Well, it’s been a while since my last update, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. I suppose the four or five main folks who read and comment on the blog have been in constant contact with me anyway, so you know that nothing much has been going on. Just a whole lot of day job stuff, and mad book-editing.
Anyway, you’ve definitely already scrolled down to the book cover reveal, so let’s just get to it. Behold, the third and final book of the Oræl Rides To War trilogy!
Yes, there’s Mell in denim short shorts. That’s technically not in the story, but I still like it. I did put my foot down about her having a gun, though, which is why she has a nifty knife holster instead. Glorious, and quite disturbing.
There we go. I love this cover. Fun note, I gave Gabriel a pretty open brief for the cover, specifically that a lot of the story takes place in an arid country in a world that is running down and falling apart in some strange ways so if he wanted to go surreal with the landscape, that would be cool. So he did!
I hadn’t actually written the Overfold into the story, at least in its final form, before I saw the draft cover. When I saw it, I immediately had to write it in. Very fun. I guess you’ll see what I’m talking about when you get the book.
When will that be? Well, the paperback is available now! The e-book is also available, here! My setup page and everything says it’s $5.49, same as the other two books in the trilogy, so I am not sure why it is selling for $6.04 on the kindle page but that’s Amazon for you.
In the meantime, this! Next up, Tales of the Final Fall #4, Always Night #2 … or maybe I’ll launch right into Phase Three, the high fantasy series is beginning to pull at me.
What else has been going on? Ugh, so much. All mostly fine, mostly dull. Busy at work, wrestling with Amazon to get print proofs and stuff shipped to Finland (they just randomly stopped), working on the Finnish translation of Eejit (Mäntti), recording episodes for the podcast and dying inside every time it mangles the sound files.
Spring is coming.
That’s about it. I have some other blog posts drafted but haven’t had a chance to flesh them out yet.
Hatboy's Hatstand 
Insta-follow-up: One set of proofs shipped from amazon.es but I still get an error from another set. Sooooo, that’s weird.
Follow-up to the follow-up: By just clicking the “send author proofs” button and ordering proofs from every marketplace over and over, and then just attempting to proceed to checkout when the approval e-mail came through to my inbox, I finally got reader copies of Mäntti in the air from Germany as well. But Amazon is still working on fixing the problem. Ordering over and over again until one of the orders slips through to checkout past the “does not ship to your address” barrier is not a solution.
I’m going to get some author copies of The Last Days of Earth too, but not for a little while. April’s paycheque is already spent.
Awesome Cover!
And thanks for putting up the updated plan – I’m halfway through phase 1 and one completed of phase 2, nice to see a road map of the delights coming up…
Isn’t it a grand cover? Gabriel never lets me down. I think he’s been wanting to put a sexy lady on the cover of one of my books for some time, they’re so puritannical usually.
The Phases sometimes get tweaked a bit but this has been the general scheme for a few years now. Not sure about Colouring With Contro but it’s one I’m thinking about. And laughing.
My high fantasy series originally starred a boy wizard but I upgraded him to girl mainly because I liked the idea of Wump and Toop reading them and being excited the way they have been with other characters, like Galana Fen and Judderoon Pelsworthy in The Last Alicorn. So Heldred became Heldreda, and the story got a lot more interesting in my head.
As another hopefully-interesting aside, both of my high fantasy serieses are already written (I know, George RR Martin and Robert Jordan ruined this line…), I wrote them decades ago in exercise books and they’re sitting in my desk … and the first series, or at least the first book of the first series, is mostly-written on computer as well because I started to re-write it when I went electronic in ~1997. However, there’s a lot of rewriting to do on that one. It is, however, already sort of set up and hinted at in my existing stories. IT’S ALL CONNECTED, MAN.
One day I am going to release a Snider Cut (yes, I spelled it that way on purpose), where each book, and part of book, maybe even chapter, is rearranged into chronological order.
AW. FUCK. YEAH. I’d hit that.
…
I mean the book, of course. Yeah. That’s how I talk about reading these days. Hitting it. Rubbing the ole papyrus. Taking out the giant scroll. Totally didn’t make all these up just now to cover for being a pervy bastid.
Also I would definitely buy and read your Snyder cut, too, as long as the plot doesn’t suck. Which I know it won’t, so yeah. I don’t even care how long it is.
That is what she said, too.
Bwaahahahaha well said! I’m just shuddering at the idea of opening my mass-doc PDF and rearranging it one segment at a time to put it all in order of occurrence.
It comes down to whether you want to just be a great author, or a GOAT author!
And yes that’s still continuing in the sexual references vein.
Also using vein is. Just to be clear.
Mell is hotter than I imagined her to be when reading the draft. I may now have to re-read the book with a hotter Mell in my head. Not sure if healthy or not.
This is going to haunt me.
That’s going to haunt you? That? Man, I shouldn’t have held back. LOL
This whole thing is going to haunt me!
Takes me back to this classic, maybe we should have another round:
https://hatboy.blog/2014/09/12/interlude-sexy-sexy-comic-book-heroes/
So with some caution because I don’t want to trigger a repeat of that marathon comic book character dispute, and as someone who has yet to read any of the Orael Rides to War series so I am therefore ignorant of any of the characters…. geez guys….I barely noticed the character on the cover, other than in her function as the sole living-armed-and-ready-for-action contrast to the arid, hostile, spectacular scenery surrounding her. You guys zoomed in on her with a high powered lens!
I repeat, awesome cover, Hatboy. As someone who was looking more at the rock formations than the person.
That’s only natural. The rock formations are very phallic.
No but seriously, with the exception of Bad Cow, this may be my favourite cover. And Mell is one of my favourite characters.
Ha ha ha ha fair call. Trust you to notice that. I definitely need to read me Bad Cow.
We were already totally woke back then, right?
We super were. But I think we can all agree Mell is not posing provocatively here, nor is she presenting. *shudder*
No, not Mell, hell no. She would murder us for just thinking it.
I am glad I didn’t talk Gabriel out of the denim. Mell usually wears dustier, long-sleeved clothes as a near-albino in a desert kind of would … but as a sole piece of life and colour in a twisted-up corpse of a landscape, it’s brilliant.
As an additional point of order that I tried to make just a minute ago and (maybe) WordPress ate, I should point out that Glomulus Cratch canonically claims to be able to twist sausages into links using nothing but his supple gymnast’s butt-cheeks. So it’s important to know where that came from.
Ummm. And then who eats those sausages?
Anyone who doesn’t want to upset Glomulus Cratch.
Paperback is now live! Updated the blog post and also the link is here:
E-book link still to come.
E-book is now up! The price is not consistent with what I put in the setup, Amazon have jammed an extra 50c on there but it may just be a function of looking at US$ from a Eurotrash locale.
In the process of updating my Author Page on Amazon, I was amused to find there were three editions of Eejit available. The usual paperback and Kindle versions, and then the time-travelling Treaty of Königsberg edition from 1656:
In other fun things that happened in 1656, I was amused to find that the Dutch East India Company ship Vergulde Draeck was wrecked off Ledge Point, about 100km north of Perth. We were big even then, see.
The Gilt Dragon! Features prominently at the Shipwreck Museum. T’was indeed a big year. Clearly those shipwrecked mariners needed something to read, Eejit would have done the job nicely.
I’m definitely putting a starship called the Gilded Drake into one of my next stories. Plausible connection to the Drake character I already have.
Amendment: With help from tech support, I see where I fucked up.
I had given The Last Days of Earth, in its setup page, the same price that I could see on my product page as Bad Cow and Greyblade had – $5.49. So then when it published, it appeared on the product page as $6.04 because they bump it up for foreigners looking into the US product pages.
But the actual price for Bad Cow and Greyblade was $4.99, which bumps up for me to $5.49 when looking at amazon.com from Eurotrashland. So I went back, long story short, and changed the price on The Last Days of Earth to $4.99 so all three will now be $5.49 for me (but $4.99 for freedom-loving freedom freedoms).
That’s the e-book, by the way. You can reasonably expect to be fucked in the arse for the paperback, no matter where you live. But it’s worth it; the paperback is glorious and Amazon gives good buttsex. I’ve heard. I had my butt removed before becoming an author for them. Anyway, there it is.
The trilogy, in kindle format, will set you back less than fifteen bucks. Just for anyone who might be keen.
Book is great!
I know i haven’t been around. In my head.
It’s not you (or anyone here). It’s me.
Fuck the police!
Oh right you had more police murders up your way. Hatboy may not know the latest. This time when the cop murdered it was apparently a mistake. Thought the gun was the taser! So embarrassing! Big oopsie!
Is that the … looked like a hotel or something? Guy went to pull up his pants and was executed for it? Cool and normal y’all.
Damon, good to see you around again boss. Sad it was with this general message but even so. Shit, I need to post more.
Yeah, whoops.
Pulled over for expired license plate tabs. Air freshener on the rearview (big no-no). Had a warrant for arrest for $340! in unpaid misdemeanor fines.
May as well tase( oh shit, my gun came out, better kill him)
Fucking stop it! He’s not some super villain who you need to stop at all costs or you will never find again!
Let him drive away and pick him up later, or don’t.
Oh right, no, it was this one. Is it bad that I got it mixed up with another one? That’s a facetious question, it’s not bad, it’s fucking appalling.
Yeah, I saw comments to the effect that 95% of traffic stops are unnecessary and fed by a desire to bully and potentially kill minorities. In a world where someone speeding, someone driving with a tail-light out, someone running a red light can just have their license plate scanned and a fine sent immediately to the car owner, that solves most of the issues. And that certainly applies to expired tabs! The air-freshener, I don’t even know where to start.
Pull someone over if they’re driving erratically and endangering others. That’s it.
All well said, you two! And this new “I thought I had my taser out, boy is this embarrassing!” defense shows they’re getting trickier and trickier with their murder defense strategy.
Not sure if you’re following any of the Chauvin trial, but it’s like TYT is the prosecution, and Newsmax is the defense. Fucking enraging.
I meant not sure if Hatboy is following that trial, obviously. Whoopsie myself!
It’s brought a whole new wave of “he wouldn’t have died if he hadn’t taken drugs!” “he shouldn’t have died from having a knee on his neck, I tried it” fucksnorts out on Twitter.
We got two resignations from that shooting, the cop and the chief of police.
Well, that’s something.