REVEAL! The Cleaved World: The Gathering

Hi folks,

A couple months ago, when the lockdown began, I posted Book 1 of The Cleaved World here on the blog in serial installments. This past Sunday, I pulled all those installments down because I’m going to publish this book officially.

If you were in the middle of reading when the posts disappeared, my apologies. But you won’t have to wait long to finish the read! The Cleaved World: The Gathering will be available on Kindle on 2 June 2020.

For a variety of reasons, I’m going to publish this first in KU, so it won’t be available for any other digital platform for about three months. But I am going to make a paperback available, too.

I’m also going to price it at 99 cents for a while.

I’m not going to do a preorder for this one, but of course I’ll let you know when it goes live.

This is the first book of what will be a trilogy. I’m beginning the second book this week, in fact.

It’s an epic fantasy, consistent with the traditions of that genre (you know–magic, sword battles, fire-breathing creatures, shifters and pointy-eared folk … and, yes, cliffhanger endings until the last book). It’s a hero(ine)’s journey, gather-your-party kind of story. I’m expecting there to be some romantic elements, but romance is not and won’t be the central focus.

The cover is by the wonderfully talented Mallory Rock of Rock Solid Book Design–and there’s a little story I want to share about this cover:

Though I design almost all my own covers and have no intention of changing that habit, I still, like I think every indie author ever, peruse book covers obsessively, looking for genre trends, etc. (not that I always follow those trends, but I like to know what they are). When I find a cover I like, I look to see who designed it and bookmark the designer, just in case I might want/need somebody else to design a cover.

Like three years ago, I was idly browsing book covers and found myself on Mallory’s page. I saw the premade version of the cover that is now The Cleaved World: The Gathering … and loved it. More than that, I was inspired by it. I’d harbored a wish to write an epic fantasy since about forever, but I hadn’t found the hook I need to start a story, which is virtually always a character I want to write about. This cover gave me the idea for the Rider.

So naturally, I bookmarked it, and every now and then I checked to see if it was still available. I was extremely intimidated to write such a big story in a genre I’ve loved all my life, so the idea stayed in the back of my brain for quite a while longer. Sitting back there more or less ignored, it started to grow roots and shoot out buds of ideas for the Rider’s story.

Then Mallory had a premade sale.

I bought the cover–my first ever cover art purchase. With the new pressure of having paid for art for a book I had only a paragraph of notes for, I finally got my ass going and started the book.

Mallory is custom designing the covers for the remaining two books, so there’s my external motivation to make sure those get written, lol!

Anyway, I love this book. It wasn’t easy at all to write, but I am proud of the result of all that effort and existential angst.

Before I go, here’s the description:

An exiled battlemage, once the most powerful warrior of her people, has wandered alone for twenty years in a world that despises magic—because magic broke the world during a brutal war long ago. She keeps to the shadows, hiding her true nature, doing small services in a lonely effort to right that great wrong and to ease her own guilt. Over the years, she’s become a legend, a mysterious hero known only as the Rider.

When an old evil rises again, she’s called to save the world from the very same forces that broke it.

Only the Rider knows the danger she poses to the people who call her hero.

I hope you’ll take this journey with the Rider and her party.
xo
s–