The new book is out. The Eyes of the Huntress.
This one was a long time coming. I originally started it in 2015, but I decided that the main character was a little too much like Aneka Jansen and went somewhere different. Well, now she’s back.
- Smashwords
- Amazon, ASIN: B07B2D559G.
In Other News
Having a little trouble with the Twilight Empress book. I’m taking the weekend to consider a fairly drastic change in the background, but whatever happens, I’m expecting it to appear on the virtual shelves in early May.
Witches and Ray-Guns 
Love the cover
Thanks. It took a bit more effort and compositing than usual.
You said you thought the main character was too much like Anika, but I’d like to point out there’s nothing wrong with that. Your Anika books are delightful. So is this one, though.
At the time, I thought there was. 🙂
To me, Shil seems more like Cygnus than like Aneka.
I think the Cygnus comparison is apt from a “powers gained by merging with an alien doo-dad” situation. In terms of Shil as a character I suppose she’s doing Aneka like things more than any other character you’ve written, although I think whatever efforts you took to distance Shil from Aneka worked as I don’t find it to be too derivative. It’s possible that at some point your tendency to self plagiarize will catch up with you but for now I’m still happily buying and reading. My electronic library has a whole shelf dedicated to you, as it were.
My electronic library has a shelf dedicated to me too, but that’s because I put all my own books on my Kindle in case I need to read them through and it’s easier to find them if they’re all in one place. It let’s me check the file conversion too.
Rather enjoyed that and would like to see more of Shil. Just hope she doesnt end up in the orphaned series category. Also, I get more of a Cygnus vibe than an Aneka one. Still waiting patiently (mostly) for Guardian and True Dark.
I would love to see long series for all your books but you have to write about what pleases and inspires YOU.
Come on man, you are better than this. Kidnapped Earthling? God, I hate that trope.
I love your books. I’ve read them all. I read Thaumatology twice. You are better than this.
OK, I may have been a little harsh last night. I’m much further along in the book now, and it’s pretty good. I was totally turned off by the rapey kidnapped earthing scenario in the beginning. If I didn’t already know you as an author, I would not have kept at it.
The trouble with the ‘misplaced human’ (however they get misplaced) trope is that it’s a useful one. The character learns about their new environment along with the reader, so the info dumps that tend to be required come in a relatively organic fashion. It avoids the even more horrible trope of some learned person saying ‘As you all know…’ and then unloading buckets of information for no reason.
Aneka was a misplaced human. Kaya (Zanari series) is maybe an easier one to handle one since she’s from a backwater planet.
Anyway, glad you got into it.
PS. Awesome name. 🙂
“[…] was not exactly a rapist.”
Right?!
If fiction authors were not allowed to use any situation or character that had been written before they would pretty much go out of business. I think using the word trope has been a trope so snarky people can distill a work of fiction down to a point they make fun of it.
I seldom reject a book because it uses a plot line that has been used before. Usually I delete a novel because the characters bore me or the author is padding the page count. I also think I have more tolerance than most people these days for an author to set a story up. Usually there is a reason for the buildup.
I think… Well, ‘trope’ seemed to be used in place of ‘cliché’ because clichés are bad and tropes may be good or bad. But, word drift. So, as you say, trope has tended to become a bad thing. ‘Oh, it’s that trope. Huh.’ Someone will come up with new word to mean the same thing eventually. Probably.
Setting up a story… Oh boy. I went back to basics for the recent Sondra Blake book: put in a hook right there in the first scene. Sondra shows off her magical talents by trashing some orc thieves. Now the reader knows we’ve got contemporary New York, magic, fantasy creatures, and a female cop.
Now, what I’d really like to be able to do is start a book like David Eddings. I picked up ‘Pawn of Prophecy’ and read the first page in the shop (it was back when books had paper; you know, the Dark Ages). Nothing really happens on that first page, but the writing grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. (This may be just me, though the series was pretty popular.) Once I got going, the magic system and the characters held me, but that first page hooked me without giving me anything much to explain why it was hooking me.
David Eddings, one of my all time favourites. I still go back and reread his book every couple of years.
I sometimes wonder what a book where Belgarion and Sparhawk meet up would be like, as they both come from worlds with similar rules. But then you have the problem of what the big bad would be. Would be fun though.
Oddly, I could never get into the Sparkhawk books.
Finished the book and left a review on Amazon. One annoying thing with Amazon is that I have you and other authors on follow. I should get a notice that you or any of them have released a new book. This feature seems to work erratically. Lately I am getting the notice after purchasing the book. It shouldn’t be that hard for Amazon to do.
I have a space reserved on my virtual bookshelf for your next novel. E books are so much better than the clay tablets and parchment scrolls I read as a kid. Ever try to use a bookmark in a scroll?
Given that Amazon sometimes takes a couple of hours to process a book, and sometimes takes over 24 hours, I’m not terribly surprised that it takes them a while to send out notices about followed authors.
That said, it may be partially my fault. I suspect (it’s a guess) that you get a notice after I mark the book as mine on Author Central. I can’t do that until the book is officially on Amazon’s shelves (see above about variable times) and then it takes them a random time to agree that a given book is mine. Meanwhile, I’ve already told everyone it’s out in this blog.
Then again (on the third hand?), Amazon sometimes send me a message telling me that I’ve published a book and I don’t follow my own author page! Maybe I should. So, Amazon can be random. Go figure.
In other news related to that comment on Amazon’s author messages… Amazon recently sent me an ‘invitation’ to have one of my past books discounted, at some time in the next few months, on some sites. It’s weird, but I said yes because they’ll publicise it to a wider range of people. Amazon have some odd ways of doing business, but they are (generally) pretty successful.
I’ve been trying to read the book but having read about half the book it’s disappointing. One thing all your characters (up to now) seemed to have in common is that they were people – if they had skills it was because they worked to develop them, they had a complex personality with faults and virtues…I don’t get any of that from Shill. The story would have been better if you had the spirit of the Hunter be sapient and take over – then at least it would have earned those skills and there’d be an in-universe justification for not having any personality beyond the need to hunt evildoers.