Brought to you by insomnia, the sixth Death’s Handmaiden book, Loyalty. Seriously, I was up at 6:30 a.m. doing the final edits on this thing. Some people view Sunday as the first day of the week, so it’s next week, sort of.
Anyway, Amazon are being a bit speedy today, so I already have the ASIN!
Witches and Ray-Guns 
just appeared on Amazon UK.
Should be out everywhere. I just took a nap and I’m about to update with the links.
Ahhhhhh! Life is good.
Wow tgat is a super dark cover on my Kindle i almost cant see the figures saluting becous it just becomes a square of moteled Gray and black.
But it is a bautifull awsom cover in coulor.
I have kind of given up trying to get the covers to look good on a Kindle. If they do, great. If not, hardly anyone ever sees them anyway.
I guess it depends on the settings of the kindle i have min set to show thr cover of the book im reading on the lock screen thats why i noticed.
I can see how it woud be hard do disign some thing that looks good in colur and grayscale and still has the right vibe./pos(itiv).
It was not ment as a kritik it was just ment as an observation and i should have useed tone notstions on it./lh
All your hard work is appreciated. The AU link worked fine. And I do like that cover and the high contrast poster-like effect.
I am so happy to hear the book was released! As soon as I saw it here I went and bought it. Going to read it now, and take my kindle to a coffee shop and read till its done. 🙂
Hope you enjoy(ed) it.
Really good book. I like the many surprising turns – I got „whiplash“. Please continue the series.
What is better than Nave? More Nava 🙂
Well, the idea is to keep going at least until they leave school. Not sure when the next one will be, there’s a load of plot to work out, but it’ll happen.
Take care of yourself! I speak from painful, personal experience that if you neglect yourself, you WILL pay for it, often in long standing ways. UTIs SUCK.
We appreciate the new book, but don’t kill yourself trying to get it out. Please?
With so much bad in the world at the moment, we should treasure what good we see. What fun we read. Because we never know exactly how long we have to enjoy it. I am GOING to savor every moment I read this book, because I know things are going to get worse this week in the US. I didn’t THINK they COULD, but I was proven wrong last week. God help us all.
A new book helps. Thank you.
The insomnia meant I put the book out earlier than I thought rather than me staying up to do it or anything. I actually took longer doing the work and took breaks to nap when I got tired, but I got an early start because I was lying awake thinking ‘I could be doing something useful instead of lying hear complaining about not sleeping.’
And, yeah. Sometimes I sit down and think up fictional horror stories to put into books as backstory. Generally, I never manage to come up with much that’s worse than what reality decides to do. I have a story I started writing and dropped for reasons where the protagonist came from a New York mostly submerged by climate change. Someone was saying that I did a good job of portraying the mindset of the Jan 6 ‘protestors’ in a Fox book. I’ve done religious extremism in various fictional forms. What really happens in the real world still manages to come off worse.
It can be disturbing, you know?
I wrote a bunch of stuff when I was younger, never finishing most of it due to ADD. Much of it is simply too fragmented or badly written to use, but some of it is so damned disturbing that I frankly read it now and say ‘why am I not in a looney bin?’. I keep it, because it is all my writing and some of the characters are cool, but it will NEVER see use as it is. There are things that are utterly unforgivable.
Nava and my main character Wil Storm would have a lot to talk about. Their methods are also surprisingly similar. Wil is not a magician (most of the time!), just a sneaky, stealthy sort with access to nuclear weapons. He was made to be what he is, a human sized and shaped weapon of mass destruction. So yeah, he and Nava would hit it right off. Neither of them are fools, so neither would want to fight the other. Go out for drinks? Maybe. Nothing more. The dragon Wil married won’t let him sleep around and might give Nava a run for her money in sheer scary.
Back to reality?
Mark Twain put it well- ‘Truth is stranger than fiction.’ Also sadder, scarier, and much more depressing.
Humans are human. I know that, but it doesn’t get any easier to deal with.
Some days, I feel much more like Nava must when I see my senses of duty, loyalty and decency being derided as ‘old fashioned’. As ‘not profitable’.
Enough depressing myself! I am off to re-read ‘Loyalty’! GOOD READ! Thank you!!!!!
You’re rereading already?!
Okay, so I wouldn’t say no (it’s on my Kindle), but I’ve just ‘read’ the thing more times than I care to think about, so it can wait until I’m ready to write the next one.
I still have the first thing I ever wrote (on a typewriter, no less). It will never see the light of day. I also don’t read it because… cringe.
One ‘small’ benefit to growing up with ADD and learning to compensate- I read VERY fast with 95% comprehension and retention. Add to that? I was motivated.
GOOD READ, sir!
And yes, the early stuff is often VERY cringe-worthy. Some interesting ideas, but I just looked at some of my earliest works and yeah. *cringe*
Excuse me. Can I haz more Nava?
I was awake early for a different reason (minor heat wave on the Pacific Coast) when I saw you’d released Nava #6. That was at about 12:15AM PDT (If I recall, you’re about 12 hours ahead of the West Coast) and finished around 3:15AM. Highly enjoyable, and I appreciate your insomnia, at least. 😀
Like an earlier poster, I’m also re-reading to insure I didn’t miss anything important, like the Dark Ones showing up and mistaking Melissa for Cari.
I am more worried about the Dark Ones showing up, taking one look at Nava and RUNNING!
That would not make for a very long or interesting story, even if it WOULD be smart of them!
The Dark Ones will not be showing up for a while. Don’t worry.
I check back here often to find out about your book releases. If I wait for Amazon the notice comes about two weeks after I read the story. Being retired means I have plenty of time to read,not to mention the weather in Vegas is now up to broil. I can’t believe I used to go out on the ramp over at the airport and survive 110 degree air temps. Now I get sweaty if the apartment goes above 77 degrees.
BTW I would love to read about your version of Vegas.
Never been to Vegas. I once mistakenly did a two-block walk at noon in Phoenix. Almost gave myself heatstroke.
My version of Vegas… Depends on the setting. In the Fox universe, it’s probably been reclaimed by the desert. Same applies to Nava’s version of Earth, actually. The Ultrahumans universe is probably surreal with Ultras doing stage shows. The Titans universe might have an interesting Vegas and they could actually get there at some point. Hm.
Will you release art for Loyalty?
Also I loved it and have loved every one of this series (and all your series.)
Thanks for the entertainment!
Yes. Probably later today.
My pleasure.
Apart from giving the word “overpowered” a completely new dimension, I really loved the book.
The whacky thing about most of the OP stuff is that it’s not that OP. The energy conversion thing is MASSIVE. The battle drones, not so much. Admittedly, the battle drones have a rather OP effect, but the point cost (Tammy rating) is fairly meagre. For a given value of meagre.
Put another way, compared to Mysara, Nava is still a normal person.
I think it’s safe to say that Nava is OP compared to her peer group, and maybe a good portion of Clan Worlds practitioners, but not to the story universe as a whole.
I was mainly referring to that “Level 5” spell she used…
Yeah, kind of. It has some significant limitations, not the least of which is its complexity. It’s also possible for it to fail due to timing. It does fall into the OP category, but she’s not the only person who can use it.
Really enjoyed the book. Great stuff! I admit that the cover and title made me think you were going to go in a slightly different direction, but no complaints. Very much looking forward to seeing where you take some of the dangling plot points you left after this book. As always, thank you for entertainment.
I admit that the cover was DESIGNED to make you think it would go in a different direction. 🙂
The title, less so. Loyalty was just a theme through the book in various ways.
Usually, within a week, the books show up on barnesandnoble.com Loyalty hasn’t shown up yet. I think that the B&N distribution is through Smashwords do you know of any hiccup there? Thanks!
This is an absolute guess, but part of the approval process is probably manual, and last week was the day the US gets destroyed by aliens… Uh, it was July 4th last week and there were a lot of people on holiday. I’ll give it another couple of days and ask them why they haven’t approved it for external distribution.
And I just got the notification that it has been accepted for external distribution. Give it a couple of days and you should see it in B&N.
It’s up on B&N just now, awesome thanks!
I just finished re-reading Loyalty and when I got to the part where Mel described Raphael in a certain way it caused me to pause and wonder if you were intentionally poking fun at a very popular set of books where some of the characters were described in a similar fashion to much outrage. Deliberate vagueness to avoid possible spoilers.
Aha! That took me more than a moment. No, Raphael is not a joke about those end-of-the-day related books.
Raphael is actually based on a character form a light novel series ‘Leadale.’ His is not a vampire (in Loyalty to Leadale). However, there is some probability that Raphael will end up being Sparkles Malkin in-universe; that’s the nickname he has in my plot notes, even after I gave him a real name.