State of the CW+ BOOK SAMPLE

First off...weekend reading. Buy my shit plz.

Second: Print book. For sale. No obligation to buy, just take a good look at my awesome skills. (Seriously. You do not have to buy. Just look at it.) 

So I bit the vanity bullet and bought the license for AWESOME trailer music so that I can make my own book trailer.

Because I can. Because it didn't cost that much and it's rooted less in "I want to sell more books" and more in "OH MY GOD TRAILERS ARE AWSOME"

Because they are. I love movie trailers. I love them almost more than I love movies themselves. I hate going to movies with my Dad, because he insists that showing up fifteen minutes after the movie starts is fine (technically it is because that's usually when a movie actually starts) and I want to cry because TRAILERS! I want to know what's coming next! I want to hear the awesome bass! I want to go "Squee I read that book!" I want to go "OMG THAT'S TWO STEPS FROM HELL I OWN THAT ALBUM"


So yeah. Self publishing is a compromise. You agree that you're not going to get a lot of the toys the big kids play with (real editors, real artists, book designers, marketing, bookstores) but you take what you can get. And damn it, it might be dumb but  I want a book trailer.

Now I just need to listen to it until I'm sick of it and write out the script.

And then figure out what I'm going to animate. And how. 

This ought to go well.

And finally, last but not least, the second Gray Prince book. I'm working on the cover. I make no promises on time, and I have to shove the release date for the next project back from July 4th to July 17th. But it will come out.

Here is your book sample. Enjoy it.

Dawn’s blue light rippled through skeletal evergreens. Accin, Leythorne thought, and good for eating. He needed to remember these things. Snow still lay here and there, clinging to ground already ripe with spring. The first spring greens were already starting to grow.. The fern-like tendrils of yan root, the spikey tiered growth of pescal. Neither of these were ready for eating yet, or so Leythorne’s new woodsman had explained. Gerswir Wirhanson, Gerswir Hunter. The Freeholders clung to their job titles more than they did their family’s names. It is because the Isles only ever had one Miller. One Huntsman. One Boatswain. One slave-keeper. And the rest were either heirs in apprenticeship, or slaves born and bred. This was quite an unhappy Lordship he had inherited. And it would likely become even more unhappy if he could not find a way to give it up.And to hear Gerswir speak, we could have chosen a worse time to rebel, but there weren’t many other choices. The Keep had chosen Leythorne as his lord. His first act as Lord of the Gray Isles—and naively, he had assumed it would also be his last—had been to set the slaves free. He had assumed that once freed, they would desire nothing more than to govern themselves, and he could find some nice, quiet part of the island and brood for a while. That they would understand how and when to farm, and plant crops, and mine ore, and do the thousands of other jobs needed to thrive.As you ought to have magically understood your own power, the nature of your new blood. Have they given out awards for nativity before? It had been less than two weeks since he had awakened in a body not his own.  He had been born mortal, and had been a Knight of the Faerie King before the accident that switched his mind with that of his enemy’s. These shabby bones belonged to Jennal Faer, would be king, patricide and murderer, and Haron would have rather burned himself alive than reside in them another minute…but no one was offering him a choice.They needed him.Oh, things had gone well, at first. The Keep had been purified during those last, desperate hours. The dungeons were not pleasant, but they were now clean and in better repair. With the doors open, and blankets laid on the cold pallets and colder stone floors, the former slaves had a place to sleep. The food had held out for a week, and the people had finally understood. The slave pens were gone. There would be no more beatings. No more families broken to satiate the master’s cruelty. But there would be hunger and want aplenty, if Leythorne did not come up with a solution fast.I’m a soldier, first and always. I wasn’t made to figure provisioning…and even there, that came from farms already grown. How do you build a city, no, a civilization, from scratch? They were running out of food. The people needed clothes. They needed a better place to sleep than a cold marble dungeon. People wanted to know what they should do next. And again and again, the question Leythorne felt least qualified to answer: What do we pay those who wish to work? And what about those who don’t?And where is work, if it is wanted?Gerswir lead the gathering party, though Leythorne followed close behind. Alys and Pardal Norestrain were nearer still. The Freeholders traced their lineage, and carried their titles in their names; the former slaves kept a heritage far older. Leythorne had spent these last few weeks speaking with them. Norestrain was no family name. It was the name of a city in a kingdom long gone. Devoured by the Mistlord, its people delivered over to the Duskin Lords in chains, it was nothing but ash and an old family name, and a story passed from generation to generation of white towers, and the song of bells, and fields of ripe red wheat trampled under invading feet. Footsteps crunched through silent snow. Leythorne’s gathering teams had grown in the weeks following the Isle’s liberation. Now they were nearly two hundred strong, and where once they all had gathered and hunted, lain traps and dug roots, now they were divided by job. Having the extra hands was an incredible luxury. A clump of ripe wintergrain sat beneath the branches of a sleeping arhat tree. Three days ago Leythorne would have gathered it himself. Now he left it for the next team, and followed the footsteps of a hawl-hind. We cannot kill this one, he thought, as he moved quietly through the brush. Gerswir had tested them all on their woodsmanship before choosing who would be allowed to hunt. Leythorne and Pardal had been selected after much debate; Alys had been in from the start. The golden huntress moved like a feather on the wind. They needed the hawl-hind for more than meat. They needed them to plow in a few weeks’ time. They needed the coarse wool along their backs, the soft down on their bellies. They needed them for breeding. But even Leythorne felt slightly cheated, thinking of all that fine meat on the hoof, and he’d been allowed some of the salted meat, rather than the smoked fish everyone else had to endure. There were four thousand freed slaves and over five hundred Freeholders sheltered by the Keep’s walls. They had eaten their way through the Keep’s store of real meat in less than one day. Gerswir made a sharp fist, the signal to stop.They had nets for catching game, and bows. Leythorne had yet to get the hang of catching game with a net. He’d be more useful setting snares and herding prey towards it. Alys, though, had caught two hares that he’d seen. A flick of wrist, a swirl of knotted twine, and another bird would be hampered. Their main game today, though, were hares and hawl. The massive deer had obvious uses, but Leythorne had always believed the hares were rodents. Perhaps good for eating, but cultivation of the damned things seemed wrong. Gerswir had simply held up one of the captured bucks by the neck ruff. Short ears, puffy cheeks, coats soft as down and whiter than snow. “It’s the hair, master Leythorne. It’ll come out in puffs all year round. A skilled spinner won’t even need to card it. Hawl-hair has better strength, but nothing is ever this soft. It’ll be good for trade…should we get that far.” Now they tracked a hawl-herd across the snow. The hoof-tracks were peculiar, three toed. Leythorne had caught a few glimpses of long legs and longer neck through the brush. With no direct sunlight, this unworldly light gave the creatures a celestial aura. They were like deer, Leythorne decided, only deer the size of horses. He almost stumbled over the deepening brush. The hunt was, sadly, the last thing on his mind. How can I protect these islands? We haven’t any soldiers. We haven’t the supplies to resist a protracted siege. We have one ship, and that is Harian’s prototype. If we are attacked by the Duskin—and I cannot imagine any letting us exist free for long,; they will come soon—then we will have no option but to cut the ropes leading to the docks. The Gray Isles floated like great mountains high above the churning Mistland waters. It was said that the Sidhe scholars who had once lived here had raised the island when the Mist arrived…only to perish, one by one, when the Mist turned its attention from the Deep to the sky. The Keep, in this version of history, had once been a great center of learning. If this was true, the Duskin had remade it to suit themselves. A network of rope bridges and floating docks connected the islands to the waters below. And those waters were quickly becoming their key source of food. There did not seem to be enough game on this island to feed them all.Which meant the isles were vulnerable.We shall have to cut the ropes leading to the docks below. That will buy us some time, but only some. And I was counting on the sea to get us through spring. Ah, the never-ending list of problems. There were four thousand battered souls struggling to find some semblance of normal, something most of them didn’t even know. They needed to work. He needed to motivate them to work. But they’re used to the whip. They’re only just now learning to meet each other’s eyes. What motivation can I use that won’t eventually lead back to the slave pens? I cannot force them to work…and yet we all desperately need them to. Crime was bad and getting worse. Food was bad. Housing people in the dungeons was a makeshift solution at best, and could only be temporary. And every one, every last surviving soul, had been irreparably scarred by the past. For the past four mornings Leythorne had awakened with shaking hands, mouth dry, body soaked in sweat. He had insisted on taking the hunting party out, in part to show the other people that their lord did not shirk his own employ…but also to clear his head. Find a new idea. Find a solution.He had not found one yet.I should have stayed behind. There are things we must do. The hawl broke cover before he could take that thought any further. Six of them, dark shadows in the lightening morning haze. Doe-like eyes flashed white, winter coats gleamed in a sudden golden ray of sunlight. They crossed near enough to touch, their warmth playing over faces and skin, and then, in a thunder of long legs and longer necks, they were gone. Only the waving brush testified they had even been there. Gerswir gave the call, a high-pitched whoo-hoo like a nighthawk swooping down. Then, as they had planned earlier, he moved left with half the group. The other half moved right, pacing around the fleeing herd. Leythorne followed the hunter, until Gerswir shook his head. He motioned downward. Stay, his hands seemed to say, and then he made a spreading motion. That’s when Leythorne realized all the others had dropped their nets. Alys, too, had stayed behind. The girl had improved since her time in the Duskin Lord’s harem. She had filled out a bit, though she was still a slender little thing. Her skin was a rich golden brown, her eyes flashed like tiger quartz, and the hair beneath her scarf was amber. “I think they are going to herd them around,” she said. “They’re going to send them to us.”He nodded. The high rock walls around them would, he saw, act like a funnel. Under Gerswir’s skilled direction, the hawl would be forced back to this place. He scanned the brush for a good place to set his net.A low rumble. The sound of snow under hoof. A seventh hawl broke cover just as the light finally broke over the ground. Soft orange dawn light spread across the snowbound branches, caught in the gleaming drops of snowmelt, and illuminated the magnificence of the hawl buck as it leapt a fallen tree. Black head, black socks, the rest of its body pure snow white, and it sported magnificent antlers. Each must be as thick as his wrist near the head. It bellowed when it spotted them, reeling away with whites shining at the edge of its deep black eyes. Alys moved like lightening flashing, heaving her net over the head. It tangled in the antlers, hung in the hawl-buck’s eyes. She tossed this end to Leythorne. The buck yanked hard against the net, almost jerking its captor off his feet. Leythorne’s grip held firm. Alys threw his net, now, and gripped the fine network of ropes. She dropped to one knee, pulling with her body weight, and Leythorne followed her lead. Mushy snow seeped into the seams of his leather breeches. Breath like white smoke from the hawl-buck’s mouth, from their mouths. Touch of warm sunlight now, dawn breaking the silent blue-world. The hawl-buck’s knees bent towards the ground, eyes rolling in surrender. Alys met his eyes, the start of a smile on her copper-toned lips. Yes. He thought, not sure why. The warmth of morning curled around them like a comforting touch. And then the buck yanked its head hard to the left, ripping the net out of his hands and sending Alys into the nearest tree.Don’t get distracted, he thought, capturing his own net once more. Breathless and coughing, Alys had never let go of hers. She hauled down, forcing the buck’s head to twist awkwardly.Leythorne drew his sword and sank it deep into his half of the nets, then gripped Alys’ net just above her hands and lent his strength to hers. She let go and grabbed for her own weapon. “It’s too small. Your knife,” Leythorne added. “Grab the harness!”They’d each been given them before they left the keep, black leather straps rolled in oiled fabric. She had it out with a flick, snapped around the neck with the pop of leather on skin. The latch had been spelled. The free end melted into the rest of the leather as if it had been made in one piece. Alys threw the other end over the upper tree branches and then pulled. The buck slammed hard against the tree. She hastily handed the strap off to Leythorne and leapt out of the buck’s reach. Its hooves and horns, he noted, could probably have gored both of them to death.There was blood on the hawl’s side. Five deep rents in the hide’s white perfection. He passed his hand over it, and wondered what this herd of hawl had been running from. Bushes rustled to his right. Quickly, he tied the harness off on a tree root and yanked his sword free of the ground. He turned, shouting a warning at Alys.And the great cat broke through the bushes with a roar. Majestic and lethal, it leapt towards the girl.
“DUSKIN!” The word rang through the hall, bringing Bennatus Serasen to his feet. Father God damn it all, he thought, to all the hells, and half the heavens. He’d only just sat down. Was it too much to ask for a little rest? He’d begun to hope that they’d gotten all the monsters, either killed during the Purification or imprisoned in the deeper places within the Keep. Apparently not. Armed men and women rushed past. And not just the volunteer guard but the hall-workers, the housemaids, those where were only here for a meal. There were knives, swords, wood axes and bows clenched tightly in whitening fists. He spotted one lass with a fireplace poker.You do not forget the touch of their lash, he thought, not even after so many days.But Leythorne had given him one instruction before leaving on the gathering team. Blood must not be shed in these halls. Bennatus knew why. The Keep was alive, a thing of living magic. Leythorne’s power had cleared it of centuries of evil, but a little violence, a little spilled blood was all it would take to reawaken the old hungers. No. The blasted creature must live…at least long enough to drag it outside. He reached the main doors, beaten brass with an expanse of hills and snow embossed on its surface. Yesterday they had been plain iron, the day before, wood and brass bars. The Keep was trying on new things, doors as if they were hats, window shapes as if they were shoes. This set was imposing, and the Duskin looked like a roach about to be crushed. There were certainly enough fists and boots volunteering for the job. Bennatus pushed through a half-circle of angry words and knives. “Shed no blood!” He cried. “No blood!”Metal echoed off the floor. And then silence. Bennatus reached the crowd’s buzzing heart.It wasn’t just the doors, Ben decided. The Duskin was small for its kind. Skin dark as pitch; either not powerful, or very young. Bennatus was inclined towards the latter. There weren’t a lot of scars across that hairy hide. It wore the dark summer fur of a crag cat, smoke blackened mail, and weapons lay scattered on the floor, well out of its reach. It knelt on one knee, head bowed.It surrendered, Ben thought. The man standing over him had sword raised for the kill.Bennatus caught his arm. Dark eyes met his pale blue ones; a snarl of rage curled the mortal’s lips. “Not in the Keep,” he hissed. Slowly the man’s eyes cleared, shock registered. He lowered his arm quickly and stepped away. It had been emphasized to all of them, after the purification: No killing, no fighting, and no cruelty in the Keep. Not unless they wanted their only shelter to turn back to its blood-thirsty ways. The slaves had almost feared the Keep as much as the old Masters. The magic users in this assembly—Bennatus, Leythorne, and Mailen Graymane, and anyone with a touch of Fairy blood—could feel the old stones lapping up the darkness, drinking it in full. Some of it—pointless anger, childish fights—faded as quickly as it came, a shallow kind of evil. But a murder would linger, and too much blood had already seeped into these walls.Bennatus lowered his own blade and tucked it under the Duskin’s chin. It sizzled, silver marking a line upon its neck.“Look at me,” Bennatus demanded, and the Duskin did so. “This is a sharp blade.” He whispered. “It will cut through your neck in a heartbeat. Why are you in the Keep?”Frantic red eyes swiveled this way and that. Deformities were common with the Duskin; this one had three, two close together on its left, and a patch where its right eye should be. Ben drew the patch aside. A well-formed third eye squinted against the bright light. “I come,” it said, “I come with a warning, sire. Please, I beg you, do not kill me!” it shivered against the knife.“I’ve worn your scars for centuries. You’d best give me a reason not to. Why were you not killed with the others?”“I am watchman. I live in the far towers. I did not know the Keep was taken until fair yesterday, when no relief came. Please, Master.” It dropped its head towards the tile.Silence, an unpleasant muttering, and the whisper of steel still in the sheath. The undercurrent of planned murder. The interest of the Keep, Ben thought, was almost overwhelming.“Has anyone here felt the lash of this one?” Bennatus called to the gathering crowd. There must have been fifty people in the hall by now.  No one said yes. “Still, I wager no one has felt your protections, either.”The Duskin just shivered.“You said a warning, boy?” Bennatus said. “Aye. The old Lord bid us keep watch for sail or force, or Deep creature, or dark Mist, for the Mistlord’s wrath is against us. I didn’t know what else to do, when I saw the sails come yesterday—”“Sails?” The high, clear voice was familiar. Isa, former headwoman of the old Lord’s harem, pushed through to the front. Her warm face paled. “You’ve seen black sails?”“Aye. For two days I thought it could have been the glows. It happens, sire. Wrights at cavort in the mist, or such, they glow. And sometimes there’s a will-o-the-wisp or Boggart. But the mist also glows when it hits the sails, and the Deep shines with the passage of boats. I was not sure until yesterday that it was sails…and not until today that it is here they come for. I would have left the warning by, if I were not sure. I have love for my own life…and I know it’s rightly yours for taking, but if the Mistlord is commin’, sir, my life is spent anyhow. A warnin’ might spare it. The sails would not.” All three eyes closed, and the Duskin lowered its head.“Black sails?” Bennatus looked to Isa.“The old Lord would speak of them,” Isa said. Her words were clipped, and Bennatus pushed no further. “They mark Duskin ships.” “There are twelve of them that I saw last even. I think I saw the flag of trader, but we’ve never had so many at once. Milord, they will know the Old Lord fell. It would have echoed through the Mist, for something so old to die. If it is the Mistlord’s will, they will take the island back. And they may try anyway.”“And you would like that, wouldn’t you? To have us in your chains again.” Isa hissed. Her fists clenched as if on a blade of her own. “You’d find that passing fair.”Bennatus stilled her hand. “Wait,” he whispered. “Your life would be forfeit, you say?” He said, to the creature.“Because I stay in the watchtower, and I don’t fight for the old ways. I know there’s no place for me in this Keep, no matter who it calls master.” It hesitated. “I’d find your Lord kinder than the Mist and its black sails. Even if he means to take my life, he is good. He’d take it quick.”Bennatus jerked his head at one of the volunteers nearby. “Go get master Leythorne. Tell him to come quickly.”The young boy nodded, and he ran with speed.