TITLE REVEAL: Spellmonger Book 16

 

Happy belated Ishi’s Day! Yeah, I crapped out on Ishi’s Day, too.  But I have a good excuse.  About a month ago, my invalid mother moved in with me and my family. It’s a scene that is all too common around the world: the family with kids who are reluctant to launch into adult life and still live at home is sometimes suddenly put into a situation where—temporarily or permanently—the care of an elderly relative is placed upon them.  My mother requires a wheel-in shower at home, now, until she gets knee surgery.  To give my brother (whom she lives with) time to complete most of the construction, we brought her to our house.  So for the last four weeks she has lived with us, and as a result, my productivity slipped dramatically, and I basically fell off the grid. It takes a lot to properly care for an elder.  My entire family pitched in, and for four weeks we had near-daily home health and nursing visits.  My mother made good progress. She also helpfully let me know all the things I was doing wrong in terms of running my household, raising my kids, and even strongly suggested landscaping tips.  Thanks, Mom!   But the day before Mother’s Day, she finally returned home.  My house is starting to return to normal, and I can get back to writing regularly again.  That isn’t to say I stopped.  But I only put up three chapters in the last three weeks. That might be a hot streak for Martin, but usually I can do three chapters in under three days, so for me it was awful. But I’m back to work now, and as soon as I can manage, I’ll be returning to regular communication and emails that sound less like a laconic ransom note and more like my regular self.  Apologies to everyone who tried to engage me for the last month.  I’ll catch up soon. In the meantime, here are a few tidbits to assure you that things haven’t entirely fallen off a cliff:

Plans have firmed on me attending and having a booth at HeroesCon in Charlotte the weekend of June 16th through the 18th.  If you’re in the area, stop on by.  More details about the schedule next newsletter. Me and my crew will be there as usual (it’s an easy con for me to get to) and will be talking with fans, persuading future fans, selling merch (because you gotta sell merch), and signing books.  Including . . .

In case y’all haven’t noticed, Book 8 of the series, Court Wizard, is finally available in print!  This took a lot of work and a lot of time because it was such a big book that it stretched the limits of Amazon’s POD system.  I had to adjust fonts and margins and then re-hash a bunch of stuff inside to get it to fit.  But fit it does, and it is now available for purchase here.

If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to check out an anthology I’m part of, When Swords Fall Silent, available here.  The Kickstarter for this project was an amazing success, and I have every expectation that it will continue to do well.  The story I contributed to this assassin-themed project is called “Mission of Mercy,” and it’s a little twisted.  It’s not a Spellmonger story, but I am very proud of it, and it was fun to stretch my creative wings a little.  Check it out!

Remember that the new Spellmonger anthology The Road to Vanador will be released on both Kindle and audiobook (courtesy of the amazing staff at Podium Publishing) on July 25th to complete your summer reading/listening list.  A good chunk of the book is made up of the previously-released novella The Road To Vanador: A Travelogue, so if you’ve already purchased that on Kindle, then on July 25th, all you’ll have to do is update the book for the new version, which includes four previously unpublished stories!  The audiobook will be narrated by the incomparable John Lee once again, of course.  This is a kind of experiment with the subgenre known as Cozy Fantasy in that there aren’t a lot of battles, deep plots, or the like; these are mostly character studies or episodes of interest that develop the background of the series.  If you’re looking for a high body count, you might be disappointed.  But that doesn’t mean that it’s boring or that nothing important happens.  Indeed, sometimes the best stories involve less dramatic elements.  But yeah, at least one troll gets whacked, so there’s that.

🧙‍♂️ TITLE REVEAL  🧙‍♂️  The next book in the series (Book 16) is to be entitled Preceptor!  What is a preceptor, you might ask?  It’s someone who sets the rules and precepts for a particular thing.  I’ll let your imagination consider just what that may portend.  In the meantime, I’ll be designing the cover and going dutifully back to work on it now that Mom is back home.  That’s about all for now.  Just a brief update.  Now back to the word mines for me . . . . Best, Terry

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