A Fistful of New Books

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 8, 2016

Okay, I guess you can’t REALLY make a fist if you are holding a book, but that’s besides the point. Here are some very new / upcoming books I wanted to tell ya’ll about, by or featuring friends of mine. And one that even includes my own humble contribution.

First of all, there’s It Came From the Great Salt Lake, an anthology of horror stories set in Utah, authored by a whole bunch of friends and acquaintances, and edited by K. Scott Forman. These stories may be most interesting to folks who live or have lived in Utah, but they should be pretty fun stories across the board. The theme was intended to suggest all kinds of horrendous monster-movie / kaiju type of awfulness, but I understand the stories run the gamut. I’ll be grabbing myself a hard copy soon (today? I need to buy a copy from a friend…), but the book officially releases Thursday (Feb 11). The above link is just for the Kindle version, but it should be available in both paperback and Kindle versions very soon. The paperback will also be available at Life, the Universe, and Everything this week as well – with many of the authors on-hand for signings.

Melissa McShane has been a friend since college. That makes for a longer-term friendship than I’d like to admit. She’s a gamer, a very skilled author, and also graciously assisted in proofreading texts and dialogue in Frayed Knights. If you come across any typos in that game, it’s all but guaranteed to be something I added late and thought I could just skip the editorial process. My bad. She’s good.

She is now a novelist and seems to be on fire. Hopefully not literally, only literarily. Her Crown of Tremontane series has really taken off, which excites us to no end. The series is heavy on the romance and politics, and follows different characters in each book. So you can probably get away with reading them out of order if you wanted to. The third book in the series, Agent of the Crown, should be released in a couple of weeks. The short version of the blurb: “Telaine North Hunter, Princess of Tremontane, is beautiful, spoiled, flirtatious, and the center of fashionable society throughout Tremontane. She’s also a spy.”

Her first two books in the series are Servant of the Crown and Rider of the Crown. There is also a novella in the series that bridges the gap between the first and third books, Exile of the Crown.

Next up is Kingdom City: Revolt, by Ben Ireland. It is the sequel to Kingdom City: Resurrection. Ben is a transplant to Utah from Australia (by way of Texas), and I got the chance to meet him as we manned the table together at Winter Faire in December. He’s also been in a couple of anthologies by Xchyler Publishing. We had the cover reveal back in October, and the book is available now.

Next up is a book I’m personally very excited about…

Sibyl’s Scriptorium Volume 3 is a collection of the winners and runners-up from the Æther Illustration Contest, DragonComet Short Story Contest, Odyssey Poetry Contest, and PhoenixMoon Graphic Novel Contest for 2016, sponsored by the Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium. My short story, “Best Wishes,” is a story about a genie dealing with the complications of granting wishes in the modern era, and will be included in the anthology. That’s all I know – we’ll find out the actual winners and where I placed on Thursday as well.

After the awards ceremony, it should be available for purchase from Amazon in paperback and in ebook format after that. The paperback will also be available directly from the Sibyl’s Scriptorium booth at Life, the Universe, and Everything this week after the awards ceremony Thursday night, and many of the authors and illustrators will be there for signings.

And finally – I’m friends with fellow Xchyler author Candace Thomas, a talented fantasy author and super-nice, friendly person. She’s been struggling with the final book of her Vivatera trilogy the whole time I’ve known her. And now – finally – it’s about ready to go out the door.

Everstar concludes the series, but you’ll probably want to start with Vivatera. 🙂 Final release date isn’t set yet, but it is probably just a few weeks away. Candace talks a little about her adventures releasing the novel and the trilogy in this blog post.

So there you go. More awesome reading to enjoy!

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