Kevan Dale's Blog, page 2

Behind the Scenes: Setting & Clarity

Quick update on the continuing revisions to THE GOVERNOR’S WITCH.

Video, because why not?

The Governor's Witch is available for pre-order

Happy to announce that the ebook version of THE GOVERNOR’S WITCH is now available on pre-order.

Release date is September 29th, 2020.

The print version will also be on sale for the release, look for the pre-order on that soon. Audiobook will trail along after that - wish I could get it out sooner, but it’s a timing issue, given how long it takes to produce the audiobook version.

If you’re excited to see what Kate Finch is up to in this brand new trilogy, THE BOOKS OF WITCHERY, you can get it sent to you on the day of release by pre-ordering now!

Click on the image below to pre-order THE GOVERNOR’S WITCH at your favorite online retailer:

Behind the scenes: Revisions, pt. 1

Update on how The Governor’s Witch is coming together, now that I’m hip-deep in revisions.

KD

Being a reader

One of the things that I struggle with - minor struggle, not actually real world struggle - is how to find time to read every day.

Not easy!

I threw together a short video, offering my suggestions on how to conquer this tiny mountain.

Behind the scenes

I’m always super fascinated with how authors go about their process.

Not that knowing how they get it done imparts any magic to my own writing. And not that it takes away from the magic of their work.

Just that it’s interesting. Seeing how others approach the craft. Getting a glimpse of how it comes together.

So to that end, here’s how I do it:

The Governor's Witch, coming soon.

For fans of The Books of Conjury, I’m pleased to announce a new book in the series: The Governor’s Witch, coming end of summer, 2020. 

Some characters linger in the writer’s mind, and that’s been the case with Katie Finch. 

My intention had been to move on to other stories, other books, after I finished up The Halls of Midnight at the end of 2018. The trilogy had been just that, a trilogy. Beginning, middle, end. I’d set out with that goal in mind. I did it. 

In early 2019, I wrote my horror novel Ghost at Dusk. Trading 18th century Boston for 21st century suburban Massachusetts (with a loving glace back at the early 1980s, read it and you’ll understand) was just what I needed. Change of scenery. Stretch my legs out after my lengthy journey with Finch, Swaine, Rush, and friends. 

Wrapping up with Tim Lane (ghost) and Groan (demon), I turned my creative energies to something new. And then another thing new. And so on. Feeling my way forward - but not getting any purchase. After wandering through three different manuscript openings, I’d found a voice, an idea, but no connection. 

And then came the spark, the idea that triggered a cascade of images. Which my experience tells me means I’ve hit a vein of story after digging through nothing but rock.

The idea: Take the voice and the premise I’d been fooling around with, and what if it became Finch’s voice and Finch’s premise?

Click. 

Everything fell into place. 

I recognized the reason I’d wandered through that wilderness of ideas was because I wasn’t done with Finch. Her friends. Her ambitions. Her growing mastery of the unseen arts. Her problems. The world she inhabits. 

The vision grew. I listened to the muse, and she delivered. So The Governor’s Witch is just the beginning. Second beginning? Whatever, you know what I’m saying. I’ve got the outlines of the next two novels roughed in, as well. 

No spoilers.

If all goes well, I’ll have the second of these new novels ready to go by the end of this year.

But until then, I’ll be posting sneak peeks of The Governor’s Witch. 

- The Governor’s Witch, coming end of summer

Next month, I’ll show you the cover. 

By the end of summer, the book will be released.

Stay well.

Kev

The Demons of Conjury

The problem with demons, as Kate Finch and August Swaine know well, is that they’re persistent. Hard to keep away. Harder still to banish for good.

Finch and Swaine aren’t your ideal neighbors.

Given their work, more than a few demons end up skulking around the nearby woods, towns, and valleys. For decades. Centuries, even. 

So what happens? Well, some myths and rumor take hold, grow. About certain places best avoided. Talk of a lake where you don’t want to sink a dead body if you don’t want it to come back—different. Tales of infernal spirits—diabolical spirits—stalking the gaslit streets of the industrial revolution a century and change on. Signs of a demonic presence wreaking havoc on a Halloween night in the early 1980s. 

It’s all connected to those demons of Salem, to the work of Finch and Swaine, despite their best efforts to keep it all under control.

Demons are hard to control, you see.

So I’ve put together The Demons of Conjury: Series Collection. It’s a box set featuring three companion novels to The Books of Conjury:

* Revolutionary Dead

* The Devil’s Key

* Ghost at Dusk

They’re all set in the same universe as The Books of Conjury, but are stand-alone stories, each featuring a unique cast of characters grappling with the infernal in a different time period in Massachusetts history. 

Again, not pointing the finger at Finch and Swaine; they did the best they could.

Read about the demons who got away. Check out the single-volume collection!

Library audiobooks?

Looks like my audiobooks are popular through library services, which I love.

Libraries mean a lot to me.

Around 6AM this morning, I was out riding my Rivendell Roadeo (it’s heatwave time, so an early ride not only spares me from getting heat stroke, but the air feels amazing when it’s humid but not yet stifling) and rode past my old elementary school. They’ve changed it into a middle school (though I still prefer back in the day when we had junior high school) and made some changes to the building itself, but the corner that used to be the elementary school library still stands. Man, that place holds some memories.

My favorite room in the school, from the time I was in kindergarten. Shelves and stacks of doorways: doorways into other worlds, into other minds, into other realities. The first books I ever found and chose on my own came from that library. Rainy recesses spent there. Perfect weather recesses, too.

There was one book series I loved—and I can’t for the life of me find a trace of it online! I searched for it a few years back and game up empty. In my memory, the title was Mister Monster and featured a protagonist who sort of looked like a dinosaur. But was a monster. I loved those books! Unless I dreamed them. But, no. They were real. I will summon some Google-fu and see if I can’t turn something up. And the Danny Dunn series. A few Hardy Boys books.

My mom used to hit the public library every week. For all her adult life. Bring home a canvas shoulder bag full of books, mostly mysteries, though not only. She devoured books, one of those people who can rip through a book in a night. She died ten years ago. One other library memory: a freezing January morning, bringing back her final stack of borrowed books, sliding them into the drop-off drawer a week after her funeral.

Like I said, libraries mean a lot to me.

So I love it that so many people have been checking out my audiobooks from libraries.

The Halls of Midnight is almost wrapped up with the recording and should be out there by the end of summer. Ghost at Dusk is underway, too—should be on the same timeline.

If you’ve listened to one of my audiobooks through a library service, which have you used? Curious which the best service is, or if you’re getting them at your local library.

Either is great. Libraries rock.

Ghost at Dusk Secret

The secret: It’s connected to The Books of Conjury. 

It’s not, technically, a sequel—but an important thread from the trilogy runs into Ghost at Dusk. 

Readers of the trilogy will recall that after Finch and Swaine find Salem somewhat too dangerous to remain in, they move to the town of Andover, some 15 miles away. Now, that doesn’t quite solve all their problems with demons—what with the sorcery and Finch’s witch nature, a few demons continue to plague them. Various wards and glamours keep them at bay. 

Hume’s Eleventh Ward, used by Swaine during this period, possessed a peculiar side effect: While it can drive a demon away, sometimes it appeared to bind the demon to the area. Not always. Just sometimes. 

I set Ghost at Dusk in: Andover.

Where Tim Lane faces: a demon.

Tim sometimes wonders where Mister Groan (aka Scary Eyes, Flibber, and Mrs. Gracie) comes from. He doesn’t know.

But I think we know now, don’t we?

Oh, we do.

Astute readers may raise a clever objection: Swaine assures Finch that ghosts don’t exist. He’s emphatic on the point.

So is he wrong?

I’ll just say this—Finch knows as well as anyone that Swaine, a genius to be sure, had his blind spots.

Happy reading!

Audiobook update

So I’m super into audiobooks, of late.

Out running, around the house doing chores, working on my bike, driving to work - it’s all time to fit more books into my life. When a great story meets a great voice actor, it elevates the experience. A few I’ve listened to this year that have given me goosebumps: Code Name Verity (written by Elizabeth Wein, narrated by the amazing Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell), The Haunting of Tram Car 015 (written by P. Djeli Clark, narrated by Julian Thomas), and Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower (narrated by Adjoa Andoh, fabulous).

It’s this love of audiobooks that pulled me to get my own books recorded and out there.

As of now, I’ve had five of my books made into audiobooks: The Magic of Unkindness, Sorcery of the Stony Heart, The Devil’s Key, and Revolutionary Dead; recording of The Grave Raven just wrapped up and will appear in stores and libraries over the next few weeks.

In the works: The Halls of Midnight and Ghost at Dusk. Both should be ready later in the summer.

I’ll keep my Audiobooks page updated.

If you’ve given them a listen, I’d love to hear your feedback! To my ear, my narrators have NAILED it each time.

Check them out!