Hello, US people.
A quick break into your winter festivities to tell you that I’m running a Goodreads givesaway of my upcoming flintlock fantasy book, Beasts of the Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II.
You have the chance to win 1 of 100 copies of the Kindle edition and be amongst the first to read it.
You can enter here. (US-based people only, unfortunately)
The giveaway runs until 16 January 2023.
Beasts of the Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II is released on 19 January 2023.
Last night, I finally reached the end of the first draft of The Vasini Chronicles III. Woo’hoo.
It’s taken some time to get here. A year and a half, I believe (I should really keep a better record of when I start writing a first draft). But after 157,0000 words (some of which will hopefully be good) it’s done.
It will now sit in a virtual draw for a while before I start editing it to try to put some more good words in there and take the less good words out.
Next up is a non-Vasini related novella. But I won’t be starting on that until the New Year. Well, maybe a little bit before then, if I happen to have a spare moment.
Anyway, woo’hoo.
I’m in the depths of editing Tales From Vasini III. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the condition the novellas are in. They still need work, but its heartening that they are in as good a shape as they are at this point in the process.
Of course that will all be swept away when I next make a pass through them and despair at what I’ve written.
Don’t forget that Beasts of the Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II is out on 19 January 2023. You can pre-order it on Kindle here:
Please check your local Amazon store if your location isn’t listed above.
If you’re on Goodreads you can find details and add it to your To Read list here.
Hello,
thank you to everyone who entered A Divided River Goodreads giveaway. Those who won should, hopefully, have been notified by now.
For those who didn’t or were unable to enter, A Divided River is on sale for the next seven days.
You can pick up a Kindle edition for 99p/99c here:
Don’t forget that Beasts of the Wildlands, the follow up to A Divided River in the Tales From Vasini series, is out on 19 January next year and is available now to pre-order on Kindle. You can find it here in the UK (please check your local Amazon store if you’re outside of the UK).
My new flintlock fantasy book Beasts of the Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II will be released on 19 January 2023. That’s just 10 weeks away. It will be good to put it out into the world after working on it (along side other things) since 2017.
You can pre-order it on Kindle here:
Please check your local Amazon store if your location isn’t listed above.
If you’re on Goodreads, you can find details and add it to your To Read list here.
And here is what you’ll find inside…
The deities were destroyed two hundred years ago. The moon split apart, the sun dwindled and the land was devastated. Civilisation has re-emerged from the carnage, but beasts, twisted by the ravages of the dying gods and goddesses, still prowl the savage Wildlands between the city-states.
Each year, as winter turns to spring, twisted beasts drift into the farmlands surrounding the city-state of Vasini, threatening herds and livelihoods. In The Hunters, Addy Blake, an apprentice hunter, is hired with her mistress and master to hunt down a beast that is killing shepherds and destroying flocks of sheep. But, as they hunt the beast, it becomes clear that there is more than simple hunger behind why the creature is there.
Out in the Wildlands, small independent settlements eek out an existence in walled enclaves free from the interference of the city-states. In In the Ruins of the Deities, one such settlement is asked for aid by a visitor from Vasini. It is down to Nate Tyler and his band of hunters to take the visitor on an expedition through the Wildlands to an abandoned estate. But can they survive against the beasts that now claim the land as their territory and why is the visitor so interested in the ruin?
Tales From Vasini is a companion series of short stories and novellas to The Vasini Chronicles novel series. It tells stories of the wider world of Vasini and its environs. Beasts of the Wildlands contains the novellas The Hunters and In the Ruins of the Deities.
It’s coming…
Beasts of Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II will arrive on 19 January 2023.
Further details to come, but for now here is the cover…
There’s just two days until the release of The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II on 15 July.
Soon you’ll be able to rejoin the adventures of Drs. Marcus Fox and Elizabeth Reid as they investigate the mysteries surrounding the death of Ambassador Joseph Bastin of Laège and the escape of Gareth Miller, the Winter Fayre Killer.
I’ve previously mentioned the murder of Josephine Addams, the Winter Fayre Killer’s first victim, here.
Over the next three months, Gareth Miller would kill a further 16 people across Vasini. At first, the murders were not linked by the city’s inspectorate, with no connections between the victims, with the crimes being committed across multiple districts.
However, when a series of eight murders happened over one week, three of whom were killed in one night, all around the Farrier’s Square and southern Ferrymen’s districts, it became apparent that the bodies — marked by the ferocity of the attacks and the lack of motive — were likely the victims of the same killer.
With the suspicion falling on a single killer, the investigation into the murders was assigned to Lieutenant David Locke of the Palace District Inspectorate, Dr. Marcus Fox’s former sergeant. But the lack of motive and the apparent randomness of the victims meant that there was little evidence to point to a suspect.
Miller was only caught by luck, when the knife he had used in what was to be his final murder, was found with the victim. It was marked with the name of the shambles where Miller worked.
Below is a report from the The Guardian, one of Vasini’s newssheets, that tells of the final capture of Miller. (The newssheets’ interest in the murders was high throughout the investigation and they harassed Locke for more and more information. Much to Locke’s annoyance, they frequently got something wrong in their reporting, the least of which was how to spell his surname.)
You can pre-order The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II on Kindle here (or try your local Amazon store if you’re outside of the UK).
Only three days to go until The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II is released on 15 July.
I may be getting a little over excited.
You can pre-order your copy on Kindle here:
If you’re on Goodreads you can find details and add it to your To Read list here.
The Theatre of Shadows
Book Two of
The Vasini Chronicles
The adventures of Drs. Marcus Fox &
Elizabeth Reid continue…
In the two centuries since the fall of the deities, only a score of city-states have risen from the ashes of their destruction. Foremost amongst them is Vasini — a city divided by politics, class, and philosophies. A city with a threat in every shadow.
Six months have passed since the events of The Silver Mask. Over the winter months, Vasini was plagued by Gareth Miller, the Winter Fayre Killer, who murdered 17 people before he was captured by Lieutenant David Locke. The city now waits for Miller to be hanged. But when Miller escapes gaol, ready to terrorise Vasini’s streets once more, Locke must hunt the murderer again to stop him from claiming more lives.
As Miller flees into Vasini’s streets, Joseph Bastin, ambassador to Vasini for the city-state of Laège, is assassinated in a brothel. With the threat of political repercussions for the death, it is up to Dr. Marcus Fox, newly appointed Commandant of Police, to find the ambassador’s killer.
Fox’s investigation soon leads to a suspect, someone who has been investigating links between the Laège embassy and the worship of the dead deities – his ally, Dr. Elizabeth Reid.
Now, Elizabeth and her friend, Catherine, must act quickly to clear her name before she is found by someone who doesn’t believe her claims of innocence and she’s forced to dance the hangman’s jig.
But these events are only a prelude for what is to come.
The stage is set. The actors are in position. The play can begin.
The Theatre of Shadows is the second part of The Vasini Chronicles, a series of flintlock-and-alchemy fantasy novels set in the city-state of Vasini.
There’s now a little over a week until the The Theatre of Shadows is out on 15 July. Therefore, it’s time for another insight into the world of Vasini. Or in this case, the world beyond Vasini.
Vasini is one of no more than a score of city-states that have arisen in the 200 hundred years since the devastation wrought by the fall of the deities and the rebellions against the old order of the priests that followed.
Vasini’s closest neighbour of note is Laège, a much smaller city-state located a couple of hundred miles north through the Wildlands. Its current ambassador is Monsieur Joseph Bastin.
Below is an aide memoire on Laège prepared for Philippe Reno, the current Comte de Vasini, by one of his staff.
You can pre-order The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II on Kindle here (or try your local Amazon store if you’re outside of the UK).
With the release of The Theatre of Shadows on 15 July, it’s time for another insight into the world of Vasini.
Before the fall of the deities, Crytha was the goddess associated with air, whispers and rumours. As Dr. Ambrose Richards explains in his A Study of the Old Deities to Inform and Protect the Good Citizenship — a book written by the University of Vasini lecturer as a way to make fast money and considered to be mostly a sensationalist midden heap — Crytha was as changeable as the air and rumours of which she was patron.
As well as being the goddess of air, whispers and rumours, legend claims that she created a race of flying people known as the fles. Since the fall, nearly 200 years ago, there has been no evidence that the fles ever existed, other than a few wild claims by a handful of traders who have passed near mountains. Such claims amount to little more than tales of seeing humanoids with bat-like wings spread between their arms and legs, circling the distant mountain peaks.
As The Theatre of Shadows’s release on 15 July draws closer, I thought it might be worth giving a little more insight into the world of Vasini and what’s been happening since The Silver Mask.
First up, The Winter Fayre killer.
At the end of The Winter Fayre in 195AL, there was the first of a series of murders that would later be attributed to Gareth Miller, labelled by the newssheets due to the location of the first murder, as The Winter Fayre Killer.
Initially thought to be the last of a series of political assassinations that had been sparked by the events in The Silver Mask, it became clear as further, similar murders occurred across that the city that a new, non-politicaly motivated killer, was active in the city.
Below is a report from The Herald, one of Vasini’s daily newssheets, on the first murder.
christianellingsen.net 