Those of you who have been playing along at home are aware that Auberon was the first step of what I plan to be a very busy summer. As of this week (I wasn’t exactly paying attention), Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) put the next piece of the puzzle on the interwebs.

Imposters is now available for pre-order on (so far) Kobo, Amazon, and iTunes.

Some background: Last summer, I was invited to participate in a closed anthology (by invitation only instead of taking submissions), edited by Irene Radford. The story I submitted was The Shipwrecked Mermaid. Last winter, I decided to write a novel (my first, by the way) and decided to write a sequel kind of story to Mermaid, picking up with Rick after he got out of prison and was working to make something useful and positive out of his life.

Unlike Auberon, which is pure military Science Fiction, Imposters if very much a modern/sci-fi thriller kind of story, an action piece on Earth in an entirely different universe, one populated by all manner of interesting alien beings hiding among us, studying us, watching.

More importantly, the material is a bit more, uhm, mature in parts. As in, there is a section in the middle, about five pages long, that is probably not appropriate for your thirteen year old to read.  Your sixteen year old probably knows these things, assuming you’ve been doing your job, but I want to make sure people know going in.

I’ve always said that most of what I write is appropriate for my own target audience, who will be fourteen this year, but that there will be exceptions from time to time. In the case of Rick and Laurie, we have one of the exceptions.

Here there be dragons…

—————————————————–

After Imposters, the next major release will be The Story Road, starring Henri Baudin as the man who founded the Republic of Aquitaine, four centuries before Jessica Keller and Auberon. This is another Alexandria Station novella, clocking in at around 25k words, and is the first of an occasional set that will come along as I need them. Need? Yes, need.

The Story Road resulted from a conversation that takes place fairly late in Queen Of The Pirates, the second Jessica Keller novel (which has gone to the printer. YAY), between Jessica and Arnulf Rodriguez, the King Of The Pirates. Arnulf asks her about the Founding Legends of the Republic.

What is a Founding Legend?

In this country, George Washington is a Founding Legend. Ben Franklin, Man of Science. Lafayette. The Battle of Lexington. The Battle of Saratoga. The Battle of Yorktown. Ethan Allen and Green Mountain Boys. These all make up an arc of stories about a supposed rag-tag group of colonists taking on the most powerful empire in history. And beating them.

Henri Baudin will fill the role of George Washington, in this distant future of which I dream. He is a Bard, a musician, a traveler. He does not set out to change the course of human civilization, but kinda stumbles into it. He is helped along by Suvi, marking her return nearly a thousand years after The Librarian.

And yes, I was able to talk Matt Weight  into returning to do the audio book for The Story Road. It should come out at the same time that the ebook and print version do, in late June.

—————————————————–

Finally, as I mentioned above, Queen Of The Pirates has gone to the printer. I am assured that it will be coming out the week before Sasquan (the world fantasy con in Spokane in August). I am hard at work on the third book in the initial Jessica Keller trilogy, Last Of The Immortals. (If you’ve been paying attention along the way, you know who the special guest star will be, based on the title alone.) This one will be coming out at the end of October, just in time for OryCon down in Portland, in early November.

Hope you are having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

shade and sweet water…

blaze