It’s here!
And in e-book format, here!
That is all. It’s been a long night and a long year. And I still have a Christmas Special to write, and apparently a film critique connecting Zardoz and Jingle All The Way into the same canonical expanded universe.
But for now, read my book. It’s got pictures!
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About Hatboy
I’m not often driven to introspection or reflection, but the question does come up sometimes. The big question. So big, there’s just no containing it within the puny boundaries of a single set of punctuationary bookends.
Who are these mysterious and unsung heroes of obscurity and shadow? What is their origin story? Do they have a prequel trilogy? What are their secret identities? What are their public identities, for that matter? What are their powers? Their abilities? Their haunted pasts and troubled futures? Their modus operandi? Where do they live anyway, and when? What do they do for a living? Do they really have these fantastical adventures, or is it a dazzlingly intellectual and overwrought metaphor? Or is it perhaps a smug and post-modern sort of metaphor? Is it a plain stupid metaphor, hedged around with thick wads of plausible deniability, a soap bubble of illusory plot dependent upon readers who don’t dare question it for fear of looking foolish? A flight of fancy, having dozed off in front of the television during an episode of something suitably spaceship-oriented? Do they have a quest, a handler, a mission statement, a department-level development objective in five stages?
I am Hatboy.
https://hatboy.blog/2013/12/17/metalude-who-are-creepy-and-hatboy/
Hatboy's Hatstand 
For those of you keeping track, here’s how Phase Two is coming along:
I also updated the aki’Pedia, to include pages for my ongoing series and anthologies.
Amazon is bugged right now. Says only one paperback is available and I can’t add it to my cart.
But I’ll keep checking goddamnit.
Collector’s item.
?
It comes in paperback, right? Can’t buy it that way right now.
Paperback and Kindle, like in the links in the main post, unless they’ve broken. Paperback, Kindle.
I don’t know what that “1 new from” link is but if you go to the paperback page and then go to quantity you can get more than one (I mean, in theory one should be plenty, but obviously if you want to get a whole bunch as late Christmas presents, I would not object).
Maybe it all looks so suspiciously good from my end because they’ve tweaked the system so the usual several-days lag before the product page looks right is replaced with “looks right from this side but still not working”.
It looks like they even ship from the US to Finland again, but Spain is still cheaper and faster for me.
What I mean is, don’t click that “1 New from $14.95” link, since I have no idea why that’s even there.
I’m a fucking idiot. I forgot how to buy things on Amazon. I have no explanation for this. LMAO
I felt like I was condescending a bit so if this is now a case of cross-sarcasm, I willingly withdraw. But if the paperback is now working for you, that’s excellent!
And real talk, after the work week I’ve had, I don’t know if I can be condescending enough in my explanations (actually my colleagues and associates have been grand, I’ve been the one who needed everything explained with nice red boxes).
Furthermore, I choose to believe that you were just so darn excited to see a new book from me, you weren’t thinking straight. Let’s agree that’s how it went.
This is quite likely. And no, I’m totally serious. My brain broke last night and only mended this morning when you indicated the add to cart button. LOL
👍
Just finished the book a couple nights ago. Very much enjoyed it, it was sort-of Urverse light and further filled in story from your main books. The serial format was fun too. Can’t wait for the next one of these and the third Orael book!
Spoiler alert, Damon! I’m still reading it, I didn’t know it was enjoyable XD
Almost done, I was in the middle of the Kingkiller series book 2, had to finish that off first. I’m wondering, now that you made that wordplay on the “last” of the Boze, Hatboy, if you aren’t going to play a similar game with the “last” Alicorn.
I mean, it’s a big urverse innit. Isn’t there some sort of infinite realm where everything is possible? So…it can’t be the ONLY Alicorn in that usage of “the last,” now can it?
Ooh, that’s true, if you go out far enough there’s got to be Dimensions full of Alicorns … but this is the last one from the Four Realms. Maybe. I think. Who knows?
*This* as in the one that’s going to feature in the book I haven’t finished reading yet?!?!?!!!!!!!!one!!
And the spoilers, they just keep on a’comin.
Many thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Yes, I was aiming at “young adult” but have zero experience or practice (although I read the Hunger Games books and half of Tempest Rising), what I was mostly thinking of was the old Howard Conan and Solomon Kane stories, where there’s not much in the way of crafting but a whole lot of action and monsters and visual stuff. Not exactly my wheelhouse and I still erred in the side of analysis and dialogue a lot – but if it was fun, I call it a win!
OK so I finished, finally! Really, really awesome! I have a few random questions, but man did I really love all the action, the different cultures you introduced, the puzzles to be solved. Amazing work.
First, I really like how you have so many of the highly intelligent, advanced species refuse to accept the possibility of time travel with so much evidence that bears no other explanation right in front of them. I mean, I understand both how they can fail to accept it, and also that this is a failing we humans tend to have all the time. But this time the human was accepting reality and the Molren were not, and I loved it.
Second, I wanted to verify that I understand what’s going on with the Citadel of the Cold Hearts folks. What I couldn’t parse at first was the contradiction in the information they “provided” to the crew, between what the Captain thought he had discovered, and their contradictory warnings to absolutely not stop in the space around that singing star (not that they explained all about it of course).
But then, I think I figured it out, just looking for your answer. So they have their reasons for needing some people to be trapped by that star, as you said. But, because of how law-abiding and forthright/moral they are as a society, they had to make that minimal effort to tell the crew to avoid that area in order to salve their consciences. Basically, leaving it to chance, if curiosity would kill the cat, while at the same time being able to say to themselves “well, we DID warn them!”
Is that right?
And finally, what is the Always Night? I have some guesses but am not sure I’m understanding the source of the title.
Again, thanks for sharing your stories with us!
Thanks man, I really appreciate it! I had a lot of fun writing and reading these out to my kids. I will have to scan and share the coloured images – as soon as I gave copies to Wump and Toop, they started colouring the illustrations.
I could have mulled over the complex arrangement with the Cold Hearted and the Gozonaar thing a bit more, I was too rushed for no real reason. The suns will be a recurring thing, entities dumped in Cursèd’s Playground, but for now they are basically unexplained. The “trap” was like you say: one part the Citadel not really doing much to stop people going in there, just saying not to and then leaving it up to the grown-arse space travellers to make up their own minds … and then another part was a “clue” leading Hartigan to change the navigation so they stop inside Gozonaar, and then another part was the Cthagnon, the trap-ship they found at the “clue” location.
Hartigan found some info related to the Alicorn. That was the Citadel, basically, encouraging them to fly in and get trapped. I could probably have done without that. I could have made it into a meta-comment about how the Cold Hearted had known the crew would go in there. They just needed to make sure they stopped and found the trap-ship. So all in all it was a bit clumsy and moving-parted, I don’t know.
Well, I think it was fine but you’re right, it was very complex, a lot of interconnected motivations that could have used more explanation. But maybe not in YA, I can’t really say. It was cool either way, and the many mysteries of the Playground really flesh it out and make it a universe unto itself (even though it’s just a galaxy).