Bloodstone

Okay, let's talk about the next novel. In order to do that, I first need to give you a little history.

Way back in 1991, I successfully completed my first novel. It was intended to be the first of a trilogy, but it was terrible, just absolutely terrible. I don't even remember the title of the book, but it's in a box somewhere in a closet.

Despite it's awfulness, there was a glimmer of an idea in that book that stayed with me. In 2001, the year I got married, when Lisa and I were living in a tiny apartment called Colonial Arms in Fayetteville, I sat down to attempt another novel. I took that glimmer of an idea and developed it more fully and completed a novel called Deep Water. It was good enough for a publisher to hold onto the manuscript for eight months, but it never did get a contract offer. Deep Water is also sitting in a box in a closet somewhere.

That brings us to the present day. I always wanted to go back and rewrite Deep Water completely and make it work, so I finally did that back in 2012. However, it wound up being one enormous bloat of a book, so I turned it into a duology. Volume One is called Bloodstone. Volume Two is called A Whisper in the Void.

What is it about? It's a fantasy novel set in a magical kingdom called Tesaria. Here is the book's blurb to explain it:

A terrible artifact has been stolen from the king, and the Elite Guard rampage through the mountain villages, seeking the thief. After a tragic encounter, a young man and woman--Jeren, son of a village patriarch, and Aleas, a merchant's daughter--find themselves on a desperate flight into the lowlands. But there is nowhere to run, for a dreadful power is at work in the heart of Tesaria, and a time of cataclysm has come.

There you go. Obviously, that doesn't tell you a whole lot about the actual plot. Thematically, this is a book that is very close to me. It started as a glimmer of an idea. It became something very intensely personal when I rewrote it in 2001, and it has only become more so with the latest (and final) version.

The first volume will be available within a couple of weeks. Look for it on this page right here, folks.