Champion of the Gods: Books One and Two – Available Now

For those who don’t own it (or who want a copy with the new cover art) The Last Grand Master is on sale now through the release of Book 2 – The Eye and the Arm on April 14, 2015.

Also – you can now pre-order The Eye and the Arm from all your favorite places.

DSP Publications: The Last Grand Master

Barnes & Noble: The Last Grand Master

ARe OmniLit: The Last Grand Master

DSP Publications: The Eye and the Arm

Are OmniLit: The Eye and the Arm

Barnes & Noble: The Eye and the Arm

The Last Grand Master – New Cover – New Sale Price

When DSP Publications decided to re-release The Last Grand Master as part of taking the entire Champion of the Gods series, I didn’t think to ask about a new cover, so when Book One was re-released on February 10, 2015, it had the same cover as the first edition. But then I sent in my request for what I wanted in the cover for The Eye and the Arm and to do what I wanted for Book Two, we needed to redesign the cover for Book One to keep the theme consistent. What you’re about to see is the result.

For those who don’t know how getting a cover works, DSP Publications took my input and paired with a cover artist – AngstyG in this case. The artist and I discussed my general idea and she got to work. I’ll be honest, the end result was all her. She gave me some choices, but with just a few minor tweaks, Sam came up with the theme for my books.

The only issue with the new cover was we’d released Book One a few weeks ago with the old cover and now we were coming back with a new look. Sadly, that couldn’t be helped. I think you’ll agree the new theme is amazing and it will be easier to sustain over the life of the series. But what to do about everyone who bought Book One with the old cover? I asked DSP Publications if they’d consider running a .99 cent sale on the book and they agreed.

From now until Book Two is released on April 14, 2015, The Last Grand Master will be on sale for .99 cents.

DSP Publications: The Last Grand Master

Amazon: The Last Grand Master

Barnes & Noble: The Last Grand Master

ARe OmniLit: The Last Grand Master

The text hasn’t changed, so unless you want the new cover, you don’t need to buy it to learn anything new.

Remember to check back on April 14, 2015 for the release of Book Two – The Eye and the Arm.

Better yet, Pre-order it now:

DSP Publications: The Eye and the Arm

Amazon: The Eye and the Arm:

Are OmniLit: The Eye and the Arm

The Last Grand Master Release Day and Contest

DSP Publications is re-releasing The Last Grand Master today! If you don’t already own it, you can buy it now:

DSP Publications:

Amazon:

B&N:

ARe:

In connection with the re-release, DSP Publications is sending me on a virtual book tour and they are giving away a Kindle Voyage to one lucky winner. Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Continue reading The Last Grand Master Release Day and Contest

Upcoming Contest For The Release of The Last Grand Master

As many of you know, The Last Grand Master is being re-released this Tuesday, February 10th. I’ve got some tour stops happening and I wanted to let you know that DSP Publications has donated a Kindle Voyage as the prize for my tour. I’ve got a bunch of stops (perhaps too many?) but they’re spread out pretty well. You can find the giveaway link on each of the tour stops.

Pre-Order Links:

DSP Publications:

Amazon:

B&N:

ARe:

TOUR SCHEDULE

February 10

Cate Ashwood

February 11

Susan Mac Nicol

February 12

Tali Spencer

February 13

Shira Anthony

February 16

M.A. Church

February 17

Charlie Cochet

February 18

Raine O’Tierney

February 19

RJ Scott

February 20

Sue Brown

February 23

Alicia Nordwell

Tour Schedule:

February 10

Book featured at Rainy Day Reviews

February 11

Interviewed at Review From Here

February 12

Guest blogging at As the Page Turns

February 13

Interviewed at Literal Exposure

February 16

Book featured at Beppe DM Book Blog

February 17

Book featured at The Dark Phantom

February 18

Guest blogging at Coffee and a Keyboard

February 19

Book featured at The Literary Nook

February 20

Interviewed at Examiner

February 23

Book featured at I Smell Sheep

February 24

Interviewed at I’m Shelf-ish

February 26

Interviewed at The Writer’s Life

Release Day – First Love – A Free Prequel To The Last Grand Master

First Love has been released and is now for free download! This is a short free prequel (or frequel as I call it) to The Last Grand Master. You can get it for free from DSP Publications and OmniLit, the non-romance side of Are or you can download a PDF copy from my site here: Download First Love

In something of a quirk, if you want to get it from Amazon, they won’t let us list it for free, so you’ll have to pay .99 cents. Kindle readers need not worry, however as you can get it in .mobi format from the other two sites. Continue reading Release Day – First Love – A Free Prequel To The Last Grand Master

Something For Nothing: My Free Prequel Is Available Jan 27th

On Tuesday January 27th, First Love, will be released. This is a short free prequel (or frequel as I call it) to The Last Grand Master. It is now available for ‘pre-order’, from DSP Publications and from OmniLit, the non-romance side of ARe. In something of a quirk, if you want to get it from Amazon, they won’t let us list it for free, so you’ll have to pay .99 cents. Kindle readers need not worry, however as you can get it in .mobi format from the other two sites. Continue reading Something For Nothing: My Free Prequel Is Available Jan 27th

Dear Me, Is It November Already?

(The title sounds better than, “Another Update”, or “Odds and Ends”, don’t you think?)

Time seems to fly buy lately. Maybe it’s because I can’t stop ‘lil q from growing up and getting bigger every day. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been so busy and I have so many deadlines to ‘meet.’ But wow. It’s November. With Halloween in the rear view mirror (pictures to follow soon) and the leaves turning (maybe pictures of that, too) it’s time to look ahead – less than 55 shopping/decorating/baking/whatever days til Christmas (sorry, had to toss that in). Continue reading Dear Me, Is It November Already?

Book Two Of – ‘Champion of the The Gods- – Is Done

Kinda. Sorta. Maybe. Hopefully?

So After many months of start and stop, of rewriting while trying to keep the story intact, I’ve finished the rough draft of Book 2 – The Eye And The Arm. Those who’ve followed my blog know I struggled with this. Not because I didn’t have the story set, but because I had to make the story fit within a word limit. I’m having second thoughts now. Overall, I feel the Champions series is good – dare I say very good, though I know the hubris of saying that. My issue is I wanted it to be a bit more epic.

Nendor has three main continents – Ardus, Laudria & Erd. My goal was to make each book a journey that took the reader to each continent and back and than in Book 4 I’d wrap things up. The 100-120K word limit left me two choices: abandon the 4 book model in favor of more books or abandon the original series and try to create a new, scaled down story that would fit in the 4 book model.

Originally I decided to go with the former – preserve the overall story by breaking things into more, but shorter books. That sound great in theory, but the issue has been conflict, tension and keeping the readers attention. My original book 2 would have been about four times longer than the current book. With revisions and eliminating things that aren’t essential, The Eye And The Arm would probably be about three times longer – give or take 20-30 words. The first third set up the rest. Cutting it down to the first third didn’t make sense because it was all set up and no conflict/tension – or not enough to justify a book.

Re-writing the story required a major rewrite, I might as well have written a whole new book. That has been the labor of the last ten months. (Of course I also published Purpose, finished NaNoWriMo, wrote a couple other things when I needed a break, joined the Wednesday Brief Flashers group – oh yeah, and I got married and helped raise our daughter.)

The next step is to do a quick self-edit and send it to a few people who’ve agreed to read it and give me their honest opinion. Once I get that back, I’ll know where to go next.

In the meantime, I plan to work on another of the many projects I’ve been wanting to write. Stay tuned – details to follow. 🙂

-AQG

Holidays, Food and Culture of Nendor

I suppose it is somewhat obvious that when world building, one should give the inhabitants something uniquely their own, but it wasn’t to me. Although I like to cook, I’m hardly a foodie. To me, reading a description of what the characters are eating is boring. Generally I skip over these parts, especially if there isn’t anything unique or important in the description. Example of important food would be Lambas bread in the Lord of the Rings or Aliantha berries in Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant Chronicles. Thus far, Nendor doesn’t boast any such miracle food.

Like any other author, I bring to the table what interests me most. I really don’t care what people eat. The fact that characters eat is sufficient. That is probably a bad attitude and given the feed back from the editors at Dreamspinner, I suspect future books will need to highlight something unique to Nendor and I’ll need to pay a bit more attention to what the characters are eating. Continue reading Holidays, Food and Culture of Nendor

Religion and Culture of Nendor

The world was created by the seven gods and goddesses of Nendor. Siblings, they are in order of age:

Honorus – Lord of the gods; Lenore – Goddess of the earth; Neldin – Lord of the underworld; Arritisa – Lady of the ocean; Khron – God of war; Seritia – Goddess of love; and Falcron – God of wisdom. Each deity has it’s own temples, clerics, and followers. Although there is no prohibition against following more than one, most people choose a specific god or goddess to primarily worship. Of course prayers are offered to different gods or goddesses depending on the need, no matter who a person follows.

The seven gods worked together to create the world and it’s inhabitants. Neldin, however, chafed under his brother Honorus’s rule and plotted to over throw his brother and rule in Honorus’s stead. A fierce and bloody war was fought which ended with Neldin’s defeat. The Six declared Neldin the God of Evil, razed his temples all across Nendor and forbade any to worship him. In the aftermath of the war, Neldin’s few remaining followers hid their devotion to avoid persecution and death from those affected by the war. Within a generation, the world believed worship to Neldin as an organized religion had disappeared. But his followers survived and created an underground hierarchy, planning for their god’s revival.

Continue reading Religion and Culture of Nendor