Buy links:
Ebook: Amazon | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords
Print: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Indiebound | Mysterious Galaxy | Powell’s
Audiobook download: Apple Books | Audible | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Kobo
Audiobook cd: Bookshop.org | Indiebound | Mysterious Galaxy
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Some time ago I started wondering how much actual interest there was in a continuation of the Twenty Palaces series. I’d tried the novella route with The Twisted Path, but sales were unremarkable. When I first started publishing with Del Rey, I’d thought I was a mid list writer. Later, it seemed I’d become a writer with a small following, then maybe not even that.
What was the point of trying to plan a career when my choices kept sending me in the wrong direction?
When Kickstarter got around to their brief “Break Kickstarter” idea, I had a really dumb idea: What if I started taking pledges for new Twenty Palaces fiction, but instead of offering a specific goal, I let the backers choose it. Break Kickstarter was meant to encourage people to use the service in a new way, so I set a rate of five cents a word and promised to revisit the series at whatever level of enthusiasm readers chose. No stretch goals. No pledge tiers. For every dollar a backer pledged, they could pick twenty words to call their own.
So, if I made a fifty dollars in pledges, I’d write a thousand-word short story. If pledges were higher, I’d write more, with a cap at two complete novels because I really had no idea how much or how little interest there was.
Well, pledges did hit that cap, and I owed my backers two full novels of at least a hundred thousand words each. The first, called The Iron Gate, is out now.
The Iron Gate
Here’s a description of the story:
Stormy Bay is a dying town nestled against an eerily placid ocean, and Ray Lilly is trapped in it. He can barely remember his name let alone his mission for the Twenty Palace society. Worse, he realizes that for some time now he’s been living as a puppet, his body and mind under the complete domination of an unknown power.
And that power can still seize control of Ray’s body at any time, forcing him and the people around him to playact in nonsense stories that center around a mysterious boy and his monster dog.
The town and its people shift and change, but only Ray seems to notice. He has no idea what sort of magic has imprisoned all these ordinary folks in Stormy Bay, but he does know he needs to get them, and himself, out.
But that might mean crossing a line he has never crossed before. While Ray has certainly taken lives in his work for the society, it was always in self-defense or in the desperate moments before impending calamity. Can he bring himself to commit cold-blooded murder, even to save dozens of lives?
Next up, after The Iron Gate, will be The Flood Circle, hopefully released sometime next month.
After that, I’ll be writing something else to let the creative energies renew. At some point later, finally, I’ll be ready to write Twenty-One Palaces, the final Twenty Palaces novel, The one that wraps up the series.
In the meantime, here are buy links to online vendors below. I’ve hit a few glitches here and there, and will connect to the books as they appear on the various sites. Apple Books is being Apple.
If you want a print edition, options are limited for the moment. I’m waiting for other vendors to connect their catalogs to Lightning Source before I can add them.
As for audio, Tantor will be creating an audiobook that combines The Iron Gate with The Twisted Path, since the latter is a novella and is too small to be on its own. I don’t know when that will be available but I will let you guys know.
And I can’t wait for the book to be fully out, so I can edit these last four paragraphs out of this post.
In the meantime, if you read the book, please write a review.
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Buy links:
Ebook: Amazon | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords
Print: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Indiebound | Mysterious Galaxy | Powell’s
Audiobook download: Apple Books | Audible | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Kobo
Audiobook cd: Bookshop.org | Indiebound | Mysterious Galaxy