Cody C. Engdahl's Blog, page 5

Poll: Which cover art do you like?

These are two mockups for my next novel.

I want to convey a frantic paranoia as the main character desperately tries to outrun the Prussian onslaught through France during the Franco-Prussian War.

Which of these do you think conveys this best and why do you think so? I’d love to hear your opinion.

This book takes place after The Prussian Prince, which is out now. Although all my books are connected, you don’t have to read them all, or in order, to enjoy any of them. So jump in where you like! There are American Civil War novels, a Mexican-American War novel, and an Austro-Prussian War book, too.

Currently, I’ve written a little over 57,000 words for The French Fiasco. I’m shooting for about 80,000, but I may go over. It’s a great story full of twists, turns, and surprises plus a lot of real history and historical characters from the Franco-Prussian War.

I just finished writing a great fight scene as the Emperor is trying to escape from the city of Metz. I’m just about done with chapter 19.

I plan to have the book out early next year but I’m not holding myself to any hard deadlines. What’s most important to me is that I give you a great book full of adventure, romance, and well-researched history. I think you’re going to like it. I’m having a blast writing it and learning so much in the research.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I appreciate your input.

Check out my latest novel here:

Book Review of The Broken Kingdom, by Angus Donald

With swords, shields, sorcerers, and a dragon, The Broken Kingdom is a fresh take on the Arthurian legends.

The Romans have left Britain. Anglo-Saxon warriors are pouring in looking for land and wealth. The Brithonic Kingdoms are too splintered to stop them. Yet there is a greater threat to the east that only a united Britain has a chance to withstand, and perhaps only one man with a very special sword can unite them.

I read this novel as it was released in episodic form.

Donald masterfully blends the known history of subRoman Britain with its myths and legends to bring us a seamless marriage of historical fiction and fantasy.
I was immediately drawn into the story. I found the dragon to be spine-tingling and breathtaking. Cythraul’s full power unleashed upon an army of mere mortals felt right out of a Godzilla movie. It was absolutely metal. Donald writes very visual battle scenes that put you in the center of the action and present real stakes for the characters you care about.

Check out Donald’s Broken Kingdom here:

Check out my latest novel here:

Book Review of The Broken Kingdom: Episode Five: Arthur’s Battle, by Angus Donald

Angus Donald lands the plane with Episode 5

“Arthur’s Battle” is a bombastic conclusion to a fresh foray into the Arthurian legend. Angus Donald masterfully blends the known history of subRoman Britain with its myths and legends to bring us a seamless marriage of historical fiction and fantasy, including the battle scene with the dragon we’ve all been waiting for. It felt right out of a Godzilla movie. Honestly, I was struck breathless at Cythraul’s full power unleashed upon an army of mere mortals. It was absolutely metal. 

Arthur also proves himself to be a true hero we can cheer for when he faces the choice between expediency or honor in dealing with his allies and enemies. 

The conclusion of this book is satisfying, yet leaves several open threads that will make you want to continue with this series.

“Arthur’s Battle” is the fifth and final episode of Book One: The Broken Kingdom which is the first novel of what promises to be the Wormkind Chronicles series. If you haven’t read the previous episodes, read Episode One: Authur’s Bane, then read through the following episodes from there. 

However, Donald has now released The Broken Kingdom: All Episodes as a full novel containing all five episodes. Isuggest buying that, at this point, because it’s currently a better deal. 

This may seem confusing, but it’s part of a fascinating experiment in which I happily participated. Donald is a well-known author in the historical fiction action and adventure genre. He’s got several successful series published through traditional commercial publishing houses. 

The Wormkind Chronicles is his own independent series. But instead of waiting to finish each novel before publishing, he’s releasing the story as a series of episodes as he writes. Each episode has around six chapters and is about twenty thousand words or around eighty pages. The episodes came out nearly monthly with about a four-month break between Episode Four and Five. The first five episodes make up the first novel of the series.

This made the story feel like an old-school serial in which I could look forward to the next episode. It also made it a bit hard to follow. I had to refresh my memory of the story with each new episode because I had forgotten a lot in the time in between. This won’t be a problem for new readers now that they can simply buy Book One as a complete novel and read it all at once. 

What was most impressive was that Donald treated each episode as a story arc in itself complete with its own climax and cliffhanger. It took a lot of discipline to make each episode satisfying, and yet tell a greater story. Even the last episode of Book One portends more to come.

I look forward to seeing how this experiment evolves. What are the lessons learned? What practices will continue andwhat will change? All I can say is that I’m here for the ride.

Check out Episode Five: Arthur’s Battle here:

Check out the full novel, The Broken Kingdom here:

Check out my latest novel here:

Book Review of The Heathen Horde by Steven A. McKay

The Heathen Horde comes out swinging!

This is a fresh and exciting new look at the historical Alfred the Great, one of Britain’s most legendary kings and perhaps the Father of England.

Steven A. McKay fleshes out Alfred from the historical record and legends to give us a hero to cheer for and an authentic person to care about.

McKay’s Alfred is a flawed man who must overcome his own weaknesses if he’s to save his people from the seemingly unstoppable Viking invasion. His character reminds me a lot of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Both are legendary for their roguish behavior during their youths, chasing women and drink before taking on the dire responsibility of kingship during a time of peril.

Alfred is equally known for his faith and poor health. Most scholars believe he suffered from Chrones disease. McKay lays a convincing path for Alfred that will take him from the wild party boy prince to the pious leader and ferocious warrior.

The book is exciting from the very beginning. Its ominous prologue portends the storm to come. The sons of Ragnar Lodbrok will have their revenge, and they’re bringing their Great Heathen Army with them. Britain will made to pay.

The book picks up a young, rambunctious Prince Alfred during his brother’s reign. Alfred is a mere teenager, just beginning to learn how to fight and lead men in battle as the Viking threat grows in Wessex. We follow him through battles with the Northmen and his own demons as he grows into a man, marries, and eventually becomes king.

The book is well-structured giving us a great “darkest hour” moment and resolution in the third act that not only satisfies the plot of this first novel of what will be a trilogy but also satisfies Alfred’s development as a character. And even though there’s a satisfying conclusion to this story, do not let your guard down during the denouement because there’s a setup for the next book that will make you want to come back for more.

By the way, the bad-ass picture on the cover totally happens in the book. It’s pretty metal. I think you’ll like it.

Check out a free preview below:

Here’s a preview to Book II out July 4, 2024:

And when you get done reading both of those, check out my latest novel:

Book Review of The Broken Kingdom: Episode Four: Arthur’s Folly, by Angus Donald.

An exciting penultimate episode to The Broken Kingdom novel. I can’t wait for the finale!

Angus Donald is not only taking us on an action-packed adventure that mixes historical and fantastical elements, but he’s also presenting it in a novel way, which is why I was so interested in reading it.

The Wormkind Chronicles promises to be a series of fantasy novels about King Arthur in post-Roman Britain. But instead of releasing it book-by-book, Donald is releasing it digitally, episode-by-episode. This is much like the old serials written and printed in newspapers and magazines like Dumas’s Musketeers series or Johnston McCulley’s The Curse of Capistrano, where we first met Zorro.

Each episode is six chapters or about 20,000 words and goes for 99p in the UK or $1.24 in the US. The Broken Kingdom will have five episodes in total. “Arthur’s Folly” is “Episode Four” and quite a banger. You do need to read the first three episodes before this one.

I will remain spoiler-free in this review, especially since this episode starts deep in the narrative. I can say, however, that it begins and ends with action. 

We open with a battle, which Donald set up in the previous episode. Donald writes very visual battle scenes that’ll put you in the center of the action and present real stakes for the characters you care about. Even though it’s decisive, there’s definitely a “to be continued” element at the conclusion.

We then get an update on his “half-sister” Morgan and her magical training with Merlin. They can transmit their consciousnesses into animals far away and witness things as they happen, or that can happen if they allow it. 

I really like how Donald portrays this. When Morgan occupies the mind of a horse, I felt I was there too, feeling “the impact of her small unshod hooves vibrate through her bones with each strike of the firm turf.” Great stuff, man!

Morgan sees her brother’s in danger and must find a way to warn him. We also see more and more evidence that Morgan isn’t quite human. This is something that Donald’s been building since the prologue in episode one.

We finally catch up with Arthur, who is traversing a web of deceit from some while forming bonds of trust and loyalty with others as several of the storylines start to converge. 

We get an exciting and somewhat tragic duel to cap off the episode. Arthur becomes closer to the legend we know him as. But as he overcomes his human opponents, a larger, more sinister threat draws near: the Wormkind. 

The soothsayer has woken the dragon, and from its foul form, other creatures are borne like sallow unicorns, wolf-like Wulpines, and other ghastly things. 

If Britain is to survive, she must put aside her petty power struggles and unite under the one king legends have called for.

I can’t wait for the conclusion in Episode Five! Hopefully, it’s coming soon before the dragon gets me!

Check out “Episode Four: Arthur’s Folly” here:

But be sure you start with Episode One if you haven’t read it already. Here’s the preview for that:

And once you’ve read all of those, check out my latest novel here:

Book Review of: Hawker and the King’s Jewel by Ethan Bale

Warning: You will immediately want to
read the next book upon finishing this one!

Hawker and the King’s Jewel is a rousing, action-packed adventure rooted in history, spanning from the battlefields of England to the streets of Venice.

Sir John Hawker is an aging knight tormented by dark secrets and his own sinful passions. His king, Richard III, gives him one last quest on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth Field: Return a cursed jewel to Venice and protect his bastard son.

But Richard’s attempt to undo the curse is too late. The king falls in battle, and now, Hawker and his band of unlikely friends must flee England and the Tudor/Lancastrian onslaught.

Their desperate flight will take them to Flanders and, ultimately, the Republic of Venice, where Hawker will have to navigate a maze of enemies and allies, all while not truly knowing which are which.

The characters are richly developed and fun to follow. Their motivations are believable even when they are not sure themselves. I have to say, my favorite was the oily Gaston Dieudonné. He will keep you guessing all the way to the end.

The plot is full of twists and turns, with a desperate nail-baiting climax full of surprises.

Bale gives an excellent sense of place, especially once we get to Venice. I’m almost certain he has walked those streets and has been inside the buildings and palaces he describes.

I really enjoyed his use of era-appropriate weapons. Hawker arms himself with a cinquedea to fight in the narrow streets of Venice. I first saw one of these at a traveling renaissance armor show at a museum in Nashville. The cinquedea is something between a dagger and a shortsword with an extraordinarily wide blade at the base. The name literally means “five fingers” because of its width. I was immediately fascinated when I first saw one. I was tickled to death when I saw one aptly used in this story along with elegantly light war hammers they hide in their cloaks, which are better for street brawls than battlefields.

I was drawn to this book when I heard the author on the Rock, Paper, Sword, Podcast. Ethan Bale is an instantly likable guy with a fascinating background in modern military journalism. But it was his description of the book that really got me.

I’ve been a fan of the War of the Roses history since I first read the Shakespeare plays. Probably because Shakespeare was pretty much a Tudor propagandist, I’ve always been biased towards the red rose of the Lancastrian side that eventually gave way to the Tudor dynasty. I’ve also been lulled into believing that Richard III was a hunchback murderous villain.

So it was interesting to see him in a different light and to see the heroes of this story dedicated to the Yorkist cause.

Bale even gives his own version of what happened with the missing princes in the tower, and a heroic and tragic conclusion to the Battle of Bosworth Field.

But those famous historical events are just the beginning of the adventure, not the end. There’s plenty more action and brushes with real history that follow.

After all of that, there’s a great setup for the next novel which will involve another one of history’s most notorious villains, or misunderstood heroes: Vlad the Impaler, better known in pop culture as “Dracula.”

I can’t wait!

Here’s a preview of the book:

Here’s a preview of my latest novel:

Hear me on the Rock, Paper, Swords Podcast!

Best selling authors Matthew Harffy and Steven A. McKay invited me on their podcast to talk about history, writing, publishing, marketing, and even a little about bourbon and fiddling!

Click below to listen!

Rock, Paper, Swords is a historical action and adventure podcast started by two of my favorite authors and good friends, Matthew Harffy and Steven A. McKay. They talk about everything to do with history, action and adventure, writing, and music too!

I’ve secretly wanted to get on the show since they announced it two years ago. But I was afraid to ask! They’ve had some really big guests like the great Bernard Cornwell, Griff Hosker, and Simon Scarrow.

So I was over the moon when they invited me! We had a great time! I hope you do too. You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts or click the link below to listen to it on their YouTube channel.

Make sure you give them a subscription. It’s a great show with a lot of interesting authors as guests.

You can also listen below on their YouTube channel

Sale alert!

Rampage on the River: The Battle for Island No. 10 is only 99¢
Through Thursday 5/30.
Check out 99¢ book here

Book Review of: Dark Frontier by Matthew Harffy

Matthew Harffy writes an absolute love letter to the American Western with all the charm of a newly unearthed Louis L’Amour classic. 

There’s even a bit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in there to boot!

Dark Frontier is as much of a mystery novel and even a crime procedural as it is a Western. As smart as I like to think I am, I was totally surprised by the end, even though there had been clues all along.

Gabriel Stokes is a veteran of the Anglo-Afghan War and the crime-ridden streets of London, where he served as a detective. He has seen some things, man…horrible things, filling him with darkness and destroying his marriage with drugs and drink. When an invitation comes from an old army friend, Stokes thinks the wide-open skies of the American West will excise his demons. He soon finds out there’s plenty of darkness in the land of the setting sun.

Dark Frontiers has all the familiar elements you’d expect of a classic Western: stoic heroes, a beleaguered widow, the old whiskey-sodden gunslinger, and the powerful cattle baron who uses money and might to lord over a lawless land.

But Dark Frontier takes these beloved familiar pillars of our Saturday matinees and freshens them with unexpected twists and a new perspective. We see the familiar Old West through the eyes of an Englishman. Stokes is certainly a stranger in a strange land, but the dichotomy runs deeper than surfacy cultural differences. 

Stokes brings the insistence of an ordered world in which justice and the rule of law prevail. His partner, Jeb White, is a utilitarian who’d rather deal out a reckoning from behind his smoking Remingtons. But as they point out their differences to each other, they’ll find they are more alike than different. They are merely the two sides of every man: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the gentleman and the savage, civilized man and the beast within.

I love fish-out-of-water stories. It’s what I like about Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe Series, in which a low-born soldier becomes an officer, or Cornwell’s Saxon series (The Last Kingdom), where an English child is raised by Danes and then has to reconcile these warring cultures within him. 

So I was fascinated when I heard that Cornwell’s fellow and rival sword-and-shield author, Matthew Harffy, was writing an American Western set in the late 19th century.  

Harffy is well known for his Bernicia Chronicles, A Time For Swords series, and The Wolf of Wessex novel. These are well-loved classics in the British Dark Ages subgenre of historical fiction. So I was stunned when Harffy admitted on his Rock, Paper, Swords Podcast to fellow author cohost, Steven A. McKay, that he is a life-long fan of the American Western. 

I mean, why not? I grew up in Detroit, making wooden swords and pretending to be a knight in shining armor. I can see my British cousins wearing cowboy hats and slinging capshooters at each other. So, I was delighted to see Harffy take on this labor of love. 

Folks, I’m gonna tell you right now, you can feel that love in every word he writes. You’ll share that boyish wonder in every sentence you read. Harffy is a masterful writer. He would shine in any genre. Here, he paints such visual and lyrical landscapes, flesh and blood characters, and intense action scenes. Do yourself a favor: saddle up and ride off into the Dark Frontier!

Check out Dark Frontier here:

Check out my latest here:

2-Star Review!?

Ow, my feelings…This book will be only 99¢ for Kindle later this month. I’ll let you know when it is. It’ll be 99p in the UK after that so you might want to wait to buy it.

The book usually gets good reviews and is sitting at 4 stars on Amazon and Goodreads. But here’s a new one that has some legitimate critiques:



….but at least they said the battles were accurate…The unKind-le Customer is absolutely correct: Rookie mistakes for sure that I made on my first book five years ago. I certainly know better now. I fixed the firing pin/nipple thing. For the life of me, I cannot find where I had solid shot exploding. So if you know, point it out to me so I can fix it, please.

Of course, being an ego-manic, I can’t help but focus on the compliments. Every single critical review I’ve ever gotten for any of my books points out the accuracy of my battle depictions. One reviewer wrote, “Only the battlescenes are good” as the title of their review. Okay, I’ll take that.

This reviewer actually gives me too much credit. I haven’t quite spent fifty years reading Civil War history, but I’m working on it. I hope they give me another chance with The Perils of Perryville.

And if you’ve read any of my books, please give me as many stars  as you think I deserve on Amazon and goodreads, and perhaps a few kind words. After all, we are made of stars. 

Here’s the book if you’d like to preview it.

Book Review of: Self-Publishing and Email Marketing by Bryan Cohen

Full title: Self-Publishing and Email Marketing: How to Create and Optimize a Reader Newsletter to Find New Fans, Gather More Reviews, and Sell More Books by Bryan Cohen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A practical and easy-to-understand springboard for any author wanting to dive into email marketing.

This is a hands-on manual that will teach you the fundamentals of email marketing and the things you didn’t know you didn’t know. It’ll even tell you the things you don’t want to hear but need to hear.

Cohen sets up the book in a very novel way. Each chapter is bookended with a conversation between himself and a fictional character, Nina, whom he is coaching. Nina is an amalgamation of the multitudes of authors he has taught. She is a proxy for the reader. In her resistance to his teaching, I found my own doubts and fears being addressed.

The chapters are laid out logically, taking you through the reasons you must have an email list, how to set one up, grow it, and how to use it for years to come as you build your writing and publishing empire. Each chapter ends with exercises to help put what you learned into action.

I would recommend this book for independent and commercially published authors alike.

This was not necessarily the book I was looking for, but certainly the one that I needed. The book I was looking for does not exist, nor can it. I wanted something that was going to take me, click-by-click, on how to technically set up an email list. The reason why that can’t exist is because technology changes so fast that any book that professed to offer that, would be obsolete in a week.

Cohen’s book certainly does help with that. He covers where you can go to get a domain name, a professional email server, and an email service provider. Even he admits that this is not easy in “Chapter Five: How to do I set up an email list without pulling out my hair?” in which he offers some practical advice on how to get through it.

I looked at a few books on email marketing for authors. I came down to this one and another one that is very popular and highly recommended. I went with Cohen’s because it was published more recently, and I had already known him to be a good teacher with good intentions through his 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge, which is FREE and I also recommend.

I trust him, and this book did not let me down. My email list is up and running as I write this. Please look me up and join if you like! https://subscribepage.io/EngdahlHouse I’m probably going to buy his book on Amazon Ads next.

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View Cohen’s book here:

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