blake michael nelson
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NEWS AND VIEWS - AUGUST 2024

City of Strange Gods is available now on Amazon! Check it out!

This is the most complex novel in the series, with a big cast and multiple POV's. I try to make all of my books broadly accessible to new readers, so you could probably go into it blind, but I highly recommend reading the first two Jack and Miracle Girl books, Disreputable Persons, Champions Weekly, Sneak and the Shadow of Darkplanet, and especially Galatea and the Dupe before jumping into this one. You'll get a lot more out of it.

This brings the series up to ten books (and one short story, Going Viral, which can be found in The Complete Guide to the Signalverse). Not bad.





In other news...I mentioned last month that I had started writing a new fantasy story, The Swordsman and the Shadow. Well, it's got a new title now -- I've decided to call it Lillandra instead, and I'm going to be serializing it on Royal Road. I'm also planning on setting up a Patreon, so if you want early access to new chapters, or if you simply want to support my work (I'd really appreciate it) you can sign up for that. I'm hoping to get it all going around the end of September, after I've got a few more chapters in the bank.

This will be kind of a different approach for me; I'm not sure if it will work out. The most popular stories on Royal Road are LitRPG's and isekai stories, while Lillandra is a more traditional fantasy. The tone is pretty light, though, and I'm trying to give it kind of a light novel feel, which I'm hoping will appeal to that crowd. As for the story itself, well, here's what it's all about:

It's been more than a century since Lillandra, the Night Queen, seized power in the wintry kingdom of Velon. An incredibly skilled sorceress, the Night Queen used her magic to overthrow the rightful king -- and under her tyrannical rule, famine is common, the borders have been sealed to trade and travel, and dangerous monsters roam the countryside.

Determined to put an end to the Night Queen's villainy, a young swordsman named Arai organizes a rebellion, fights his way to the top of her dark tower, and engages her in battle. This should be where the story ends...but unfortunately, Arai's story has only just begun.

Accidentally transported to the other side of the world during their final confrontation, Arai, the hero, and Lillandra, the villain, find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar land, and are forced to work together to survive. Now, somehow, they're going to have to find their way back to Velon...and along the way, Arai is going to have to learn to trust the woman he once swore to kill.

I'll be releasing new chapters every three days, give or take.

So I've been spending most of my spare time working on that, and playing Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, which I started a couple weeks ago. I'm enjoying the game, but it's very derivative of the Suikoden series. I guess that's what the fans wanted, but the developers spent so much time trying to emulate Suikoden (particularly Suikoden II) that they forgot to innovate; there's really nothing here that we haven't seen before. If the game had been called Suikoden VI and been released in 2008, I think a lot of fans would have been disappointed.

My insomnia really started acting up around the end of the month (I'm typing this on about two hours' worth of sleep), but maybe September will be better. Excelsior!


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