Mandatory link to the newsletter here!
Check it out for some fun giveaways, some great deals on KU books, a couple featured reads, and some updates from me on Bad Blood, Vacancy/The Willful Inheritor, and Blightwood.
And, since you’re here, I figured I’d share an extra tidbit: when Blightwood comes out, I’m thinking of doing a rapid release. So there will be a long wind up to the initial release (mid to late 2022), but then all three books will come out within a few weeks of one another. This feels right for a series from me, so I’m hoping it pans out. In the meantime, I’ll be advertising for the first time and releasing the standalone that is Bad Blood (but will be called something else), so I won’t be totally stagnant, but it’s still kinda scary.
I also included an excerpt from Bad Blood, so here’s that:
Supreme Evil And What It Entails
A very first-drafty excerpt from Bad Blood, my NaNo WIP
The discourse surrounding the most superlatively evil being to have blighted the realm of Eiren with their presence is complex and has already been written about extensively in many thick and pedantic tomes. While the argument has been made for a number of villains to ascend to the coveted, supreme spot of Most Evil, notably Chiron the Disastrous, Scorlisha Baneblade of the Mounted Beasts, The Plague Bringer Norasthmus, and Ed from Next Door Who Insists on Running His Leaf Blower at Dawn Every Morning, there are also a number of names which remain unspoken by the populace of Eiren, for merely alluding to them is said to corrupt. These are the demons, and while valiant scholars and the devoutly religious are compelled to study them so that they might be thwarted should they attempt to rise to power, their names are only traded in hushed whispers for fear of summoning them.
If only summoning a demon were so easy.
Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne fell into a heap, nearly drained, dagger clattering at his side. Blood pooled around him, thick and viscous and black, spreading out in the shaft of hazy light that fell through the chamber’s single window many stories above. He steadied himself on a hand, slick against the stone floor, breaths coming ragged but full, light eyes focused on the chamber’s center. Peering between black strands of sweat-drenched hair, he watched it, the amalgamation of years of study and expedition condensed within a single piece of inkarnaught ore. With the last of his magic, he dragged a finger in his own gore, drawing out the sigil he had designed in a trail of glowing crimson, and waited.
Silence blew through the chamber on a frigid breeze, sweeping over Damien’s pallid skin. The slices across his chest and arms burned with the frozen air but gave up no more blood—there was nothing left to give, unless his already thinning patience counted.
And then the inkarnaught sparked to life with an arcane glow all its own. Damien’s hard-lost blood seeped away from him, drawn through the grooves of the cobblestones toward the ore to be absorbed. Its light intensified, and the entire shaft of the chamber was filled with a sanguine aura as the newly formed talisman rose from the ground. Swelling with power, it filled the freezing room with the heat of brimstone, and even in his anemic state, Damien pushed himself to stand in its presence.
With two long strides, he crossed to the chamber’s center, sallow skin now bathed in scarlet as he reached bloodied arms out. The talisman descended gently to rest against his palm, its master’s palm, eager and alive as it thumped with the same beat that pounded in his own chest.
“My life’s work,” said Damien. “It is finally complete.” He was twenty-six.
That last line is supposed to be funny. Does it come off as funny? God, it needs to be funny!
Anyway…
A.K. Caggiano 