking beams, Hollywood phonies, Aztec mummy princesses, corrupt LAPD cops, and super-science archery (all the kids love archery these days, don’t they?)

It’s not nearly as grim or downbeat as the Twenty Palaces novels, and for me it was a challenge to write a book very quickly, keeping the pace as fast as possible and filling the book with fun ideas.

Sample chapters are available on the publisher’s website, and if you buy the paperback from them directly, you get the ebook, too.

Check it out.

The Twenty Palaces post

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As promised, finally, I have the Twenty Palaces prequel ready for sale.

Here’s the cover:

Twenty Palaces cover, small image

Here’s the book: When Ray Lilly was 13 years old, a handgun accident landed his best friend, Jon Burrows, in a wheelchair and turned Ray into a runaway and petty criminal. Fifteen years later, Ray returns home after a stint in prison; he’s determined to go straight, but he knows he can’t do that without making peace with his old friend.

What Ray doesn’t expect is to discover that Jon has just received a mysterious cure–not only is he out of his wheelchair, he seems stronger and faster than… well, pretty much anyone. Worse, his cure has drawn all sorts of unwanted attention: the media are camped out on his block, the police are investigating him for insurance fraud, and weird shadowy figures have begun to draw closer, figures who clearly do not mean to do Jon any good.

Can Ray atone for the biggest mistake of his life by protecting his oldest and best friend? What’s more, should he?

Yeah, this is the book where Ray meets Annalise, creates his ghost knife, and sees a predator for the first time. It’s also going to be the last Twenty Palaces novel for a while.

Buy here:

Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo | Smashwords

Thanks for reading, folks.

The Child of Fire post

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My first published novel Child of Fire, (cover art at the bottom of this post) is out right now. Yaaaaayyyyyyyy!!!

You can buy a copy from any of the online booksellers listed in the sidebar to the right, or in pretty much any brick-and-mortar store. (Call ahead to make sure they have it.)

If you’d like to read a sample chapter first, that’s available now, too. There’s also the starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Finally, the book has made Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2009 list!

The sequel, Game of Cages, has been revised, copy edited and the galleys have been checked. Yay! The tentative release date for that one is August, 2010.

The best summary of Child of Fire I have is the one I used in the query letter that caught my agent’s attention. Here it is (edited slightly because I can’t resist):

Ray Lilly is just supposed to be the driver. Sure, he has a little magic, but it’s Annalise, his boss, who has the real power. Ray may not like driving her across the country so she can hunt and kill people who play with dangerous spells–especially summoning spells–but if he tries to quit he’ll move right to the top of her hit list.

Unfortunately, Annalise’s next kill goes wrong and she is critically injured. Ray must complete her assignment alone–he has to stop a man who’s sacrificing children to make his community thrive, and also find the inhuman supernatural power fueling his magic.

Child of Fire is a contemporary fantasy in the tone and style of a crime thriller.

Here are some of the blurbs the book has collected so far:

“Every page better than the last. Cinematic and vivid, with a provocative glimpse into a larger world. Where’s the next one?” — Terry Rossio, screenwriter (Aladdin, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean)

“[Child of Fire] is excellent reading and has a lot of things I love in a book: a truly dark and sinister world, delicious tension and suspense, violence so gritty you’ll get something in your eye just reading it, and a gorgeously flawed protagonist. Take this one to the checkout counter. Seriously.” — Jim Butcher

“With an engaging protagonist, an unusual setting, fascinating magics, dark mysteries, and edge-of-your-seat action, [Child of Fire] is everything you could want in a supernatural thriller. An exciting and original start to a great new series that will leave readers hungry for more.” — Victoria Strauss (see also: Writer Beware)

“[Child of Fire] is a fine novel with some genuinely creepy moments. I enjoyed it immensely, and hope we’ll see more of Ray Lilly.” — Lawrence Watt-Evans

“Connolly’s story jets from 0 to 60 in five pages, and never lets you brake for safety. He’s a fantastic new voice.” — Sherwood Smith

“Redemption comes wrapped in a package of mystery and horror that hammers home the old saying ‘Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time’ … and even then you’d better check the yellow pages for one bad-ass exterminator first.” — Rob Thurman

“Classic dark noir, fresh ideas, and good old-fashioned storytelling.” — John Levitt

There may have been other blurbs, but I don’t have a copy of them.

And here’s the cover art:

Cover for Child of Fire

It’s by Chris McGrath(!)

The tags for each book are the working titles:  Child of Fire is tagged as Harvest of Fire, in case you want to read back through all the posts about it (although I can’t imagine why).

Be sure to give the sample chapter a try! Or you can order right now from any of these sellers:

| Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository (free int’l shipping!) | Books a Million | Indiebound | Kobo | Mysterious Galaxy | Powell’s Books |

Thanks!