The Ghost Cauldron: Cover and Release Date

 

Here we are at last. Behold the cover to the third and final book in my long-gestating trilogy, The Battle for Majadan. I'm really happy with how all of my covers came out, thanks to the wonderful Olivia Pro Design. If you're an indie author, be sure to check her out!

The next bit of news is, of course, the release date: February 28, 2022. (Yay, the crowd goes wild.) Yes, if you scroll back through my blog posts, you'll see that's quite a bit later than I'd planned. But to quote Professor Tolkien, "The story grew in the telling." It's finished, but it just needs two more months of spit and polish before it's ready for public consumption. You can, however, pre-order the ebook now while you're in that holiday shopping-spree spirit. 

The Ghost Cauldron, like the first two books in the series, will be Amazon-exclusive and available free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Here's  the blurb for your blurb-reading pleasure:

No peace for the living, no rest for the dead.

As the Wight Lords’ armies march across the world, former fugitive and refugee Aust returns home to where the invasion began. He arrives in the devastated city of Majadan to join an underground resistance, but his allies are fractured and their leaders vie for power while his friend Shadmar Dukane wages a reckless, private war.

Shadmar escaped Majadan as a broken man. Now he has become an engineer of vengeance, a ruthless mage and torturer who’ll stop at nothing to destroy the Wights. His victories have made him a hero of the resistance, but Aust fears that the longer Shadmar spirals into darkness, the more of his humanity he’ll lose along the way.

But Shadmar and Aust don’t stand against the Wights alone. Eris was one of those killed in the invasion, but she and the spirits of the dead on both sides are trapped, unable to escape from the city. Forging an alliance with her slain former enemies, Eris leads a ghost rebellion to free the captive dead, for the Wight Lords’ atrocities go deeper than any of the living suspect.

When all three factions of the conflict converge, Aust learns that every slain foe becomes fuel for the Wight Lords’ final weapon, a cauldron that burns the souls of the dead and converts them into raw magic. As the shape of the Wight Lords’ agenda becomes clear, Aust will have to make an impossible choice, lest the world be consumed in an ultimate battle that neither the living nor dead will escape.

The Death of Eris: A FREE Novella!

 

When Eris died in battle, her problems really began.

The city of Majadan fell in one night to the army of the Wight Lords of the Madlands. The defenders of the city fought back, and they died. The people of the city tried to flee, and they died. Eris was one of the very, very few who almost made it out alive. The last thing she remembered was fighting to make sure that the woman she loved could escape.

Then she died.

In life, Eris was an earth-elf, a soldier, and a slave. All she’d ever known was the struggle to survive. However, her troubles didn’t end with her death, for the Wight Lords hadn’t merely conquered Majadan; they’d built a wall around it to trap the city’s souls. Unable to escape, Eris only had two choices: hide forever, or track the power that imprisoned the city’s ghosts to its source.

Eris’s life had always been cheap, but she’d make sure her death would cost the Wight Lords dearly.

~

The Death of Eris is a free novella set within the chaos of the Battle for Majadan trilogy.

Download Your Copy Today!

“Discontinuity” in Apex Magazine

The hits keep coming! Another new story of mine is out right now in the latest issue of Apex Magazine. It’s called “Discontinuity.” Here’s a taste:

Stars snap into place outside Lura’s cockpit. A red giant twenty degrees off her ship’s nose has visibly shifted position. The nebula above her has grown more diffuse. She exhales, clicks the button to log another successful breach, and lets herself blink while the flight computer calculates the next FTL jump. She never closes her eyes during the breach. Whether or not it helps doesn’t matter. What’s important is to maintain her sense of self.

She reviews her mental inventory. She is Captain Lura Maraj. Her parents are Ama and Sondi. Her brother is Ravi. Her mission …

She shakes off a wave of dizziness. Her mission is her mission. She can’t let herself forget. She eyes the button that would inject her with a dose of Reboot, then pushes it out of her mind. She prefers other ways of keeping a grip on reality. 

Read the story free online!

From their blog:

“With new fiction from Joelle Wellington, Rachel Swirsky, Maggie Slater, D. Thomas Minton, Rose Keating, and Jared Millet, classic fiction from Yohanca Delgado, Tenea D. Johnson, and Jason Sanford, non-fiction from Maria Dong and Ken MacGregor, and this amazing cover from Marcela Bolívar, it's a spectacular issue.”

Apex is a fantastic magazine, and I’m thrilled to be included with so many other great authors. But don’t take my word - read Apex for yourself!

“The Librarian of Babyl” in Translunar Travelers Lounge

Fun fact: Today’s my birthday! My present to you is my newest short story, “The Librarian of Babyl,” published online in the August 2021 issue of Translunar Travelers Lounge. It starts a little something like this:

The clank of a metal-shod staff heralded the arrival of Melnock the wizard to the library of Babyl-no-Ktan.

Ragna, the noontide librarian, looked up from his clay tablet and set aside the daily missive from his superior. He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and promised for the thousandth time that he would neither run screaming from the building nor bludgeon Melnock to death with the nearest stool...

Read the rest right here. Or better yet, Click This to see the whole issue! From their website:

“Translunar Travelers Lounge is a biannual speculative fiction magazine that aims to explore the fun side of fantasy and science fiction. In this issue you’ll find a soup-making seneschal of the dead and a teapot that brings self-enlightenment; gods and heroes finding a second life in the mortal world; a librarian dealing with rowdy patrons and a scribe writing for a demanding audience; two people with very different connections to the ocean; companionship in a wishing well and conflict at the border between water and wood; a trip into the desert and a quest to the bottom of the sea; a troublemaking theme song and a union organizing in hell.”

It’s an all-around great issue. Be sure to check it out!