New book: ‘The Crooked Path’

There’s news! Today I signed a contract with Eric T. Reynolds of Hadley Rille Books for The Crooked Path. It’s a prequel, after a fashion, to After the Ruin, and is a fairy-tale inspired by Celtic mythology and Greek myth. Those of you who frequented Authonomy (may it rest in peace) may have read part of it there: in those dim and distant days it was called Twicetold Tales. It will be edited by the lovely Terri-Lynne DeFino and is scheduled for publication in the autumn of 2016.

Here’s a blurb:

Stories link together, like beads upon a chain: there is never a clear beginning, never a simple end. This story could begin with a man who stopped the sun at noontime in hope that he might live forever. It could begin with a sailor who set a course across the sea to find an apple for his lady, so she might eat and set her past aside. Or it could begin with two lovers at midsummer, pledging their hearts beneath the flowering trees, or maybe in a book-lined room where an old man, driven near madness by his grief and rage, makes plans for his revenge.

This story could begin in each or any of these places, for all these are beads upon one chain, all these are chapters in one tale and what is done in one time and place spreads out, like ripples ’cross a pool, to shape the future. But, since there must be a beginning, let it be when Almecu the potter carves a creature out of driftwood and dreams. It carries him beyond the confines of his life into a world where he must be far more than just a potter, where fair faces conceal foul intents, where two kings guard the firstborn tree by night and day, where only a living man’s love can undo a dead man’s hatred. And where, if he does not go carefully, the choices made beneath the flowering trees and in a book-lined room will cost him his life.