Jessica Rydill's Blog, page 4
August 23, 2019
Malarat joins the Time Benders!
From 24th August until September 22nd, Malarat is one of a bundle of discounted eBooks featured on StoryOrigin.
Why “Time Benders”? Because all the featured books involve time travel, history and steampunk!
From a re-imagining of the story of Joseph of Nazareth, to an epic historical romance set in the Kremlins (fortresses) of medieval Russia, Malarat is in congenial company.
A special thank you to promo organiser Stephanie Ayers, whose just-released anthology Bending Time published by Crazy Ink sets the theme for the promo bundle.
Check out the books
August 12, 2019
Before The Sequel Sale -All Genres
Sequel Sale bundle from StoryOrigin, organised by E. Darkwood, author of the G.A.M.E.Z. Duology, featuring all genres: Thriller, Romance, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Suspense, Horror – and so much more!
Let’s celebrate the next instalment with a discount…
read them here
July 31, 2019
The Girl from the Sea lands…
The Girl from the Sea, which launches today, is the prequel to Children of the Shaman. Set some twenty-nine years earlier, it tells the story of the eponymous Shaman, his twin sister, and their best friend, Aude d’Iforas.
They grow up in the same world, experiencing its industrial revolution, but also filled with unsettling magic. And twin shamans Yuste and Yuda Vasilyevich have to learn how to handle their own magical powers on the brink of adolescence, a process that ranges from painful to comical.
But out in the bay near the small village where they live lies the sunken city of Savorin, and something ancient has wakened from its slumbers…
At an astonishing 88 pages, The Girl from the Sea is a slim volume, literally lighter than my other books.
The book is available for purchase from the Kindle Store, to borrow from Kindle Unlimited, and also as a paperback.https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Sea-Prequel-Children-Shaman-ebook/dp/B07TJN9XZR/
July 25, 2019
New releases - SFFBookBonanza - StoryOrigin - SciFi and Fantasy Book Sale
New releases July 201999 cent sale - July 22nd - 28thGet these books fast! This promotion ends July 29th!
99 cent saleSFF Book Bonanza - 99c Books – Jul 2019
Books for just 99c on Kindle from 22 – 28 July
Note: Make sure to check the price before you buy.Books may not be discounted in all regions.
SFF Book BonanzaJuly 24, 2019
The Girl from the Sea launches: 31 July 2019
Some of you will already know that my new novella, The Girl from the Sea, is launching on July 31.
This book is the prequel to Children of the Shaman and tells how three of the main characters met when they were adolescents.
The main character is Aude d'Iforas, Annat's mother, and the story tells how she came to Sankt Eglis, and met the twins Yuste and Yuda Vasilyevich.
The book will be available in Kindle and paperback editions. You don't need to have read any of the other books to enjoy it!
You can pre-order The Girl from the Sea here.
June 17, 2019
Mailing list and shaman news
Ice-house from Stourhead in Wiltshire*My shaman-world series has a mailing list!
You can sign up for it here in order to get updates on my writing, upcoming releases and news. The link takes you to a sign-up page.
Follow the shamans on their journey
With The Girl from the Sea appearing over the horizon - hopefully for release in late July - I am exclusively sharing some of the proposed cover art in my next mail-shot, and asking for feedback.
The Girl from the Sea is a prequel to Children of the Shaman, my first book. It's a novella, and the main characters are children: but some of these children appear as adults in Children of the Shaman.
If you've enjoyed reading my books, reviews are much appreciated.
*Readers of Winterbloom will know why there's a photo of an ice-house...
June 14, 2019
June 4, 2019
The Girl from the Sea?
It's a bit different to the others: shorter, and it has a less complicated plot. Rather like Tunguska, the sequel to Winterbloom, it's a fairly simple narrative.
I've been talking to people who read my books, because I'm always interested in feedback. One friend said that they were funny, and could I write books that were humorous altogether?
I wish!
It is a peculiar mixture, though. Unless you are writing comic fantasy, humour isn't supposed to appear, but I find it difficult to avoid it. One of the ways I cope with difficulty is by having a laugh, including when it is far from appropriate. (I am not advocating this approach!)
I am also conscious that the books can segue from funny to dark fairly rapidly. This has led me to wonder if I should describe my writing as "quirky".
The other problem I find is pigeonholing them neatly in any genre. They are definitely fantasy because they are set in an imaginary world in which magic is a Thing. It's a parallel or secondary world, a rather offbeat version of Earth, but in Winterbloom we learn that they are by any chance related, to misquote Private Eye, along with another world, Midgarth, where the people are generally bigger in stature.
(Eagle-eyed readers will spot that Midgarth refers to Middle Earth and Midgard, from Tolkien and Norse mythology respectfully. It's also named after the place where I live).
The Girl from the Sea is firmly set in the shaman world, and told mainly from the point of view of Aude. It brought with it some surprises that I wasn't aware of when I wrote Children of the Shaman; I can't mention them here because spoilers, but it does explain what happened to Aude and why she turned out the way she did.
I'm not certain yet when the book will appear - no announcements yet! - but I anticipate it's being around before the end of August. In the mean time, I am continuing to work on Tunguska, which looks as if it will be a regular length.
(If you haven't read my books and have no idea what I'm talking about, Children of the Shaman is the best place to start; the others follow in chronological order).
Amazon
July 31, 2018
Best of the Independent eBook Awards 2018
I am honoured to have been chosen as a finalist for the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards, along with my co-host at the Speculative Fiction Showcase, Cora Buhlert.
I am a finalist in the Best Fantasy (Contemporary/Urban Fantasy) category for my novel Children of the Shaman, and Cora is a finalist in the Short Story category for her story Baptism of Fire from The Guardian: Eleven science fiction short stories. The anthology is also a finalist in the Best Anthology Category.
If you want to vote for any of the finalists, you will find the link on the Bards and Sages web-site here.
Congratulations and good luck to all the other finalists!
June 23, 2018
What's Tunguska?
Taiga of Far East in Russia
Tunguska is the name of my work in progress. Today it has just bust the 60,000 word mark, though as usual at this stage in the process, it's pretty rough and ready. Or as they say, "a first draft".
I have nothing but admiration for people who plan where they are going and have meticulously detailed outlines. With Tunguska, I have a rough idea of where I want to be, and where I'm starting out from, but not a clue about how to get from A to B.
Unfortunately, in this story, my characters have the same problem. They need to get to Tunguska in a hurry, and they don't know where it is, even though one of them comes from there.
I should perhaps explain that this isn't the Tunguska in the real world, where a meteor air-burst flattened large areas of the Siberian forest in 1908 (unless it was aliens). The jumping-off point is a contemporary account by the local people that the explosion and subsequent devastation was caused by shamans fighting.
Shamans fighting!
I knew some shamans who had the kind of powers that could knock over several acres of boreal forest.
So that's Tunguska. Possibly quite a short novel, with a big explosion in there somewhere...
[Photo courtesy of borya from Wikimedia Commons, source https://www.flickr.com/photos/barthelomaus/229945110/ date 8 August 2006 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License; no endorsement by the author implied]
