Hello, June! Love you already (don't make a liar out of me, bro). My current WiP is coming along pretty swimmingly, I've finally put in a vacation request for my birthday week in August, and other real life things outside work are also progressing surprisingly well. As an aside, for a variety of complex and irritating reasons, I haven't taken any vacation time for over five years straight, so this is a massive victory for me. Hoping to do better next year with at least two weeks off (not taken together, of course).
But I'm not here for that. I be here for this month's books for my Backlist Bonanza. So for starters, a book from my Curiosities collection:
A disastrous incident at a ball in St. Jude threatens to undo Alexej Sauveterre, and his protective adoptive family whisk him off to San Marco, a mythical and romantic city in the water. Born sickly, young Alexej has grown up resigned to the fact that only his family's immense wealth makes him barely palatable to other gentlemen seeking partners.
The family's sojourn in San Marco at first promises a much-needed distraction to Alexej when his older brother introduces him to an aristocratic inventor of automata as well as an old school friend who now tours the European continent as a classical pianist. Baseless hope and heartbreak, however, seem to follow Alexej everywhere.
Alexej's fascination for automata and his hopeless infatuation with Briant Cousineau draw the attention of an entity from the otherworld, one that's been wandering the globe for unwary souls to claim through cursed wishes. San Marco's winged lion summons the city's supernatural guardians in answer, and in the midst of glittering balls, magical clockwork puppets, and lonely dreams, a terrifying fight for Alexej's soul darkens the streets of a fading city.
And secondly, a book from my Arcana Europa collection:
Iulian Dalca is a twenty-one-year-old musical prodigy with big dreams. He's also blessed with a hint of light magic in his blood, a gift that's apparently unique to prodigies and whose purpose appears to be the developing of an extremely strong connection between artist and audience during a performance. Unknown to most, the gift of light magic also allows him a powerful and inexplicable psychic link to someone who remains invisible, a person he's never met in the real world. It's a connection that strengthens over time, a symbiotic bond whose purpose remains a closely guarded secret among the goddesses believed to have created it.
Cosmin Vasile is an eighteen-year-old young man living in obscurity and poverty in a rural village in the Wallachian countryside. Gifted in song, he spends his time adding to his parents' meager income by weaving and gathering wool for sale, singing rustic songs he knows by heart as he works. He's also plagued by mysteriously restless sleep lasting a week and occurring once a year since he turned eleven, though he remembers nothing of the dreams or nightmares that may have caused the disturbance.
Then out of the blue on two separate occasions, a once-in-a-lifetime chance at fulfilling their dearest dreams suddenly comes along, and youthful hope takes flight...
Only to tumble headlong down a nightmarish pit of old magic twisted for a darker purpose, where lines separating reality and decades-long madness blur. Haunting portraits of long gone students, a cursed mirror hiding a terrifying world of corruption and death, a monstrous satyr lurking in the shadows of the mirror's world - time and hope for escape disappear as Iulian and Cosmin suddenly discover the awful price of being marked as the Muses' rare, favored children.
For the entire month of June, both e-books are 50% off at all online stores. Just click the book titles above for their respective pages and store listings. For readers who prefer to shop at Kobo and Smashwords, click those two respective links to get to my author pages at both stores. Later this month, I'll be posting individual stuff for the books so readers can enjoy a bit of behind-the-scenes goodness that led to their writing.
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