AUGUST: Of fairy tales and funding

I appear to have totally skipped over July's blog post. Oops. It's probably a good thing I didn't have much to tell.

Now it's August and I have many things. I've already written about the FundTheWandering campaign, so I'll just briefly say it's still ongoing (until the end of August) and there's still plenty of time to claim your book swag rewards (jewellery and bookmarks and books!) and help me give people more free books.

The Wandering, the second book in the Lux Guardians series, comes out next month, and I've been working my ass off on getting it perfect for you all to read. I'm very happy with this book, and I hope you'll love its story and new characters (as well as the direction I took the old characters) as much as I do. The Wandering is the hardest book I've written so far, and a lot of myself has gone into it so I hope it lives up to The Forgotten.

The little breath of laughter that comes from her makes my heart flip in my chest, and I decide right there and then that I’m delirious. I must be coming down with a Strain. It’s the only logical reason for the heat rushing through me.

It comes out September 23rd in digital. If you want a paperback, you'll have to wait a little longer (not much), until October when the physical copies will be released. You can sign up to get one here if you haven't already.

But enough about The Lux Guardians. Here's the fairy tales quota of this blog post.

Love In The Gilded Age! I've already spoken a little about it in its announcement, but since it is now close to finished I can tell you the rest. It's part of a series of Diverse short story anthologies, and this anthology is set in a world called Fissure. There will be three stories in Love In The Gilded age, with many more in Fissure to come. Here is the contents of LITGA:

Xanna  - Little Red-Cap
Love In The Gilded Age - Rumplestiltskin
A Fortress of Thorns - Brier Rose

My personal favourite is Rumplestiltskin because I am more than a little in love with the characters, but I hope you'll love them all as I do. I've noticed most of being an author is writing things I love and hoping other people will feel the same. It's a nervy profession. Here's an excerpt from The Red House.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Elder Niesk said abruptly. “I’ve been wanting someone to avenge my death.”
Xanna must have misheard. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“My death, dear. I’ve been wanting someone to avenge it. It was my husband, you see. He stabbed me solid in the back and buried me in the rose garden.”
Xanna shot to her feet, knocking over her umbrella. She bent to retrieve it and held it close to her chest like a shield. “Osseil guide me,” she whispered, invoking the Saint of wisdom and knowledge. “I don’t understand. If you’re dead, how can I see you?”
“I’m a ghost, sweet. You’re seeing the image of my soul.”

Love In The Gilded Age is out October 28th in digital only. It'll be available on all the usual sites - Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Smashwords etc. and will cost you less than a dollar!

Lastly, The Beast of Callaire is half price now - $1.54/£0.91 - so if you've been waiting for it to drop, get it now.

That's it for August. I'll have more about The Wandering next month, including a snippet of each of the main six characters.

~Saruuh