Quick Progress Update

I’m hard at work on Weight of the Crown: Benjamin Ashwood Book 6, and it’s shaping up nicely. I’ve completed the rough draft, finished my revisions and rewrites, and I’m now on copy-editing. I’ve got two more weeks of that, then it’s off to a professional proofreader. She’ll spend a few weeks painting the entire thing red before sending it back. That gives me a few weeks to accept her changes and apply the final polish. We’re on track for a December 1st release.

This book is currently sitting at 127.7k words, which will make it the longest in the series. It wraps up the main story arcs, but there are a few unanswered questions / unexplored stories which I may delve into later. For now, I’m just worried about getting this thing finished and making it the strongest and most satisfying conclusion I can!

If you’re not caught up yet, now is the time to get reading so you’re reading of Dec 1st!

-AC

Opportunity to Win a 1-Year Audible Subscription

Miranda Honfleur is running a giveaway with a chance to win a 1-Year Audible subscription - $150 value! If you sign up, you are allowing a handful of authors (but not me) to add you to their mailing list. I’m actually on a few of those lists, and they have pretty good content. You can always unsubscribe if you disagree…

http://www.mirandahonfleur.com/promo/

Even if you don’t want to sign up for the newsletters and have a chance at the subscription, there are some great Audiobooks Miranda recommends (including mine), so click over and check them out!

Wondering about author newsletters? It’s not too late to sign up for mine… Newsletter HERE.

Alec Hutson's The Silver Sorceress is out today!

Alec Hutson’s The Silver Sorceress is out today! This is the highly-anticipated sequel to The Crimson Queen, which I really enjoyed. I enjoyed it so much, that I actually did an interview with Alec a few months ago for my newsletter. In honor of Silver Sorceress coming out, I thought I’d post that interview. My favorite part, SS had the working title of The Shadow King? Does the title give anything away? You’ll have to read the book to find out…

Check out the interview and scroll to the bottom to see the cover. If you don’t need no stinkin’ interview to buy the book, the you can grab The Silver Sorceress HERE.

AC: What fantasy books and worlds have inspired you?

AH: When I was very young, I lost myself in The Wizard of Eathsea, The Chronciles of Prydain, and the old Forgotten Realms novels. I read Game of Thrones when it was released in 1996, and it completely changed my sense of what fantasy could be. Later, New Weird authors like China Mieville, KJ Bishop, and M. John Harrison were hugely influential. For worlds, Westeros, certainly. Faerun. Krynn. Bas Lag.

AC: After finishing Crimson Queen, I couldn’t wait to dive into the next book and learn more about the world. Can you give us a sneak peek of where the story will go and when to expect it?

AH: The next book will be Shadow King, and I expect to have it ready to go sometime this Spring. Most of it is already written, but I’m going to make sure I’m completely happy with everything before I usher it out into the world. The story will follow three main POV threads – Keilan, Demian / Alyanna, and Cho Lin. The first three characters will be familiar to readers of Queen, and Cho Lin was introduced in a story in my short story collection The Manticore’s Soiree. She’s the daughter of the Shan demon hunter who was tasked with recapturing the Chosen in The Crimson Queen. That duty now falls to her. 

I have the story arc for the three books in The Raveling trilogy all set. Readers will get to wander around fairly widely, with extended stops in The Empire of Swords and Flowers and the Frostlands. I may write further books in Araen, as I do enjoy the world and I think there’s plenty more to explore.

AC: How did you get into writing?

AH: My aunt owns a very large and excellent independent bookstore in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I grew up among the shelves and worked there when I was younger. I read voraciously as a child and my lifelong dream has been to instill the same sense of wonder in others that I enjoyed.

Bonus Material: Alec Hutson lives in Shanghai China, loves ultimate Frisbee, and the first chapter of CQ was written after exploring the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Book 5 is out on Audio!

Burning Tower: Benjamin Ashwood Book 5 is now available on audio!

Eric Michael Summerer is back with more great narration and this book is getting the best reviews of the series! If you are like my wife, and have been waiting for the audio even though you know you are featured as a character in this book and you keep asking me what happens to you and I keep saying “why don’t you just read it” and you are like “no, I like the audio version better” and I am like, “then you have to wait” and you are like, “my character had better not die” and I am like, “your character doesn’t die” and you are like, “my friends keep saying I’m a bad guy” and I am like, “that’s because they actually read the book” and you are like, “audio is so much better” — now is the time to pounce…

Pro-tip, don’t name characters after your wife.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2ItD3RG

Audible: https://www.audible.com/author/AC-Cobble/B01GA7NZTE

Video with Thomas Webb

My small press, Cobble Publishing, is putting out three books in Thomas Webb’s Clockwerk Thriller series. We have two out, with the third to arrive likely around January. I absolutely love these books. When people ask, I describe them as “If Michael Bay wrote Steampunk”.

I think that’s accurate - these books are incredible escapism fun. When reading them, you can see the movie playing in your head… When you peel back the onion though, they go a lot deeper, and in the interview below Thomas discusses that. There are not a lot of people of color in SciFi, and very few on the covers of books. We put someone of color on the cover of Stalemate because it’s true to the story, and true to Thomas’ story. He has a lot to say about that in his interview, and I hope you check it out.

If “Michael Bay wrote Steampunk” is interesting, but “pushing diversity” is not interesting to you, I recommend you still give these books a shot. Thomas is not heavy-handed or preachy, he is simply writing what is true to him. That’s what I love about it, this is an authentic story told from a really interesting perspective. If it helps, Thomas is also a former marine, so the combat scenes are badass.

Find the interview HERE.

Or the books HERE.