Jared Millet's Blog, page 3

Book Signing at the North Myrtle Beach Library

 

On April 7, I'll be reading and signing copies of my books at the North Myrtle Beach Library. Here's the press release:

Atlanta Author Jared Millet To Speak at North Myrtle Beach Library

Friends of the Library North Myrtle Beach is pleased to present its April “Coffee with Friends” literary event Thursday, April 7, at 10 a.m. All are invited to attend this free program. Coffee and refreshments will be served. 

This series meets on the first Thursday of the month and features local and regional authors who talk about their books and answer questions. The authors sell autographed books to interested guests and donate a signed copy to the library.  

Friends of the Library is a non-profit organization that supports North Myrtle Beach Library with funding for programs, equipment, and supplies. 

The specific book I'll be promoting is The Whisper, but I'll have copies of all my titles available. The library's address is 910 1st Ave S, North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. If you're in the area, I hope to see you there!

The Battle for Majadan Ends

With today's publication of The Ghost Cauldron, my long-gestating trilogy comes to a close! Here's the blurb for the set:

The Wight Lords of the Madlands are on the road to war. Their first target is the city of Majadan. Next: the rest of civilization itself. Caught up in the chaos is a ragtag band of survivors. They aren't heroes or generals, immortals or gods, but in the right place, and at the right time, the actions of an insignificant few may tip the balance of the world.

This concludes a project I’ve been working on for a very long time, and still the ending surprised me. It’s funny what happens when the characters take over the story. You can get the whole set on ebook for a whopping-low $10.97, or absolutely free if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

Click Here and Browse the Whole Series.

The cover artist, Olivia Pro Design, is Ukrainian, and I sincerely hope that she, her family, and all her friends are safe. From what I can tell, she’s still busy and working, so if any of my readers are also indie authors, I highly recommend her. She also does logo design and digital marketing, so if you’re in need of those services, by all means check out her page!

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. 

Check out the whole issue right here. 
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! 

The Wait Is Over: “The Bone Collar” is on sale!

“Moth Blackwater is the last of her kind, a shapeshifting nomad whose family died on the night of the Wight Lord invasion. Now she's on the run half a world away in an ancient archipelago of sea-faring elves. During a desperate gamble to survive, Moth stumbles on a secret at the heart of the sea-elf nation and joins a conspiracy to dethrone the Empress herself. When all sides turn against her and every friend becomes a foe, can one lost girl stand against an Immortal? No matter the odds, Moth will have to try.”

The Battle for Majadan continues today!

Available in the format and/or vendor of your choice:

Paperback: Amazon

Ebook: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Kobo | Smashwords

~

P.S. Have you not read the first book in this series? Well, download it here for free.

Ahoy There, Readers! ~ An Excerpt from "The Bone Collar"

[Spoilers if you haven't read your FREE COPY of The Blood Prayer yet.]

After a night of fitful unrest, I woke to someone hammering on my cabin’s door. The Valerie had been lurching through rough seas since sundown, and I still hadn’t learned to sleep through the weather. The banging on the door almost drowned out Moth’s voice.

“Mister Aust! Mister Jago! There’s another ship. Come see.”

My hammock swung in time with the swell. Our cabin didn’t have a window, so I reached through the dark in the direction I thought was “up” and felt for the beam above me. Once I found it, I pulled my legs free and swung down in time with the crest of a wave. Jago’s bunk was directly below mine, and I’d discovered the dangers of simply rolling out of bed.

The ship tried to slip out from under me as I stumbled toward the door. Jago snored like a wolf cub, oblivious to the sea and the racket Moth was making. I opened the door midway between blows and glared at my tormentor.

“Mister Aust, there’s a ship,” she said. “Tasnan navy, maybe. Come on, come see.”

I let her lead me by the arm. Her black curls were cropped so boyishly short that she almost could have passed for one of the crew, had it not been for her frilly red dress. She wore three or four bracelets on each arm, brass earrings that she’d charmed from one of the sailors, and several beaded necklaces, none of which were actually worth anything. In addition to these items, she wore a tight leather cord threaded with slivers of bone around her neck, the token that marked her as a Scenga of the Blackwater clan.

She clambered up the steps to the deck, and water sprayed down when she opened the hatch. Moth and I had taken to going barefoot like the crew, but if the deck was cold and slick it might have been wise to go back for my boots. I paused, but Moth yelled, “Hurry up, snail.” I was too groggy to fight her indomitable will.

As I’d feared, the deck was slippery with spray, and the whole ship bucked up and down like a stallion. The waves didn’t look as bad as they felt, but the helmsman was steering directly into the swells instead of taking them at an angle. The sails had been dropped, and teams of sailors scrambled to secure every foot of canvas. I pulled Moth under the quarterdeck steps so that we’d be out of the way.

Moth seemed excited by all the commotion. In truth, I worried about her. Not a month had passed since her clan had been slaughtered, but instead of grieving, Moth had buried her loss beneath a torrent of enthusiasm. It had endeared her to the crew, but I wondered what would happen if her cheer ever faded.

“There, see?” Moth pointed to starboard.

When the Valerie topped the next crest, I saw a tall-masted warship bearing down on us, perhaps a mile away. Her wind-taut sails were silver and blue, and she seemed unusually narrow for her height. The warship’s sides bristled with cannons.

The Valerie lurched. Moth and I grabbed the stairs. Captain Forgil bellowed orders from the quarterdeck, but another voice cut through the air from the direction of the approaching ship. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like someone was yelling through a pipe. 

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Not a clue, me. This is great.”

A light flashed on the Tasnan ship’s forecastle, followed moments later by a boom. One of the planks on our starboard rail exploded, and something the color of lead flashed through the air. Splinters clattered around us like hail, and I tried to shelter Moth with my body.

“Let’s hope that was a warning shot, lads,” said the bosun. “Now get that last fucking sail down and run up the colors!”

My chest filled with dread. It had been weeks since we’d had any news from the outside world. If the Tasnan navy was attacking ships on sight, the situation out there must have been worse than we thought.

“Let’s get back below,” I said.

“Hells no, gasho. Staying here, me.”

“Then keep your head down.” I stepped out from our hiding place to get a better look. There were two approaching ships, I now saw. One peeled out from behind the other on a course that would cut off any escape. The first ship tacked in the other direction, the better to catch us in a broadside. I could make out a handful of the words being shouted: halt, down, and something like ordered or hoarded. Another boom shook the air, followed by a fount of seawater over the forward rail.

The bosun rang the ship’s bell, over and over. Every sailor who wasn’t already on deck came running topside.

“All hands, all hands,” he shouted. “Inspection stations! Prepare to be boarded.”

That sounded better. To be boarded and inspected was infinitely preferable to being sent to the bottom of the ocean. Coasting on momentum, the Valerie tipped drunkenly as one of the warships approached our port side.

The Valerie’s complement arranged themselves on deck. The sailors shuffled on their feet, looking back and forth between the Tasnan ship, their captain, and each other. Some of my fellow refugees had come above too. The ones with sense stayed out of the way, but a few leaned over the rail and waved at the approaching ship. I kept a firm hand on Moth’s arm, and we watched from our shelter by the quarterdeck.

The first warship drew close enough to see the faces of its crew and to read the name Insistent painted on the bow. As our forward motion came to a halt, the Insistent aimed two harpoon-guns at our side. They fired long barbs into the Valerie’s hull, trailing cables that the elven crew used to winch the two ships alongside each other.

Once we were close enough, two teams on the Insistent extended boathooks over our rail. The Shi’El marines not working to bridge the gap pointed handheld long-guns at us on the Valerie. The guns were magical weapons not unlike hand-cannons, but slimmer and nearly a yard in length. One of the Insistent’s officers raised a silver hoop to his mouth. When he spoke, it nearly deafened me.

“STAND BACK FROM THE RAIL. DO NOT MAKE SUDDEN MOVEMENTS. WE WILL FIRE AT ANY SIGN OF RESISTANCE.”

From the way everyone else winced, I wasn’t the only one whose ears were now ringing. Once the boathooks were secured between our ships, two sea-elves in mages’ robes activated a magic charge in the grappling lines. Both vessels lurched, locked to each other like a ship with a double hull. The sea-elf marines extended two gangplanks and sent an armed party across. Our captain stepped forward to greet them.

“Gibran Forgil, master of the Valerie. Permission to come aboard granted.”

A Shi’El officer took the captain aside while the marines surrounded the passengers and crew. I pushed Moth behind me, and she poked me in the spine.

“I want to see.”

“Shh.” I kept my grip on her arm while a second platoon of marines went down one of the stairwells. Apart from Shadmar and some other sick refugees, it looked like everyone aboard had come topside. Everyone except…

A wolf’s head popped out of the nearest hatch and yawned, a bestial maw with fierce-looking incisors. The mighty jaw stretched, and cracked audibly shut. The manwolf shook his jowls, flinging off drops of rain, and then spoke.

“Could you bloody sea-rats make a bigger racket? What’s a fella got to do to get a few hours slee…”

Every single gun held by every sea-elf marine was now pointed at Jago’s head.

“Whoa,” he said. “Hey. Ah, let’s… not do anything hasty.”

Slowly Jago rose from hatch. He stood seven feet tall, an upright wolf covered in grey fur. Some of the elves inched forward as he climbed on deck, while others backed away. As soon as he cleared the hatch, one of the long-guns went off, blasting a handful of splinters from the mainmast.

“Crikey!” Jago shouted. Chaos broke out.

The Valerie’s sailors rushed the marines, who, focused on Jago, were taken by surprise. I heard a few splash as they were thrown overboard, and a cheer went up among the passengers.

The regiment of gunmen on the Insistent opened fire. The cheering stopped as the first crack sounded. Captain Forgil shouted for his men to stand down, and then there was nothing but gunshots and screams. 

Moth laughed. Cracks echoed through the air, but she didn’t even flinch. I forced her down to the deck, shielding her with my body. She screamed and kicked me. “Get off, gasho pig!” Then she screamed in earnest as a bullet struck a plank beside our heads.

“Get out of here,” I said. “Get out. Take off. Leave us.”

“No,” she yelled back, wriggling out of my grasp. “No one left behind. Not again. No one ever.”

A bullet ricocheted not far from my ear.

“Moth, don’t be stupid. You have to go.”

“I’m not–” The rest was a squeal as I picked her up and ran to starboard. “Don’t you dare, Aust! Don’t you dare!”

I ran to the rail and threw Moth over the side.

She never hit the water.

I asked her once what the change was like – if it hurt, or if she was frightened when it happened. She told me it was like walking from one room to another. In the blink of an eye, the air folded around her, and a raven soared into the sky. 

Continued in The Bone Collar,  available in print and ebook July 15, 2021
Preorder the ebook now!
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books
Kobo | Smashwords

Four Stars for The Blood Prayer

"Though high fantasy is dominated by epic sagas filled with clashing continents and sweeping generational conflicts, there is also a place for stories that zoom in on the details of what it would be like to live in such a time of magical war. [...] With dense action set in a closed city environment this story utilises the core principles of classic Greek theatre to the fullest: One time, One place, One action. Rather than a drawn out road trip, the story condenses the action into a single night with new twists and complications overlapping on almost every page. It is an intense experience that reminds me of both 'The Lies of Locke Lamora' for its focused scope and 'Resident Evil' for its brutal blood spattered violence."

- Charles Gull, Reedsy Discovery

Read the full review here!

Visit Charles Gull's website for more reviews and original fiction.

Check out Reedsy Discovery and sign up for their weekly newsletter. It's a great way to find new books by indie authors in all genres.

Happy Book Release Day!

So as not to bury the lede, here it is:

The Blood Prayer is now officially for sale in print and ebook!

Amazon (ebook & print) 

Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Smashwords | Kobo (ebook only)

The Bone Collar ebook is now available for pre-order. It will be published in ebook and print on July 15.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Smashwords

Thanks to my ongoing ebook giveaway of The Blood Prayer, there are already plenty of copies "in the wild." If you'd like your own free e-copy, just click here.

Thus endeth the sales pitch. Carry on!