I sort of did not intend to disappear off the face of the blogging earth. I really meant to do some progress updates for Of Gold and Iron, build up some hype or whatever. But ah, oh well, now I shall just wrap them all up into one big update.
I finished my go through of reading OGaI, now I'm just waiting on edits. I decided that since I already had a bunch of people beta read OGaI back when I was starting to query it that I would skip betas this time around. I'm just having a couple of friends read it to check for consistency.
Of Gold and Iron is 283 pages long making it replace Week of Werewolves as my shortest full length novel (Winter Cursed of course still wins as my shortest story). It used to be 120k words long (as long as Time of Trepidation and A Certain Sort of Madness) but to fit publishing guidelines I shaved off 10k words and somehow never got them back. It is also made shorter by the fact that I am making it a different size than my other books.
But enough of that technical stuff, it's high time that I finally release my official blurb so that you can all know what this story is even about.
“Swear on something else.
Swear on your humanity.”
I
suddenly find it very hard to swallow. My humanity? With a jolt I realize that
there are far greater things at risk here than just my life. I’m in the faerie
world, anything could happen. Even immortality.
The
Otherworld is the home of the faeries, deceitful, decadent, and deadly. As the
next in line to become Guardians, Jaye and her brother Thomas are tasked with
defending the human world from all things magical. But when a routine scouting
mission ends with them trapped in the Otherworld, it becomes painfully clear
that someone doesn’t want them to leave the world of the faeries. Determined to
not become an immortal’s pawn, Jaye kidnaps Ravven Crowe, an arrogant solitary
faerie, so that he can guide them safely home. But things quickly go from bad
to worse when they are captured by the Winter Court and embroiled in a plot to
start a faerie civil war. Thomas is enslaved by an Unseelie faerie, and it
seems that the only way to save her brother and avoid a war is for Jaye to ally
herself with Ravven.
The
faeries are governed by a set of strict laws. For their own safety, the
Guardians have their own rules. But with Thomas’s life hanging in the balance
there is only one way to save him that does not include breaking the faerie’s
Fair Law, a crime that ends in death. Together Jaye and Ravven must compete in
a series of deadly tests given by the faerie courts in order to earn Jaye the
right to be named the Fair Assassin and wield the Blade of Gold and Iron. As
the Fair Assassin she will be permitted to kill any faerie she so chooses, but
first she has to live long enough. Walking a fine line between destruction and
further entanglement with Crowe, Jaye is going to have to break her own rules
if she wants to win. She must trust a faerie. Her life and humanity depend on
it.
I already have the cover, and it's a beauty. We are right on track for an early October publication, I'm shooting for October 3rd, but publishing waters are rather tumultuous so I'm not going to make any solid promises (especially with how unreliable this whole year has been). I'm also trying to work toward a special release "thingy" for lack of a less vague word. It is my first time doing something like this so again I'm not going to make any official announcements, I'll hopefully have more details by release week.
With that said, I am looking for ARC readers. So if you can't wait another second to read this story then sign the form below. The ARC copy doesn't have the final edits, so bear that in mind.
