Latest Developments

Various and sundry interesting things are happening in the world of Jeffrey Aaron Miller novels, so let me dive right in. First of all, some of my books are getting new covers and new editions.

Garden of Dust and Thorns is now available as both a Kindle book and in a lovely trade paperback edition. Along with the paperback edition, there is a new cover. Compare and contrast the two, if you will. Which one do you like better?

Old Cover

New Cover

Then there's the new cover for Children of the Mechanism. First, I should explain the recent changes to that book. I got the rights to Children of the Mechanism back from the original publisher. This has given me the opportunity to do some revisions to the story. Nothing major but there were a couple of things I really wanted to change. At the same time, I lost the rights to the original cover art, so I won't reproduce it here. Instead, I cobbled together a new cover, and here it is.

Of course, I already mentioned Dreams in the Void in my previous blog post, so you can scroll down and check that out if you want. In the meantime, I recently published a new novel, which is available for Kindle and in trade paperback. Here it is:

It's the first book in an epic new fantasy series, and I'm already hard at work on book two. More on that one later, so keep checking back, friends. Oh, and feel free to click on any of the covers above to get to the right page for purchase. Thanks!

Dreams Belong in the Void

So let's talk about the novel of mine that has the longest and most tortured history. In it's latest incarnation, it looks like this:

The first novel I ever completed was a smelly mess I cobbled together with rotten scraps of fantasy ideas in the summer after I graduated high school (that's 1991, to be precise). It was the half-baked story of two brothers (who in this first iteration were called Kieves and Redert. Yep.) who discover a mysterious red crystal in a cave that possesses magical powers. They go some places, destroy some things, meet some people, and it all comes to a lame conclusion, leaving room for sequels that will never be.

Anyway, that first version of the story is sitting in a box in a closet forever. I don't even remember the title.

Ten years later, whilst newly married and living in a super tiny apartment with two cats (including one cat who tried to set himself on fire using a lit candle, but that's another story), I decided to try my hand at writing a novel again. I took the germ of an idea from the first novel and made significant changes. It still involved two brothers, but this time they had the slightly improved names of Jaeren and Korli. (I did say slightly improved).

The second time around, it became the story of a mysterious red suit that feeds on angry emotions. Various characters with weirdly spelled names appear and die, and it all ends in dramatic fashion. Thematically, it went from being "random fantasy tale #523" to a focused story about confronting and overcoming tragedy and grief. It almost got published once (by a Canadian publisher), but it wound up in a box in a closet forever. It was called Deep Water.

Despite the utter failure of attempt two, I felt I was onto something, thematically at least. So finally, about three years ago, I sat down and determined to make it work. The brothers became Jeren and Cen, and it became the story of a red suit, a shared dream, and an island nation slowly sinking into madness. It sat around on a hard drive for a while, but eventually I published it as two books: Bloodstone and A Whisper in the Void. It even had a nice hand-drawn map done by my wife.

And here we are, friends. The final iteration of the story. I combined the two volumes into one 187,000-word tome, made various minor additions, and now it is available as both an ebook and a trade paperback called Dreams in the Void. I even added a little pronunciation guide at the end of the book. The thing is heavy enough to be a door stopper.

As a tale about a gradual descent into pain and madness, I think it turned out pretty good, so check it out. There's the Kindle version and the Trade Paperback version to serve all your bookly needs.

Actual Paper for Actual People

So sometimes you just want to hold actual pieces of paper in your hand when you read instead of flipping and flopping imaginary pages on a Kindle device. To that end, I am releasing trade paperback versions of all of my novels that are currently "ebook only."

This includes Shadows of Tockland, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel with clowns and circus people and plague-ridden zombies and tyrannical overlords. In fact, a nice 5x8" paperback version of that one is already available right HERE.

  
Then there's Garden of Dust and Thorns, which is a fantasy novel with animals fighting armed soldiers and all sorts of crazy things going on. You can get the paperback to that one HERE.

Deep Water will be next. I'm merging the two volumes of the Deep Water duology into one volume. So Bloodstone and A Whisper in the Void will get combined into a massive 6x9" paperback of 500 pages called Deep Water Dreaming. Look for that one very soon. I have to do some major formatting and such first, but it's coming.

Eventually, the same thing will happen to every ebook I've ever written or will write, so brace yourselves. Actual paper for actual people, just like it was for hundreds of years.