I Get To Play In Charlaine Harris' Sandbox: DEAD BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

It's likely half the planet knows that Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series inspired HBO's True Blood, and the last book in the series, Dead Ever After, came out last spring. What half the planet might not know is that Charlaine put together a 15-story anthology set in the Stackhouse universe and invited several notable and skilled authors to participate. Oh, and me! She invited me, too! (My working theory to explain my involvement is that she lost a bet.)

Now that press releases are flying all over the place, I get to talk about it and man, sooooo excited.  I've only written novellas and single title books for the last decade; I've forgotten what fun writing a short story can be, and how different from my norm.  It's a sprint, not a marathon, and you've got to get moving in a hurry.  My story, Widower's Walk, takes place 201 years after the events in Dead Ever After, showing readers what Eric Northman has been up to, his thoughts on the past, and his plans for the future. 

The anthology will be released in several formats (audio, e-book, hardcover), with the audio book released by Audible, Inc. on May 13; it's available for pre-order at www.audible.com/DBNF. I'll be sure to post other release dates as I get them. 

Below is a teaser, and the cover. Mild spoilers for Sookie's choices at the end of Dead Ever After. 




Eric Northman thinks that everyone got what they wished for, with all that entailed.  Sookie wanted sunbathing and babies and Merlotte, probably in that order, so his darling had chosen to live in a swamp and have puppies with a sentient Labradoodle, or whatever the hell Sam Merlotte decided to be that month.  Gone now, of course, like(his no not his never his not for a long long time)Sookie, she to the heaven she so unwaveringly knew awaited her and Sam to wherever the souls of Labradoodles go.  Eric is sure Sookie mourned, but Merlotte’s children remained, and his grand-children, etc., etc., ad nauseum, and that would have been enough for her, she would have died happy knowing her line would go on and on. Like Eric goes on and on and will after true death.  Merlotte is not the only sire to ensure his line continues.  He has Pam and he has Karin, and through them many others, and soon he will have a nation.It had been his maker’s will that Eric and Freyda marry to consolidate power and eventually take the United States.  (Well.  The first part was all Appius, to be sure.  Eric might have tacked on the second as an addendum.)  And he had been fine with that plan, once he tweaked it, because—oh, yes, there’s always something—he had always known he wouldn’t need Freyda to take the States.  He only needed the more powerful supes to be looking the other way when he made his move, which worked out nicely, but only for him.  The Stackhouse-Merlottes can have their swamp, and welcome to it.  He’ll take more.  He always takes more.            He wonders when his plan-within-a-plan finally became clear to Sookie.  If she kept up with the news, she would have realized in less than a decade that things had never been so cut and dried as they’d appeared.  He wonders if she regrets giving him up—or letting him be handed over.  I won’t ever settle for settling.  He is always amused by those who insist that having a good choice and a bad choice means having no choices.  In the end, it is a choice, everything is, good and bad, and crying otherwise is for children.  He is many things, but he has not been a child since William of Normandy walked the earth.