Heloise & Grimple is Released, and Good Is (Hopefully) Done

I’m delighted to announce, thanks in no small part to the loyalty and support of the Goodreads community, the publication of The Chronicle of Heloise & Grimple, which is now available on Kindle. (Take note, loyal FOHAGs—the collection includes the previously unpublished concluding installment.)

You can find a description of the book on the Amazon page or on the GR listing for the book, but I’d like to focus here not on the particulars of the story (which is probably the greatest fantasy saga ever told, in my completely objective opinion), but on the wonderful GR community that helps make it possible for these types of stories to find their way out into the world.

I have a crazy busy job that requires long hours. I have two kids under the age of 3.5 who require a ton of hands-on attention (and who think sleep for their parents is optional). I have a house to keep up and take care of. And, I have a fairly lengthy commute (usually upwards of 2 hours roundtrip each day). In short, I have a lot going on these days.

I also have an incurable addiction to telling stories.

So, what do you do when you’re desperate to write stories, but have very little time (specifically, a 15-20 minute chunk of time in the morning during the carpooling portion of your commute, and a similar chunk during the trip home in the evening)? If you’re me, you start banging out a semi-coherent, serialized story about a quippy half-elven bard and her gambling-addicted hill giant companion, and you rely on the GR community to give you the energy you need to keep at it day in and day out no matter how tired you are in the morning (after a bad night of sleep) or how worn out you are in the evening (after a stressful day of work).

Over the past 9 months, I’ve released 12 installments of The Chronicle on this blog, and, in each case, it was the enthusiastic, supportive, and very witty comments from GR readers that kept me pushing the story forward. I can’t speak for all writers, but I write stories simply in the hope that people will read and enjoy them, and that they can, in some small way, make someone’s day a little better. Of course, hearing directly from people that a story I’ve written has managed to do precisely that probably makes me feel ten times better than my story made them feel in the first place…

And so I say thank you, a million times over, to everyone on GR who took the time to read or comment on the story somewhere along the way. I would especially like to thank the following readers, who were kind enough to read/like/comment upon darn near every installment, and whose opinions and suggestions helped shape the narrative (so, yes—you can blame them for anything you don’t like), presented in alphabetical order: Aileene, Amber, Bret, Cathy, Cindy, Ginger, Lolly, Miriam, Mona, Paul, Shadowdenizen, Sharyl, and Trish (Bret, Lolly, and Paul all also contributed some stellar artwork to the collection)

In keeping with the tradition that began with The Camelot Shadow, I’m hopeful that the publication of The Chronicle will manage to do some small bit of good beyond nominally entertaining the easily entertained (not to denigrate my readers, mind you). As described previously in this space (see "Do What You Do Well to Do Good"), I’m an advocate for using the skills and abilities that we all have to try to inject some goodwill into the world; to that end, all proceeds from the first 150 copies sold of The Chronicle of Heloise & Grimple will be donated to ProLiteracy (www.proliteracy.org), an organization that promotes adult literacy through content development, programs, and advocacy. So, feel good about your purchase, dear readers, and contemplate how you can use YOUR unique skills to do some good out there.

So, what’s next? Glad you asked (or, at least, are sticking around while I tell you, whether you’re interested or not). The sequel to the aforementioned The Camelot Shadow calls, and Bret and I are slowly making progress on Cheesecalibur. There may also be further adventures starring our friends Heloise and Grimple, and there are a slew of other stories waiting—practically begging, in fact—to be told, if only time will slow down enough for me to write them.

Regardless, you’ll be hearing from me soon, and probably far more (and far sooner) than you’d like.

Until then, I’ll take a cue from Grimple and sign off by saying, simply…

Tally ho!