Blogging Excuses & Book Bargains

Hello Bloglandia!!

Just a quick message to let you know about a terrific deal on my latest release and to offer up some excuses for my recent lack of bloginess (yes, that’s a word now).

First Up: The Excuses

Loyal readers may have noticed lack of pizazz on the blog recently…and a lack of Finn McSpool (who I know is far more popular than I am). My excuses? Well, there’s a couple.

One, I have been up to my eyeballs with the latest revision of the final two books of The Osteria Chronicles. In order to really give this possibly-final revision some intense attention, I’ve got myself on a strict schedule that’s leaving the blogging side of my brain a bit drained.

Excuse two, I’ve been plotting and planning some changes and an entirely new endeavor for next year and I’m sorting out how that will mesh with this blog. More on that soon.

Never fear (I could see the panic in your eyes), this blog isn’t going anywhere, but it will continue to be a little thin over the next couple weeks. After that, I’ll hopefully be brimming with announcements and ready to relay all my (and Finn’s) French adventures — and believe me, some of those vacation days did turn out to be an adventure.

Alright, excuse time is over. Now get ready for an Amazing (yes, with a capital A) deal on my most recent, and most massive novel…

Next Up: Kobo’s Amazing 40% off Sale!!!

Right now, as in TODAY, you can get Domna: The Complete Set for 40% off!!!

I know! This is an amazing offer, but before you start clicking and clacking away to take advantage of the bargain, do be aware that it’s exclusively available on Kobo.

So, Kobo readers, if you’ve been contemplating picking up all six parts of the Domna serial in one handy package, you might want to hurry because this sale ends in just a few days (18 November, to be exact).

All you need to do to snag this great deal is click the cover above or the image below, add the book to your cart, then enter NOVSALE at checkout.

And if you don’t know what in the world Domna is, I’ve included some glowing reviews, a quick teaser, and even little sample below.

P.S. Kobo is featuring dozens of other boxsets in this limited time offer. If you want to check them all out, just click HERE.

A Little Domna Teaser….

​Destiny isn’t given by the gods, it’s made by defying them.

• “This book is highly entertaining…”
• “I’m loving this story!…a unique and imaginative work..”
• “…a satisfying mix of fantasy and history.”
• “Highly recommended…”
• “So much political intrigue, betrayal and backstabbing that I just HAD to keep on reading.”

Sofia Domna has her future planned. She will follow in her father’s footsteps and lead the Temple of Apollo. She’ll marry her childhood love, Papinias. She’ll have respect, status, and power.

But when her father bitterly forces her betrothal to a stranger and orders her from the life she’s always known, Sofia is thrown into a new world where any wrong move could mean her demise.

If you like the political intrigue, adventure, and love triangles of historical fiction by Philippa Gregory and Bernard Cornwell, and the mythological world-building of fantasy fiction by Madeline Miller and Simon Scarrow, you‘ll love Domna.

Pick up your copy of Domna: The Complete Series to lose yourself in this epic tale of passion, ambition, and betrayal today.

Domna: The Complete Series includes all six parts of the serialized novel in one volume, plus several bonus features:

• Part One: The Sun God’s Daughter
• Part Two: The Solon’s Son
• Part Three: The Centaur’s Gamble
• Part Four: The Regent’s Edict
• Part Five: The Forgotten Heir
• Part Six: The Solon’s Wife
• Four bonus glimpses into the creation of Domna
• An invitation to take a free tour of Sofia’s world

SAMPLE EXCERPT

Chapter One – The Prophecy

I stepped into the darkened room. After the bright afternoon sun of a Bendrian summer day, I could see nothing, but the pungent scent of spruce incense bit at my nostrils. Today, like every Bendrian youth on the eve of his or her sixteenth birthday, I would have my fate told by the oracle. From the seer’s predictions I would be given my path into adulthood. My future would be decided by an old man who served as the voice of the gods. Having my own mind and strong ambitions, I knew what I wanted. But would the gods let me have it?

“Enter,” rasped the voice of the oracle.

A chair scraped against the stone floor. I still couldn’t see properly, but I knew this room well enough to head toward the sound without faltering. Slipping my hands along the smooth, curved edge of a table, I took cautious steps until my toe brushed the leg of a chair. The wooden seat creaked as I slipped into it. My legs started trembling the moment I was settled. I told myself I was being ridiculous. My destiny was already written by my birth and by my training.

Still, the oppressive silence of the oracle’s room and its bitter chill despite the heat of the bustling afternoon outside had put me on edge. A cool, papery hand clasped mine. I jumped in my seat and cursed my childish nerves. The dry hand gave a squeeze.

“I had doubts you would come.”

“Shouldn’t you have seen I would?” I teased and laid my free hand over his. My vision finally adjusted to the dim room and I smiled at the warm, crinkled face of my grandfather. Like all Osterian seers, he had been born with red hair. The strands had gone completely silver years ago, but the tufts of his unruly eyebrows retained their fiery tint. 

“Such a cynical girl,” he said with a sigh and released my hand.

I leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You should know I’m not the type who would break with tradition.” 

As a priestess my career would be centered on maintaining tradition. Growth was changing Osteria, with several of the poli demanding independence and the Solon of Osteria doing his best to keep the realm united under his rule. But, as long as the people had their rituals and festival days to keep them grounded, the troubles of politics were easier to withstand. In my future role as priestess, I would be the focus of that tradition in the polis of Bendria, so I needed to adhere to it.

My grandfather, usually so still and calming, shifted in his seat and picked at his fingernails.

“And if you don’t like what I have to say? Will you still want to uphold the tradition?”

My stomach lurched. 

My father, Bassio, served as High Priest of Apollo here in Dekos, capital of Bendria, and I had followed his every movement since I could walk. I trained alongside the acolytes, I memorized the incantations, I never flinched at the sacrifices, and I understood how bedsport honored the gods. Unlike most people in Bendria, I could speak, read, and write in all the dialects of Osteria, the ever-growing realm Bendria had recently joined. I was even fluent in the language of the Califf Lands, a separate realm far to the south.

I may have not yet reached sixteen, but I had my future planned. I knew what I wanted and I’d always believed it would be mine. I wanted the honor and status of being High Priestess of Apollo, and I wanted the love of Papinias, my childhood friend who I’d sworn myself to. 

I had a course mapped out for my life. Shouldn’t the gods appreciate and honor that as I had always honored them? Shouldn’t I of all people get what I want? Still, how bad could my Seeing be? Oracles were known for giving unclear prophecies, forcing you to interpret the true meaning. The sooner I learned mine, the sooner I could mold it to my future plans.

“Go on, give me my Seeing. I’m not destined to work in the sewers, am I?”

The old man paused, sucked a deep inhale through his nostrils as if for courage, then declared, “You will marry a king.” 

I stared at him wondering if he’d been too long in the sun. This prediction was about as meaningful as the ones I cast with my sister, Jalaia, when we were children playing at being oracles. Having inherited our mother’s dark hair without a hint of red, we would never be true seers, but a few years ago I had been lucky enough to befriend a sorceress who taught me some of her spells and trained me in the use of star charts that might glimpse the future. True seers scoffed at these “tricks” saying the only way to know the future is to hear it from the gods’ lips, not from the movements of objects in the sky or the casting of rune sticks.

“Of course I’ll marry well. I’m the daughter of the high priest and a member of the patrine class,” I said, hoping to goad the seer into telling me something more, something I could twist to suit my plans. 

Besides, he might not be wrong. Secretly, Papinias and I had betrothed ourselves to one another on my birthday last year and hadn’t I at times called Papi the king of my heart? Still, I wanted to hear my grandfather’s and the gods’ blessing of my future with Papinias who, with his education and training in the medic’s arts nearly complete, would have more power than any Bendrian king these days. 

Unless I was passed off to a land not ruled by Portaceae – Osteria’s center of power – such as the foothills of the Great Mountains where the Middish lived in their uncivilized tribes (which, even in his worst mood, my father would never do to me), a “king” in Osteria was nothing but a man with a pointless title. 

This had been a sore point as Osteria spread its rule across the land and absorbed one region after another. There was no war to bring this unity about, just treaties signed between district governors and the Solon, the overall leader of the realm of Osteria who resided in Portaceae City. With poli now overseen by governors who reported to the Solon, sat as judges in local matters, and collected taxes, kings suddenly found themselves as little better than figureheads under the new agreements.

“Your sister didn’t marry well,” the oracle reminded me. “She’s the eldest. She should have married far better than you could ever hope to, yet she was given to a nobody. A clerk for the undersecretary of the Solon is all she got.”

“But I’m prettier,” I said, taunting the old man with the vanity he always chastised me for.

“You are a most impertinent young woman. Zeus give strength to the man you wed.”

“You’re too easy to tease. Now, I think you owe me the Seeing my father didn’t pay for.”

Click HERE to keep reading by taking home your copy today, and don’t forget to enter NOVSALE at checkout.