Publication date for ‘The Crooked Path’

I have a publication date for The Crooked Path.

It will be published by Hadley Rille Books on 22 September 2016, the day of the autumn equinox here in the northern hemisphere. It’s not a random date. The Crooked Path is a prequel (and in some sense a counterpart) to After the Ruin but, whereas that story is centred on the solstices when light (or darkness) has the upper hand, this one is all about balance: light and darkness, love and hatred, vengeance and forgiveness.

The cover is still in preparation but I can share a draft of the front cover artwork. Once again the image was created by the amazingly talented Yana Naumova, who has brought my creature to life in the most wonderful way. I wrote it as ‘half a fish and half a gull with an open beak and a thrashing tail and long, strong, feathered wings’ and left it to her to decide what it actually looked like. You can find more of Yana’s artwork on her Deviant Art page.

  Image © Yana Naumova

A short blurb

Stories link together. What is done in one time and place spreads out across the world to shape the future: there is never a single beginning, never a simple end. But, since this tale must have a beginning, let it be when Almecu the potter carves a creature from dreams and driftwood. It carries him to a place where fair faces conceal foul intent, 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 in other times and places will cost him his life.

An even shorter blurb, courtesy of Irene Soldatos

A bored potter craves adventure, blunders in on something enormous, gets in over his head, and is helped by a mysterious piper.