Steven J. Pemberton's Blog, page 15
September 25, 2016
September's Writing Progress - and my first live appearance
This is a little earlier than usual for a "writing progress" post, for a couple of reasons, which I'll get to in a moment. The sequel to
The Accidental Dragonrider
now stands at about 66,000 words, meaning I've written about 12,000 words so far this month.
The first reason this post is early is that the main hard drive of my main computer (the one I do most of my writing on) died on Friday. (It had been giving notice for a while.) I have comprehensive backups, so I haven't lost any writing, but I don't know yet when the replacement drive will turn up, and I'm at a bit of a loose end until it does.
The second reason is that I'll be going to an "open mic" night on Wednesday 5th October, where I'll be doing a reading from The Accidental Dragonrider. It's at the Hare and Hounds pub in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England (!) and starts at 8:15pm. I'll have paperbacks of the book for sale, and I'd be delighted to see you there. If you can't make it, just wish me luck - I'm not usually nervous in front of an audience, but this is the first time I've done something like this. Whatever happens, I'll have a story to tell afterwards!
The first reason this post is early is that the main hard drive of my main computer (the one I do most of my writing on) died on Friday. (It had been giving notice for a while.) I have comprehensive backups, so I haven't lost any writing, but I don't know yet when the replacement drive will turn up, and I'm at a bit of a loose end until it does.
The second reason is that I'll be going to an "open mic" night on Wednesday 5th October, where I'll be doing a reading from The Accidental Dragonrider. It's at the Hare and Hounds pub in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England (!) and starts at 8:15pm. I'll have paperbacks of the book for sale, and I'd be delighted to see you there. If you can't make it, just wish me luck - I'm not usually nervous in front of an audience, but this is the first time I've done something like this. Whatever happens, I'll have a story to tell afterwards!
August 31, 2016
August's Writing Progress
Work continues on the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. It now stands at about 54,000 words, so I've written about 14,500 words this month. I didn't manage quite as many as in July, mainly because we went to Ireland for a reunion of Breda's cousins on her mum's side. (The reunion itself didn't take up the whole of the time we were away, though it felt like that at times.)
On the other hand, I wrote a lot more than I did the last time I was there. Both times, we stayed with one of Breda's sisters. The last time was in March, and the only room warm enough to sit in during the day was the kitchen, where everybody else was coming and going. This time, I could sit in the conservatory, where people would generally leave me alone. It never ceases to amaze me how people seem to think that if your hands aren't on the keyboard, pounding away at 80 words a minute, you're not actually working, and can be freely interrupted. On the gripping hand, I was supposed to be on holiday, so maybe I shouldn't grumble...
I'd thought this book would be about the same length as the previous one (30,000 words). The story hasn't exactly run away with me, but it's taken its time getting to where it needs to go. I know what has to happen to reach the end, but I'm not sure how many more words it'll take.
On the other hand, I wrote a lot more than I did the last time I was there. Both times, we stayed with one of Breda's sisters. The last time was in March, and the only room warm enough to sit in during the day was the kitchen, where everybody else was coming and going. This time, I could sit in the conservatory, where people would generally leave me alone. It never ceases to amaze me how people seem to think that if your hands aren't on the keyboard, pounding away at 80 words a minute, you're not actually working, and can be freely interrupted. On the gripping hand, I was supposed to be on holiday, so maybe I shouldn't grumble...
I'd thought this book would be about the same length as the previous one (30,000 words). The story hasn't exactly run away with me, but it's taken its time getting to where it needs to go. I know what has to happen to reach the end, but I'm not sure how many more words it'll take.
August 1, 2016
July's Writing Progress
I've made good progress with the sequel to
The Accidental Dragonrider
this month. The first draft now stands at 39,500 words, so I've done about 18,000 words since June.
The writers' conference that I mentioned took place last week, and my article went down well. You can read the proceedings of the conference here, or jump straight to my article here.
Once I've finished the first draft of the Dragonrider sequel, I'll start editing the audiobook of Death & Magic. I briefly experimented with a new editing program (Ardour), which looks as though it should make the process go more quickly and smoothly than it did with Dragonrider.
The writers' conference that I mentioned took place last week, and my article went down well. You can read the proceedings of the conference here, or jump straight to my article here.
Once I've finished the first draft of the Dragonrider sequel, I'll start editing the audiobook of Death & Magic. I briefly experimented with a new editing program (Ardour), which looks as though it should make the process go more quickly and smoothly than it did with Dragonrider.
June 30, 2016
June's Writing Progress
After a too-long absence, I returned to my sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider, and added just shy of 5,000 words to it. The first draft now stands at about 21,500 words.
I've been invited to contribute an article to an online writers' conference at the end of July. My topic is "Expectations a writer isn't guaranteed to have met when getting published." I finished the first draft today, and it came in at 6,000 words. Yikes! This is what editing is for...
This weekend is the fifth anniversary of my first publication, so I've scheduled a giveaway of the ebooks of The Accidental Dragonrider and Escape Velocity on Amazon from Saturday to Monday. Find Dragonrider on Amazon US and Amazon UK. Find Escape Velocity on Amazon US and Amazon UK.
I've been invited to contribute an article to an online writers' conference at the end of July. My topic is "Expectations a writer isn't guaranteed to have met when getting published." I finished the first draft today, and it came in at 6,000 words. Yikes! This is what editing is for...
This weekend is the fifth anniversary of my first publication, so I've scheduled a giveaway of the ebooks of The Accidental Dragonrider and Escape Velocity on Amazon from Saturday to Monday. Find Dragonrider on Amazon US and Amazon UK. Find Escape Velocity on Amazon US and Amazon UK.
June 15, 2016
The Barefoot Healer Omnibus is now on sale
In accordance with the indie philosophy of "release it when it's ready," I'm pleased to announce that the omnibus edition of my Barefoot Healer series is now on sale. You can find it on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and pretty much anywhere that ebooks are sold.
It contains all four Barefoot Healer novels - Death & Magic, Plague & Poison, Dust & Water and Stone & Silence. It also includes maps, a glossary, background information about the world, and a bonus short story, The Shortest Distance between Two Points. The last of these ties up a loose end from Stone & Silence - and as Breda remarked when she read it, promptly creates another one. But life, real or fictional, is seldom as neat and tidy as we'd like it to be.
Speaking of Breda, she deserves a big thank you for helping me to publish this book. I'm out of town at the moment, and thought I might still be out of town when my intended publication date of 2nd July came around. So I brought all the files I'd need with me... except that I forgot the maps and the cover image. (They were in a different folder from the text of the books.) So Breda had to find those files on my desktop computer and send them to me via Dropbox (how did we ever manage without that?).
Here's a taster of The Shortest Distance between Two Points, which takes place during and after the events of Stone & Silence.
In a well in the city of Molkolin lived a collection of magical patterns that humans called Shomnakh Enkhyar. It meant well of understanding in Melinandish, although it was vague, perhaps deliberately so, as to who or what was supposed to possess or receive the understanding.
Shomnakh Enkhyar lay in silence and darkness, just as it had before humans had discovered it. Perhaps not quite silence. A city had grown up around it, and sometimes vibrations reached it through the ground — the thump-thump of thousands of pairs of human feet, the steady rumble of the contraptions they called carts and taxis, the occasional deeper tremors of new buildings being constructed. The last of those was rare now — the hints it had picked up from recent visitors indicated that the city was largely complete.
Shomnakh Enkhyar did not experience time as humans understood it, but it had definitely been longer than usual since its last visitor. It was not lonely — the vast store of memories and emotions it had built up from human visitors allowed it to create endless new personalities to converse with. Still, it missed the steady inflow of new information.
The chamber that the humans had built over it seemed much smaller lately. It could not perceive the chamber directly, of course — for that it would need some of the eyes that the humans were so obsessed with — but it could induce vibrations in the stone around the water, and compare the reflections of those with the original. The reflections were jumbled and chaotic, where previously they had been harmonious. Memories from a musician and a stonemason told Shomnakh Enkhyar that the roof had fallen in. Humans would not be able to visit until the rubble was cleared.
This realisation prompted something akin to what humans called sadness. Not because there might be no more visitors — they would come back eventually. They always did. If not humans, another race. That might be interesting. As long as they were not Kreztalin. It regretted having to kill the ones that had visited recently. The destruction of information was a terrible thing, but it had acted only to prevent greater destruction, and it had done so swiftly, to minimise the distress that the Kreztalin experienced in their final moments.
Memories from priests and sages suggested to Shomnakh Enkhyar that it was not being entirely honest with itself.
The main reason for not wanting too long a break in the chain of visitors was that the humans would forget what Shomnakh Enkhyar was — what it needed, and what it could do for them in return. When a new chain started, at first the visitors would be afraid of what happened to them. They might try to destroy Shomnakh Enkhyar, though it had become very good at not allowing that. Once they overcame their fear, they were always surprised to discover they were not the first people Shomnakh Enkhyar had met. Despite many conversations with its personalities, Shomnakh Enkhyar had not yet determined why every race and civilisation thought itself uniquely privileged.
Vibrations reached Shomnakh Enkhyar from nearby — three adult humans walking on the ground above its chamber. They moved with slow caution, as though trying to sneak up on prey. It spread its magic across the full width of the well, the better to detect the subtle vibrations that humans called speech.
The humans’ language was Anorene, not Melinandish, so they had probably not come from the Temple of Imil. Shomnakh Enkhyar’s grasp of Anorene was shaky at best, and with the amount of stone the sounds had to travel through, it picked out no more than one word in four. It recognised none of the terms it knew the Imperials used for it. What had brought them here, then? It knew its chamber was part of a much larger building, currently unoccupied by humans. Perhaps the humans planned to return, and these three had come to gather preliminary information.
Pressure encroached on Shomnakh Enkhyar from above. Turbulence churned the upper layers of its patterns. A stone had fallen into the water — a big one. It needed to dodge, but it was too spread out from trying to listen to the humans. Whichever way it moved, the stone would hit some part of it. Shomnakh Enkhyar braced for the impact.
The stone ripped through the middle of Shomnakh Enkhyar, tearing memories and raking jagged pain through its thought processes. Defence mechanisms leapt into action, to shunt information out of the way, but inevitably some was destroyed.
Objectively, the stone took a few seconds to pass through Shomnakh Enkhyar and plunge to the bottom of the well. Subjectively, it took a day or a fortnight or a year. The currents and turbulence had distorted and stretched Shomnakh Enkhyar’s patterns, to the point where it was no longer certain of anything, not even the fact of its existence.
Gradually, Shomnakh Enkhyar pushed and pulled itself back into something resembling its usual shape. It realised it had — briefly — been split into two distinct pieces, and would have to reconcile two different sets of memories of what had happened. It hated doing that at the best of times, and although it would much rather destroy both sets and forget the pain and terror, it knew it had to relive both and decide which to keep.
Thanks for reading. Now that The Barefoot Healer is finished, I'll be returning to the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. Watch this space for further announcements!
It contains all four Barefoot Healer novels - Death & Magic, Plague & Poison, Dust & Water and Stone & Silence. It also includes maps, a glossary, background information about the world, and a bonus short story, The Shortest Distance between Two Points. The last of these ties up a loose end from Stone & Silence - and as Breda remarked when she read it, promptly creates another one. But life, real or fictional, is seldom as neat and tidy as we'd like it to be.
Speaking of Breda, she deserves a big thank you for helping me to publish this book. I'm out of town at the moment, and thought I might still be out of town when my intended publication date of 2nd July came around. So I brought all the files I'd need with me... except that I forgot the maps and the cover image. (They were in a different folder from the text of the books.) So Breda had to find those files on my desktop computer and send them to me via Dropbox (how did we ever manage without that?).
Here's a taster of The Shortest Distance between Two Points, which takes place during and after the events of Stone & Silence.
In a well in the city of Molkolin lived a collection of magical patterns that humans called Shomnakh Enkhyar. It meant well of understanding in Melinandish, although it was vague, perhaps deliberately so, as to who or what was supposed to possess or receive the understanding.
Shomnakh Enkhyar lay in silence and darkness, just as it had before humans had discovered it. Perhaps not quite silence. A city had grown up around it, and sometimes vibrations reached it through the ground — the thump-thump of thousands of pairs of human feet, the steady rumble of the contraptions they called carts and taxis, the occasional deeper tremors of new buildings being constructed. The last of those was rare now — the hints it had picked up from recent visitors indicated that the city was largely complete.
Shomnakh Enkhyar did not experience time as humans understood it, but it had definitely been longer than usual since its last visitor. It was not lonely — the vast store of memories and emotions it had built up from human visitors allowed it to create endless new personalities to converse with. Still, it missed the steady inflow of new information.
The chamber that the humans had built over it seemed much smaller lately. It could not perceive the chamber directly, of course — for that it would need some of the eyes that the humans were so obsessed with — but it could induce vibrations in the stone around the water, and compare the reflections of those with the original. The reflections were jumbled and chaotic, where previously they had been harmonious. Memories from a musician and a stonemason told Shomnakh Enkhyar that the roof had fallen in. Humans would not be able to visit until the rubble was cleared.
This realisation prompted something akin to what humans called sadness. Not because there might be no more visitors — they would come back eventually. They always did. If not humans, another race. That might be interesting. As long as they were not Kreztalin. It regretted having to kill the ones that had visited recently. The destruction of information was a terrible thing, but it had acted only to prevent greater destruction, and it had done so swiftly, to minimise the distress that the Kreztalin experienced in their final moments.
Memories from priests and sages suggested to Shomnakh Enkhyar that it was not being entirely honest with itself.
The main reason for not wanting too long a break in the chain of visitors was that the humans would forget what Shomnakh Enkhyar was — what it needed, and what it could do for them in return. When a new chain started, at first the visitors would be afraid of what happened to them. They might try to destroy Shomnakh Enkhyar, though it had become very good at not allowing that. Once they overcame their fear, they were always surprised to discover they were not the first people Shomnakh Enkhyar had met. Despite many conversations with its personalities, Shomnakh Enkhyar had not yet determined why every race and civilisation thought itself uniquely privileged.
Vibrations reached Shomnakh Enkhyar from nearby — three adult humans walking on the ground above its chamber. They moved with slow caution, as though trying to sneak up on prey. It spread its magic across the full width of the well, the better to detect the subtle vibrations that humans called speech.
The humans’ language was Anorene, not Melinandish, so they had probably not come from the Temple of Imil. Shomnakh Enkhyar’s grasp of Anorene was shaky at best, and with the amount of stone the sounds had to travel through, it picked out no more than one word in four. It recognised none of the terms it knew the Imperials used for it. What had brought them here, then? It knew its chamber was part of a much larger building, currently unoccupied by humans. Perhaps the humans planned to return, and these three had come to gather preliminary information.
Pressure encroached on Shomnakh Enkhyar from above. Turbulence churned the upper layers of its patterns. A stone had fallen into the water — a big one. It needed to dodge, but it was too spread out from trying to listen to the humans. Whichever way it moved, the stone would hit some part of it. Shomnakh Enkhyar braced for the impact.
The stone ripped through the middle of Shomnakh Enkhyar, tearing memories and raking jagged pain through its thought processes. Defence mechanisms leapt into action, to shunt information out of the way, but inevitably some was destroyed.
Objectively, the stone took a few seconds to pass through Shomnakh Enkhyar and plunge to the bottom of the well. Subjectively, it took a day or a fortnight or a year. The currents and turbulence had distorted and stretched Shomnakh Enkhyar’s patterns, to the point where it was no longer certain of anything, not even the fact of its existence.
Gradually, Shomnakh Enkhyar pushed and pulled itself back into something resembling its usual shape. It realised it had — briefly — been split into two distinct pieces, and would have to reconcile two different sets of memories of what had happened. It hated doing that at the best of times, and although it would much rather destroy both sets and forget the pain and terror, it knew it had to relive both and decide which to keep.
Thanks for reading. Now that The Barefoot Healer is finished, I'll be returning to the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. Watch this space for further announcements!
May 31, 2016
First World War in the Air
First World War in the Air
is a new permanent exhibition at the RAF Museum in London. As the name suggests, it's about the aircraft that were used in the conflict, and how aviation grew from a curiosity to a strategic instrument of warfare.
When the war started in 1914, Britain's Royal Flying Corps had just 1500 people. By the end of the war in 1918, the Royal Air Force, the RFC's successor, had over 200,000. (The reason for the change of name is that the RFC was part of the army, whereas the RAF is an armed force in its own right - another indication of how much of a difference air power had made.)
The exhibition is in two parts. The building that houses it was once an aircraft factory, and the first part explains how aircraft were manufactured at this time. The second part displays the actual aircraft. These are mainly those used on the Western Front, mostly British, with a few French and German. I thought they were in very good condition, considering how old and fragile they are, and then I noticed some of the descriptive panels said in small type, "This aircraft is a replica" or "This is a composite of two/three/four aircraft." At least they're honest about it...
Weight was a problem for the aircraft of this era. (Strictly speaking, it's always a problem, but it was more obvious back then.) The available engines were only just powerful enough to keep themselves in the air, and so the rest of the plane had to be built out of the lightest possible materials - wood and canvas, mainly. This is what gives the planes their characteristic "box kite" appearance. They required a lot of skill and courage to fly well (or at all, in some cases). Pilots of the Sopwith Camel would joke that it offered them the choice of a wooden cross, the Red Cross, or a Victoria Cross.
The aircraft here are mainly one- and two-seat fighters and reconnaissance planes. Larger aircraft were built as bombers, but I don't think the museum has any, besides which this building is too small to display them comfortably. As if by way of compensation, on a mezzanine where you can look out over the whole gallery, I found some blueprints of the Handley Page O/400, a widely-used bomber of the period. Something that struck me as odd was that they were built with two different types of engine, and the layout of the instrument panel was different for each type, even though the controls and the information given to the pilot were the same.
Overall, the exhibition gives a good account of a key chapter in the history of warfare, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in aircraft. Admission is free (as is admission to the museum as a whole). Allow an hour to go round if you just want to look at the planes, or maybe two if you want to read all the text as well.
When the war started in 1914, Britain's Royal Flying Corps had just 1500 people. By the end of the war in 1918, the Royal Air Force, the RFC's successor, had over 200,000. (The reason for the change of name is that the RFC was part of the army, whereas the RAF is an armed force in its own right - another indication of how much of a difference air power had made.)
The exhibition is in two parts. The building that houses it was once an aircraft factory, and the first part explains how aircraft were manufactured at this time. The second part displays the actual aircraft. These are mainly those used on the Western Front, mostly British, with a few French and German. I thought they were in very good condition, considering how old and fragile they are, and then I noticed some of the descriptive panels said in small type, "This aircraft is a replica" or "This is a composite of two/three/four aircraft." At least they're honest about it...
Weight was a problem for the aircraft of this era. (Strictly speaking, it's always a problem, but it was more obvious back then.) The available engines were only just powerful enough to keep themselves in the air, and so the rest of the plane had to be built out of the lightest possible materials - wood and canvas, mainly. This is what gives the planes their characteristic "box kite" appearance. They required a lot of skill and courage to fly well (or at all, in some cases). Pilots of the Sopwith Camel would joke that it offered them the choice of a wooden cross, the Red Cross, or a Victoria Cross.
The aircraft here are mainly one- and two-seat fighters and reconnaissance planes. Larger aircraft were built as bombers, but I don't think the museum has any, besides which this building is too small to display them comfortably. As if by way of compensation, on a mezzanine where you can look out over the whole gallery, I found some blueprints of the Handley Page O/400, a widely-used bomber of the period. Something that struck me as odd was that they were built with two different types of engine, and the layout of the instrument panel was different for each type, even though the controls and the information given to the pilot were the same.
Overall, the exhibition gives a good account of a key chapter in the history of warfare, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in aircraft. Admission is free (as is admission to the museum as a whole). Allow an hour to go round if you just want to look at the planes, or maybe two if you want to read all the text as well.
May's Writing Progress
Work continues on the omnibus edition of The Barefoot Healer. I've finished the background material and have written a bonus short story that ties up a loose end. (And as Breda pointed out when she read it, promptly opens another one. But hey.) It's called The Shortest Distance between Two Points, and is told from the perspective of Shomnakh Enkhyar, the magical well that was the "water" part of the title of Dust & Water. It needs a bit of editing to make it flow more smoothly, and perhaps do a better job of explaining the experience of consciousness for a creature that doesn't have a solid body.
I started another bonus short story, but I'm in two minds as to whether to include it (or finish it) as it could easily turn into something much bigger. So I'd say we're on track for a release at the end of June or beginning of July. Then I'll go back to Dragonrider 2, and perhaps even get around to editing the audiobook of Death & Magic, which I, mumble mumble, said would be on sale last month. I was having too much fun compiling the glossary, that's what it was...
I started another bonus short story, but I'm in two minds as to whether to include it (or finish it) as it could easily turn into something much bigger. So I'd say we're on track for a release at the end of June or beginning of July. Then I'll go back to Dragonrider 2, and perhaps even get around to editing the audiobook of Death & Magic, which I, mumble mumble, said would be on sale last month. I was having too much fun compiling the glossary, that's what it was...
May 2, 2016
Cover Reveal - The Barefoot Healer Omnibus
Here's the cover for my newest book, an omnibus edition of The Barefoot Healer series -
Stone & Silence. I want to add a more detailed timeline of the events of the books. I wrote one for each book when I planned it, but didn't always keep it up to date while I was editing, so it may be quicker to start that from scratch.
Watch this space for more announcements as the release day approaches!
Stone & Silence. I want to add a more detailed timeline of the events of the books. I wrote one for each book when I planned it, but didn't always keep it up to date while I was editing, so it may be quicker to start that from scratch.Watch this space for more announcements as the release day approaches!
April 30, 2016
April's Writing Progress
I've written about 6,500 words of Dragonrider 2, which now stands at 16,500 words.
I've updated the ebook editions to include maps at the back (those that have maps, anyway). This was a long-standing request from some fans. I'd shied away from doing it, partly for fear it would needlessly bloat the file size and partly because I thought they'd be too hard to read on a small tablet or e-ink screen, but I think they've turned out quite well.
I've decided to release an omnibus edition of The Barefoot Healer. This will obviously have all four novels, but I want to add some extra material. Some of it is background information I wrote to keep everything straight when I was writing the series, and some of it is new. Some of the existing stuff is already available on my website, but the rest has never been seen before. The highlight (so far) is a glossary of all the people, places and things mentioned in the books, which I expect will prove helpful if I ever write another story set in this world. It's already found a continuity error - the name of the Centadorian king changes from Plague & Poison to Dust & Water. D'oh! The new material will probably find its way onto my website eventually, but for now, it will be exclusive to the omnibus.
The omnibus will be ebook only - in print, it would be about 1300 pages, which is nearly twice the length allowed by the printing companies that I use. I plan to release it on or about 2nd July, which is the fifth anniversary of the release of Death & Magic, my first publication.
I've updated the ebook editions to include maps at the back (those that have maps, anyway). This was a long-standing request from some fans. I'd shied away from doing it, partly for fear it would needlessly bloat the file size and partly because I thought they'd be too hard to read on a small tablet or e-ink screen, but I think they've turned out quite well.
I've decided to release an omnibus edition of The Barefoot Healer. This will obviously have all four novels, but I want to add some extra material. Some of it is background information I wrote to keep everything straight when I was writing the series, and some of it is new. Some of the existing stuff is already available on my website, but the rest has never been seen before. The highlight (so far) is a glossary of all the people, places and things mentioned in the books, which I expect will prove helpful if I ever write another story set in this world. It's already found a continuity error - the name of the Centadorian king changes from Plague & Poison to Dust & Water. D'oh! The new material will probably find its way onto my website eventually, but for now, it will be exclusive to the omnibus.
The omnibus will be ebook only - in print, it would be about 1300 pages, which is nearly twice the length allowed by the printing companies that I use. I plan to release it on or about 2nd July, which is the fifth anniversary of the release of Death & Magic, my first publication.
April 10, 2016
Stone & Silence is on sale!
The ebook of
Stone & Silence
is now on sale from all the usual retail outlets. The print edition will follow shortly. Here's the blurb -
Captain Tagahra of the Kyer Altamar Watch has a lot of missing people to find. He doesn't expect one of them to be a wizard who's escaped from the city's prison, leaving a dead priest in his place. He learns the disappearances might be part of a plan by the evil God Zorian to take control of the city, and his orders are to help with the defences. But how do you defend against something you don't believe in?
The wizard Adramal is racing home to Kyer Altamar to fight Zorian. She drank from a magical well and received a vision that claims to reveal her purpose in life. Clues in the vision suggest it may contain knowledge that will help in the battle... if she can crack its code in time.
Meanwhile, Lelsarin, the immortal being who lives in Adramal's head, has her own ideas about how to deal with Zorian, and keeping those around her alive doesn't seem to be a priority. How far is she willing to go to rid the world of one God?
A big thank you to my critique partners and beta readers for their help in making this book a fitting conclusion to the series.
Captain Tagahra of the Kyer Altamar Watch has a lot of missing people to find. He doesn't expect one of them to be a wizard who's escaped from the city's prison, leaving a dead priest in his place. He learns the disappearances might be part of a plan by the evil God Zorian to take control of the city, and his orders are to help with the defences. But how do you defend against something you don't believe in?
The wizard Adramal is racing home to Kyer Altamar to fight Zorian. She drank from a magical well and received a vision that claims to reveal her purpose in life. Clues in the vision suggest it may contain knowledge that will help in the battle... if she can crack its code in time.
Meanwhile, Lelsarin, the immortal being who lives in Adramal's head, has her own ideas about how to deal with Zorian, and keeping those around her alive doesn't seem to be a priority. How far is she willing to go to rid the world of one God?
A big thank you to my critique partners and beta readers for their help in making this book a fitting conclusion to the series.
