Lilah Arrives

Frostfire hits the shelves today, and one of my duties as its author is to tempt you into purchasing it.

If it were a car, I could pop the hood and invite you to admire its gleaming engine while I regale you with details of its many innovative features. I could point out the care with which I designed and built it, and mention some of the pleasures involved in taking it for a ride. For once even the exterior on this one is pretty neat (God bless the factory paint job people.) You won't find anything else like it on the market, I'd say, and it wouldn't be a lie. Too bad it's not a car.

Perhaps I could go for the emotional blackmail approach like James Patterson. I noticed he did another of those Buy my book or I'll kill my protagonist TV commercials during the holidays. It's true that novel royalties are my sole income, and healthy book sales assure that I remain employed, which is ammenable to you, yes? Okay, maybe not. I need to employ someone who no one will want to suffer, which isn't me . . . maybe the new puppy?

Not a hair on my dog's head will be harmed whether my book sells or not; let's just be very clear about that upfront.

But imagine little Skye looking up at you with her sad and beautiful dark puppy eyes, while a sign around her neck reads in wobbly lettering: Please, buy my human's book. She's so small and helpless and entirely dependent on me for buying her growth assistance food, paying for her vet visits and restocking her supply of toys. Only she's too busy playing tug-of-war with Cole and the stuffed toy candy cane that squeaks. I want to kill that candy cane; does that count? Probably not.

I could do the artist thing and talk about the novel's new world-building (Frenchman's Pass and the Ahnclann), the unusual characterizations (alternately dreamy and nightmarish to write), and how three of the cast constantly tried to steal the story for themselves. I could tell the story behind the dedication and the lucky dictionary thing between me and author Larissa Ione. Or mention that one, spooky line that came out of nowhere; so perfect and so unexpected and shook me up so much I actually had to stop writing for a couple hours so I could process what had just happened on the page. Like any writer, I'm certainly capable of boring you with all the details. Willing to? Not especially.

We'll just have to go with the standard. So:

My new book Frostfire is being released nationwide today. It's a book about the Kyndred, third in the series, but more of a standalone this time around. For those of you who liked Samuel Taske from Dreamveil, he's part of the story, as are Nick and Gabriel from the fourth Darkyn novel, Night Lost. If you have a bookstore gift card or some cash left over from the holidays, I hope you'll consider checking it out.

Or if that doesn't tempt you, look into these eyes: