Category: My Books

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Dronefall My Books

You Need to Read the Dronefall Series this Fall

When autumn comes around with its crisp cool breezes and dark cozy evenings, readers everywhere often get the urge to take a hearty bite out of their towering to-read stack. Some reach for mysteries or horror, some for classics, some for fantasy, and some even start in on the Christmas romances. But what if I told you you need to were going to fall in love with a little-known dystopian series this fall?

Dystopia might not scream “cozy autumn reading” at first glance, but on closer observation, I think I can convince you this is, in fact, a great way to spend your moody nights in.

Let’s get right into the reasons:

🍁Spooky, mysterious vibes throughout

Dronefall has multiple mystery subplots running through all six books. There is much clue-hunting and secretive investigating. Against a backdrop of an often dark and sometimes eerie atmosphere, you’ll be surprised how much the series will satisfy your craving for mystery-thriller elements.

🍁Book 2 confronts corruption in academia

Halcyon (the main character) returns to the boarding school where she grew up to seek out some lost information about her identity in the second book. She also comes face-to-face with the (very real) corruption and lies that are trying to seize the minds of the world’s youth. Read this while you’re in college and you won’t be able to unsee some things in real life.

🍁Book 3 references Hound of the Baskervilles

The Sherlock Holmes classic is a great fall read in itself, and I think my fellow Sherlockians will be pleased to discover the way book three reflects it. Also, it’s a scientific fact that the Hound can’t get you if you’re wrapped in a cozy fleece blanket. I just made that up.

🍁Rain, thunder, and an all-night café

I don’t know that it actually rains as often in Budapest as it does in Dronefall, but it sets the stage. It’s easier to hide from drones in the rain, since night vision as well as infrared are not as effective in a heavy downpour. And yes, the series does strongly feature a nocturnal café where drone-snipers often seek caffeine at all hours of night. 

🍁A nuanced look at how to be a light in a dark world

If you’re looking for something a bit headier than the light reading you might have enjoyed this summer, the Dronefall Series is full of thought-provoking themes to deepen the plot. The world is becoming increasingly more complicated, and sometimes it can be hard to see how we should best shine the light of Christ. This story could help you work out some answers for yourself.

🍁Immersive European cyberpunk setting

Sometimes, you just want to dive deep into a vividly detailed fictional world for a few books (or six.) The unique setting of the Dronefall Series will give you plenty to explore. (Check out A Traveler’s Guide to the World of Dronefall here.)

🍁Books 2, 6, and part of 5 are set in fall

The whole plot of the series takes place in a little over a year. Several season changes are cycled through, though I kind of skipped winter. It’s harder to shoot drones in winter. Should I write a Christmas special? As it stands, the season that gets the most page time is, in fact, fall.

🍁The rest of your TBR can wait😏

I know you’ve got a tone of books to read. I’m sure many of them have been on your list a lot longer, and most of them are much more popular. But you can always add a few more, right? Those other books aren’t going anywhere. Now is the time to pick up the Dronefall Series.

Here are some links for you.

Get a paperback copy of book one HERE

Find the eBook version HERE

Check out the whole series HERE

Need to know more about the books? Check out my reason for sticking with this project for 8 years. You can also find a list of tropes and things to expect in this post. Or this one if you want an even angstier look into my motivations.

Take your time. But I hope you eventually meet me in the all-night cafe with a new favorite book for a dark, stormy night.

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My Books

Escape Writer’s Block with The Burnout Journal

A few summers ago, I got the idea for a prompt journal. It was around that time I realized my biggest adversary in my creative life wasn’t rejection, impostor syndrome, or people being rude on the internet. What gets me down the most is burnout. Writer’s block, art block, whatever you want to call it. Paralysis and lack of motivation seemingly from some invisible well running dry.

I created the journal pretty quickly. Several of my immediate family members didn’t know I was working on it until the proof arrived. I wanted to make something to help other creatives—especially writers, artists, and poets like me, who might be facing the same things.

What is the journal, exactly?

It’s a collection of 101 prompts. But these aren’t the usual art or story prompts. They’re not one word or even one sentence written at the top of the page. I wanted to go deeper than that. I wanted to jump-start the creator’s mind by beginning to expand on the ideas before handing them over.

Writing the prompts in the journal was a good exercise for me in itself. Each prompt is a suggestion—or multiple suggestions in one—of a story. These stories are both full of possible detail and wildly open-ended.

But there was another element I wanted to address with this prompt journal. I know a burnt-out creative mind is easily overwhelmed, so I wanted to make sure that—while giving you plenty of fuel for your smoldering artistic fire, I also provided some guardrails to keep you from pushing yourself to make every prompt a whole project. I only give you two pages per prompt to explore your story. As a result, you should feel the delight of finishing a mini piece after completing each prompt.

Another unique thing about the Burnout Journal is the fact that I intended the prompts to be used for whatever creative medium you like. You could be drawing, writing flash fiction, composing poems, experimenting with comic strips or even just rambling on in prose. Here’s an example or a completed spread, using prompt no. 2. I opted to draw a map and write up a little mock travel guide to my fictional self-portrait island.

 Who is the Bunout Journal for?

Artists and creatives. I know. That covers a lot of ground. Though I’m not really in the camp that insists literally everything is a creative art (come on, now. Let’s not get silly.) I do think most people have a creative streak in them. It might not be highly developed as it is in those of us whose lives revolve around it, but I think a lot of people could get something out of this journal. Or should I say, put something into it.

However, there is a reason I aimed it at artists and creatives. Here’s the thing: if you’re kind of more of a normal human, burnout is going to manifest in other areas of your life probably more strongly than your creativity. You might struggle with energy or motivation to do things or feel sort of blah and directionless at work or in your social life. But if you’re a creative artist, when burnout hits, the main feeling is going to be, “Help! I can’t CrEAtE sTUFF!”

And maybe that’s the main difference between creatives and more normal people.

Where can you get it?

I published The Burnout Journal through Amazon KDP, so it’s available from Amazon right here.

Hopefully I can be a part of your escape from burnout and provide you with a refreshing way to shake off the doldrums and get back to doing what you love. Feel free to reach out to me in the comment section if you’re feeling creatively stuck.  I’m working to make this blog a resource for frustrated creative types, so if that’s you, don’t hesitate to request post topics!

You can get through this.

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My Books

Reasons to Read The Boy Who Called the Foxes This Fall

“I’m trying to finish Dad’s song.”

  Sage looked up from her camera screen. “Huh?”

  “In the notebook Mom showed me. He left a song unfinished. Don’t tell anyone. Please? I haven’t written a song in a long time. I can’t even do it anymore.”

  “I won’t tell anybody. But why are you doing it? Seems like that wouldn’t be an easy way to start back up again. Seems like it would be easier to start with a clean slate and write something on your own.” She motioned for him to turn around and look out over the town. “Co-writing is really hard.”

  Co-writing. Yes, it was. Especially when your partner was dead. There was the constant overhanging question of whether the other writer’s vision was coming through at all. It was all the worse when you could never check in with him to ask. “I don’t have any other ideas.” He pushed his bangs back and glanced over at her. “It’s kind of—”

  “Sorry, do that again.”

  “Why are you taking portraits? I thought this was supposed to be a street-photography thing.”

  “You have to take the pictures you see. Anyway, I think you can do it. A lot of your stuff already sounds a lot like Dad’s stuff. It might take a little while to get back into it, but that’s understandable. Don’t give up on it.” She sauntered off away from him, apparently not seeing any more pictures there.

  “I wasn’t going to give up on it,” he said. And that was when he realized how close he had been to doing just that. “I was just thinking…it’s never going to be the song it was supposed to be.”

  “Cade, that’s okay. No song really is.”

                                             Excerpt from The Boy Who Called the Foxes

What is The Boy Who Called the Foxes?

The Boy Who Called The Foxes was born from one thing, really: my obsession with the cozy, brisk, dreamy, eerie, exhilaration of the autumn season. When the idea sparked, all I really knew was I wanted to write a story that would be the literary equivalent of a rich pumpkin-spice latte on a crisp October morning.

For a long time, that’s all I had. It was driving me a little crazy. I didn’t have any characters, no specific setting, no themes—I didn’t even know what genre it was going to be. But finally, the catalyst came in the form of a single image—a boy calling foxes.

The Boy

  I didn’t know a thing about the main character at first. The title came before I had a name for him. At last, I came up with Cadence Kim—a guy who was kind of in the same stage of life as I was. He was a college graduate wondering where his life had gotten him so far. He was on his way back to move in with his mom and siblings again, since his job-hunt in Chicago was going nowhere.

  But most importantly, Cade was an artist. He was a musician who couldn’t seem to live life the way everyone else thought he should. He was a sensitive person who saw the world through different eyes and wanted something it couldn’t seem to provide.

  And he had lost his father—a similar person who, though an incredibly quiet man, had influenced his family to its core.

The Vibes

Obviously, a major draw for any potential reader would be the autumn aesthetic. I know I’m not the only one who lives for those short months toward the end of the year. The descriptions are loaded with the roar of October wind, the migrating birds, the changing leaves, the cozy coffee houses, caramel apples, autumn festivals, etc. I tried to make it as immersive as possible.

While writing this book I was constantly surrounded by everything I thought could help me set the mood. I burned fall candles, drank a lot of chai, created a Pinterest board, and listened to ambient sound and playlists I curated for the project. So, the writing process itself was a kind of therapeutic experience. Almost like a vacation. I hope some of that comes through for the readers, too.

The Themes

Themes typically start emerging later in my planning for writing a book. They come from looking at my characters and their problems and their hopes and dreams. Cadence’s dreams have given way to disappointment in the beginning of the book. He’s disappointed in himself, and knows his old acquaintances are going to be let down as well. So, he spends a lot of time trying to hide from his situation and avoid confronting the changes that have rocked his world.

I think it’s something a lot of people can relate to. Especially if you were ever one of those people who everybody said had “so much potential.”  Yes, there’s so much you could do, but what will you do? A lot of us don’t actually have our whole lives tied up with a bow by the time we’re eighteen. Don’t let the YA novels fool you.

The Other Perks

Of course, I could go on and on about how this book is worth your cozy autumn reading time. It’s fun, it’s lyrically written, it’s loaded with healthy best-friend relationships between siblings, introvert problems, settings you’ll want to move to, journal entries, original song lyrics, and just a hint of otherworldliness to set it apart from other general contemporary fiction. But rather than keep you here any longer, reading a blog post, I’ll send you off to read a book instead. (You can decide for yourself whether or not it’s The Boy Who Called the Foxes.)

More On UnsweetenedDarjeeling.com:

The Rise of “Gritty” Christian Fiction

How to Survive a Creative Dry-Spell

How to Write a Book Review that Actually Helps Readers

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Author Interview Character Interview Dronefall My Books new release Nightstare Q+A

Answering Questions Nobody Asked About Dronefall Four

 The release of the fourth book of the six-book Dronefall series is fast approaching. Finally. Whether you’re new to Dronefall, a longstanding reader who’s been with me from book one, or a casual bystander who might have stumbled across this post by accident, I want to treat you to a quick self-interview to answer the questions that may or may not be going through your mind right now.

So, let’s start with a couple of basic things for the newbies here.

What inspired Dronefall?

I’d done a lot of novel-writing prior to starting the Dronefall series, but I hadn’t ever ventured into dystopia before. Neither had I delved too deep into fiction with more explicitly Christian content. I was in a place in my life and growing awareness of the world around me that made me think it was high time. And looking back over the years I’ve been working on the project, I can’t help but think I was right.

I actually wrote a whole three-part series here on Stardrift Nights telling the story of how I got inspired to take on Dronefall. If you’re interested in a more in-depth answer to this question, definitely check that out. (part one, part two, part three)

Who is Halcyon Slavic?

Halcyon Slavic is my main character. A young twenty-something left to her won devices by a society that has isolated and estranged her for reasons she doesn’t know for certain. In the beginning of Dronefall she finally drops out of mainstream society entirely to live with her Christian friend in a rough part of the city who happens to be a drone-sniper.

Everybody has their own reasons for making a lifestyle out of shooting down the city’s surveillance drones. The deeper Halcyon gets into the netherworld of hackers and trackers and sharp-shooting thrill-seekers in cyberpunk Budapest, the more she realizes something is up. Things are not what they appear, some somebody somewhere behind all those flying cameras seems to have a problem with her. If you want to learn more, check out this two-part interview I did with her. (part one, part two)

And now, we get to questions about book four, Nightstare. Firstly…

What took you so long?

Boy, I don’t really know. There won’t be another gap this long between books in the series, I promise. I really wouldn’t do that to you after you’ve read Nightstare. That would be terrible.

I think part of the reason this book took me so long is because I had a major growth spurt as a writer while I was working on it. I’m probably still too close to the project to see it, but I bet some of my readers are going to notice there’s something stronger about book four, whether or not they can put their finger on just what it is. I hope it makes for better reading.

What did you learn while writing Nightstare?

A ton. I’m getting deep into all my characters at this point in the series. I’ve been studying all I can about character-driven storytelling and learning to plot in a much tighter but more holistic way than I ever have before. I’ve learned to love the second act. That’s a giant leap in my development.

I actually feel really confident about my pacing and character arcs, now. I think I can guarantee the second half of the series will be even better than the first half. Things really start to pick up in Nightstare.

What makes Nightstare so momentous?

Book four is huge in the scheme of things. A lot blows up in this book. (Figuratively and literally.) Things are starting to tie together, even as things fall apart for the characters. We’ve officially hit the big midpoint of the series, and from here, everything is just going to escalate. I’m really excited for it.

This would be a really smart time to catch up on the series, if you’re not up to date yet. The first three books are all available on Amazon, and all ebooks are temporarily 99c each. They’re also available in paperback and on Kindle Unlimited, if you’ve got a subscription for that.

So, keep an eye out for updates. We’re getting really close to liftoff, here. 

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Dronefall My Books

Dronefall Halftime Tour Wrap-Up

This post is a bit late but there you have it: my first-ever attempt at running a blog-tour for my books. Once again, many thanks to the wonderful bloggers who volunteered to collaborate with me for this event. If you missed it, here’s the roundup:

Feb 3rd: Nicki Chapelway at Myths, Magic, and Madness (spotlight)
Feb 4th: SHINE at hauntingghosttown (interview)
Feb 5th: Bree Dawn at The Long Voyage (interview)
Feb 7th: Oceane McAllister at Oceane’s Writing Rambles (interview)
Feb 8th: Elizabeth at Elizabeth’s Corner (interview)
Feb 9th: Nicole Dust at Legend of a Writer (interview)
I also want to take the opportunity to thank my readers and friends and followers who have supported me up until this point in the adventure of writing and publishing the Dronefall Series. I hope you had some fun learning a bit more about me, and about Dronefall and the story behind it. 
I’m really excited to move on to the second half of the series. I promise, if you’ve gotten this far, it only gets better. All those crazy clues I’ve been scattering all over the first three books are about to start exploding, and all those odd little hints at subplots are going to start expanding and weaving into the main narrative. Your patience will be rewarded.
I thought now would be a good time to give you some updates on my progress on book four, Nightstare. 
My current word-count for Nightstare is 93,118. (My anticipated final word-count is ~120,000, making it the longest Dronefall book yet, and bypassing End of the Saros as the second-longest novel I’ve ever written.
I’m a couple of pages into chapter nineteen, which is tentatively titled “Clearing the Sky.” Nightstare will ultimately be twenty-two chapters long, if I don’t cut or add anything too drastic.
After finishing the first draft, I’ve got a few edits I know I have to make before going on to my alpha and beta readers. I’ll be seeking a small army of beta readers when the time comes, so stay tuned. I might call on you. 
Oh, and two more quick announcements: I have an Instagram now. @albuehrerauthor. And the Dronefall series is now on Kindle Unlimited! You’re welcome. 

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Dronefall My Books The Birth of Dronefall

The Birth of Dronefall: The Story

I’ve had a lot of dreams like this: Who are they? We don’t know. What do they want? Can’t say. But they’re peeping at the windows, and we’ve got to hide.

I was researching for a project in college when my interest in drones and mass-surveillance solidified. I started to conjure up a future where drones ran the world. They dominated the airspace, delivered the packages, cleaned the chimneys, kept the peace, and few questioned it. This was a world that believed constant surveillance was the only way to protect the public. But in the end, humans still had to call the shots. Someone had to decide who was a threat.
For my main character, I picked out a cynical young woman who believes she’s irrelevant and invisible to society—until someone behind a monitor (or is it just an algorithm?) seems to target her as a threat. So, she takes off and joins her only friend in a neighborhood full of Christians that have their own reasons they wish they were invisible.
I don’t know. A story about a gang of people who hunt surveillance drones just sounded kind of fun to me. There was just enough escapism in the sci-fi concepts to pull me in. I wanted to write a dystopia, but I didn’t really want it to be a non-stop bummer story. The fact that so much of my thematic material was going to hit a lot of readers close to home made me want to make an effort to try to add some contrasting material—explosions, fascinating technology, unusual settings, vibrant characters, and even a decent bit of humor, if I could really pull all that off.
Most importantly, I wanted to give something great to Christian readers. I never meant Dronefall to be an evangelism tool. Life goes on after you get saved. It isn’t easy, either. I wanted to write as a ministry to other Christians, like me, who wanted to step back from the chaos and confusion of life and see life’s spiritual battle from a new vantage-point. I wanted to show them people they could identify with in a world rougher and scarier than their own still standing up for the things we believe in.  
I don’t think the goal of Christian dystopia is to be alarmist or get everyone dreading the future. Instead I want to make Christians aware of the direction the world is headed around us. Because no matter how it looks, it’s a good direction. It’s God’s plotline. You’re a hero in his story and a part of the most thrilling and magnificent epic imaginable. 
If you read the Dronefall series, you’re going to start recognizing elements of it in the world around you. But I hope, beyond the pain the state of history gives you, you’ll discover a sense of exhilaration. Now is the time to stand up, speak out, and shine brightly with the truth of Jesus Christ. This is what you’re on earth for.      

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Dronefall My Books The Birth of Dronefall

The Birth of Dronefall: The Seeds

Through the heart of my Alma Mater’s main campus runs a railroad. A slow freight drags through a few times a day, typically, covered in weathered graffiti. Whistle wailing and detuned bell chiming, it shakes the library where I lived most of my college days.

As a student, I wore a lot of dark eye-make-up and went around with my backpack slung over one shoulder, which was bad for my back. I was there for academics only and typically sat in the back of the class avoiding participation. I made good grades and no friends, but I didn’t really care. I had an idea for a new book.

The idea was born under vaguely hostile conditions. The vagueness, in fact, was part of the inspiration. As it turns out, mainstream society, even in my small town has some kind of a problem with Christianity. There were a few occasions when this was very obvious, but most of the time it was just subtle enough to make me wonder if I was imagining it. Maybe I just have that “Christian Persecution Complex” they talk about. That weird paranoia that evangelicals have where they suffer from delusions that the world is out to get them. No idea where such absurd thoughts would come from.

And yet, why did so many professors feel the need to use their classes as platforms to spread their anti-Christian beliefs? In Ethics, Christianity was an outmoded faulty guide to right and wrong, in Logic God was impossible and ridiculous, in History we watched a video on the Scopes trial that took up a disproportionate amount of class time and portrayed Christians as truth-hating loonies. I learned that Christianity was an enemy of art, science, progress, personal responsibility and free thought. It promoted racism, sexism, slavery and fear and hatred of other cultures.

And it wasn’t just on campus. I remember one incident in particular on a chat-group on Goodreads. It was one of those groups where sophisticated adults have sophisticated discussions about world events. There was a thread about Islamic terrorism. Almost immediately, the topic was hijacked and changed to a slightly different subject—the increasingly relevant problem of “Christian terrorism.” Someone mentioned the Crusades and how it was probably “in their DNA” by now.

Everywhere I looked, I could see the true face of Christianity being hidden from the world and a grotesque caricature replacing it. Christians are told to keep their religion to themselves or else they’ll be discriminating against those with other beliefs. But Christianity isn’t going to be forgotten. If God’s people keep their heads down the rest of the world will have no problem building a hideous strawman in the void.

How long will society emphatically deny that they have a problem with Jesus Christ, his truth, and his followers? How long will the post-Christian world insist Christians are delusional for noticing the world is hostile to them and their God?

That’s what I wondered in that train-rattled library during my college days.
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Dronefall My Books The Birth of Dronefall

The Birth of Dronefall: The Gap

I think I was thirteen years old when I dropped Return to Harmony on the floor and didn’t bother to pick it back up. I told my mom I didn’t like books that were about quote, “people’s lives and how they feel about them.” I really wasn’t that into the fluffy inner struggles of young ladies and how their bland love interest’s hair smelled.

When I was thirteen, I liked stealth military aircraft and meteor showers and those little kits where you can hatch things. Honestly, I still prefer those things over reading stories about people’s lives and how they feel about them. I actually have a kit for triops on my desk as I write this. I can’t wait to get it started. Hope it works.
So, I noticed fairly early that the Christian fiction market was a little lacking. There are quite a few sweet romances out there starring heroines with rather obvious problems who learn rather obvious lessons and get the guy who was rather obviously designed for them. Apparently, this appeals to Christian women. I have no idea what male readers are supposed to pick up. Maybe Christian men don’t read fiction.
I started writing fiction of my own when I was about that [author name]-dropping age. There was a frolicking joy in the process of invention that I found addictive. Naturally, I leaned toward science-fiction. At last, my inner worlds took shape as real places—planets, alien landscapes full of fantastic geography, bizarre life-forms and near-magic technology.  My teenage adventures in The Stardrift Trilogy saw the first manifestations of my writer’s voice, and on that journey, I learned the dark art of finishing novels.
I didn’t stop writing after The Stardrift Trilogy. I had a mission—a gap to fill. I wanted to write thrilling imaginative stories that took Christian fiction far outside its stale narrow box. The truth of Jesus Christ isn’t restricted to the tidy easy messages and quick prayers of light inspirational women’s fiction. It’s vast and wild—reaching through all time and space, deeper and wider than any of us could ever imagine. So much unexplored potential was tantalizing to me.
As I grew up, new facts of life came into my broadening horizon of awareness. The world around me was changing—faster and faster. The future was coming. It was right at the door. It was a strange exotic future, full of horror and hope. I began to realize something about the future. Much of it can be seen in the present. In fact, the closer you look, the harder it is to see the line between the two. 
I graduated from high school not really knowing what my personal future was going to look like. All I knew for sure was that I was going to keep writing, and keep following God. Eventually, I chose what seemed to be the path of least resistance to me. I was going to study music at the university in my hometown.

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My Books

Rainchill Is Available on Kindle!

News at last! Today I got the email I’ve been anticipating literally since Spring—the email telling me Dronefall Three, Rainchill, is available to the reading public.

Now, it’s still just the ebook right now, the paperback will be fast on its heels. But for those of you who can’t wait you can go get the eBook right now. It’s 99c. And guess what? So are the first two books, so no matter what level you’ve attained in your Dronefall readership adventure, you have no reason not to jump in now and take advantage of the excitement. 

 Guys, you have no idea how excited I am to be releasing Rainchill. I completed the first draft last year as my NaNoWriMo project, and I knew, even then that I had something uniquely thrilling to share. I know I keep saying this, but Rainchill is my favorite Dronefall book yet. I’m not saying it has to be yours, but I think you’ll be able to tell I had a great time writing this book, and I hope some of the enjoyment will catch.

 Rainchill is a particularly suspenseful addition to the series. The Enclave finds themselves on the trail of their first killer robot—a monstrous mechanical hound with electric jaws. There are some twists and exciting reveals, and all while the tension between the church of 3.5 and the secret criminal underworld that protects them without their knowing continues to grow. I won’t give anything away! Just trust me, this one is worth the first two. When you hit Rainchill, you’re in.

 So, run and get it. Give yourself an early Christmas present. Or, cozy up and start the series from book one. You’ll be snowed-in before you know it, and we all know that mean God is telling you to quit stressing and read books.

 Get Book One, Dronefall.

 Get Dronefall Two, Lightwaste.

 GET DRONEFALL THREE, RAINCHILL! (sorry for yelling.)  

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Dronefall My Books

Rainchill Cover & Blurb Reveal


So, remember that, uh…thing that chased Halcyon for several grueling blocks at the end of Lightwaste? Well, you haven’t seen that last of it.

Dronefall Three, Rainchillis finally in the process of being released. I’ve hit several delays, as usual. I realize I keep telling people “It’s coming out this month,” and not making good on that promise. I’ve got many hundreds of thousands of words worth of novel manuscripts at this point in my career, but I’m still completely baffled by how some debuting indies actually release their books on an exact date which they tell the world a year in advance.

Actually, I don’t really know how anyone plans anything a year in advance.

But I will say now, you’ve got less than thirty days to wait for Rainchill. It’s coming! So, I think it’s about time I’ve released the back-cover blurb and the cover. Take a look:

The Official Rainchill Blurb:

Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Halcyon Slavic’s brush with the hostility of mainstream society has left her scarred and wary. As the darkness of winter slowly lifts, she only wants to continue her drone-sniping in secret. But dark places are disappearing all over Budapest, and District Three Point Five can’t be spared. Soon, they’ll be under the same oppressive drone-grid Halcyon came to escape from.

In the midst of the stir, a monster of another kind emerges behind Three Point Five’s back. A canid robot takes the Enclave’s eyes from the sky to the streets. And before they can be certain what it’s come for, it’s made its first kill.

The drone-snipers are forced to face a new reality. Three Point Five is changing. Chaos lurks around every corner. The police won’t lend their aid. And the Christians are stalked by their most deadly threat to date: They’re called hellhounds.

Now, the cover isn’t actually the Official Final Cover, but this is more or less the design and the feel you’re going to get, probably plus a couple of small changes. But I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer, so here it is.


Rainchill is book three in the Dronefall series, and I’m excited to announce that, due to recent reconsiderations, it will be the third of six Dronefall books. Yes, I’ve been telling you five all this time, but as I write book four, I’m realizing that I’m going to need more room, so I’ve expanded. The Dronefall series is now plotted as a sextet.

I can tell you want hints about the content of Rainchill beyond what you’ve got. I’ll be cryptic, but I see no reason to keep any rumor-fodder from my theory-loving readers. Here are some whispers you may have heard:

·         Somebody ends up with a major injury

·         A couple of characters prove to have…complex loyalties

·         The first fatality of the series occurs

·         It becomes apparent that the dynamics between a certain two characters is going to be dangerous in the future….

Well, there you have it. There’s more to come on the subject of Rainchill, and the Dronefall series in general within the next several weeks before publication. Subscribe if you haven’t already!

  And also, if you’ve read any of the Dronefall books, or have any intention of doing so soon, I highly recommend you go here and sign up for my email list, and the free Guide to the World of Dronefall that comes with it. The guide is just my little attempt to help you get oriented in the rather complicated world where Dronefall takes place. There are a lot of forces in play, and the guide is a resource I created so that you can have all the facts in one place. It’s bound to enrich your reading experience.

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