2021 r/Fantasy Holiday Megasale!

It's that time of the year again!

(Although there's never quite been a year like this one, so... yeah.)

Author Bryce O'Connor is once again going to be organizing his annual MEGASALE to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for the holidays!

All participating authors are pledging to put their books up for $0.99 or as a freebie on December 26th and 27th and will be donating $0.01 for every book sold or given away to St. Jude at the conclusion of the M-M-M-MEGASALE.

I'll be participating this year by offering up both WHAT WAS YOUR NAME DOWNRIVER? and A BAD RUNE AT ANGELS DEEP for a discount: Free and $0.99 respectively. In addition to St. Jude, I'll also be matching that donation to United Way of Stanislaus County this year.

Here's the link to the original r/Fantasy post on Reddit, and I'll be making another post when the sale rolls around that'll act as both an announcement and a connection to the other authors participating.

Snag some books and help out some good causes that might ease what's been a rough year for a lot of folks.

Hope to see y'all then!

NEW SHORT STORY: "Ain't That Just the Way?" (and other various updates)

Long time since the last update! Just a quick rundown of what's been going on in my life since my last post in January:

• I had to get my gallbladder removed! Yeah, I didn't see that one coming. Luckily, everything went a-okay and I was on my feet rather quickly. After three rather severe gallbladder attacks over the last year, I'm so, so happy to not have to worry about that happening again.
• I got accepted into grad school! Yep, I'll be continuing my education in English so I can speak it gooder. (Nyeheheh.) Been fun so far. Lots of theory, which isn't really my bag, but it's interesting nonetheless. I'll be looking at my options at the end and figuring out if continuing on for my doctorate is right for me, but for now I'm just preparing to stress out about my thesis project along with the rest of my cohort.

That's mostly it. Also bought a lot of books and am preparing to move to a different part of California soon... these two developments are at odds with each other, I know.

But, anyway: new short story!

I'm always writing in the background and this is a short story that I wrote, that I loved, but just couldn't find a home for. If I get to the end of that open submission gauntlet and still think I have a fun story on my hands, I'll publish it to Amazon. It was a story that I wrote after rewatching one of my favorite movies, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, for the billionth time. I really just wanted to write some characters who just goof off, talk at each other a bunch, and have some modest adventures for a few pages.

I still really like it. I like Dial and Jim, and wouldn't mind writing some more short stories with them eventually.

That's about it! Outside of school stuff, I'm still mapping out Book 3 of The Shattered Frontier. It's not coming along as fast as the second book did, but the conditions are different and this is going to be a bit of a stopping point for the series. So I need some arcs to come to a conclusion. Depending on where things are at once this one is published (i.e. - folks are reading and enjoying it), then I'll get started on Evaline and Trivan's next adventure sooner rather than later.

Hope all is well!

NEW BOOK: A Bad Rune at Angels Deep: Tales of the Shattered Frontier (Also, r/Fantasy Book Club stuff!)

Here it is! The second book in THE SHATTERED FRONTIER series!

I can't promise I'll be able to consistently deliver two books a year like this, but quarantine has been a heck of a thing. Let's jump right into the synopsis:

THE CONTINUING TALES OF SIX-GUNS AND SORCERY!

Runes: a form of deployable magick that caused untold devastation during the war. With the stroke of a pen, entire cities were demolished, entire armies decimated--and now one such rune may have come south to Ariasun County.

Acting on scant clues left behind by the vicious lynching of a smuggler, Evaline Cartwright and Trivan Esterhazy head north to track the rune’s passage through the county. All in the hope of destroying the rune--or its possessor--before it can be used for catastrophic ends.

RELEASE DATE: February 23rd, 2020

This has been an odd writing process for me. Legitimately, I haven't been able to write this much in many, many years. A big part of it, I think, was quarantine and just wanting something to engage with. Another part was most of the footwork already being done. Seems strange that WHAT WAS YOUR NAME DOWNRIVER? took years to finish, while A BAD RUNE AT ANGELS DEEP only took three months... and is almost twice as long.  But a lot of that time spent on Book I was planning the big steps and small steps alike, and with all that locked into place I could just get up and go.

It's also very likely that my mind needed a distraction. Losing my old cat took a lot out of me. It's been just shy of five months since he died, but it still feels raw. Taking some time and writing a novel definitely took the edge off.

So, it's up for preorder now! I'll probably still take some time to make a few last minute corrections before I walk away. I'm also in the process of getting the paperback version ready. The preorder page might not be up until the second week of February, but it'll definitely launch concurrently with the Kindle version.

Other bits of news:

r/Fantasy RAF Book Club

WHAT WAS YOUR NAME DOWNRIVER? was selected to be a part of r/Fantasy's Resident Author Fantasy Book Club on Reddit! This was a great surprise and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say.

The book will be read through March, with a Q&A to be posted just before then, I think. If you want to join in, here's all the information. And I'll probably post all the relevant posts here as they drop.

To everyone who will be participating in the book club, I'll try to make the book free for a week beforehand.

Price Drop: The Shattered Frontier - Book I

Since Book II is right around the corner here, I'm lowering the price of WHAT WAS YOUR NAME DOWNRIVER to $2.99 as a means of lowering the barrier of entry to the series. This will likely be where it'll stay.

Lore of the Reluctant Paperbacks Temporarily Withdrawn

Now, I'm still fairly new to all this. I'm always learning, always fine-tuning. I started publishing the Lore of the Reluctant books several years ago to help myself get over the fear of putting my work out there. There was a sort of lackadaisical approach to publishing them that I'm still trying to correct, as a result. One of these was the formatting of the paperbacks of both THE OUTCASTS OF VAMPIRE FLATS and BLADES OF ELSINGR.

Basically, I'm going to spend a little more time fine-tuning the formatting for the paperbacks. Shouldn't take too long, but I didn't feel good about having them up for sale in the meantime.

The Kindle editions are a-okay, though I'll be going through and updating their "Works by" pages (I'm legit blanking on their formal names) to account for A BAD RUNE.

I think that's it! Be well, everyone!