All by way of saying that my original estimate of the time required to finish production and get The Seventh Law of Power ready was wildly off. Barring any last minute complications, both paperback and Kindle version of the book will go live on July 15th. I’ll put links up when I have them.
Hey, I was surprised too.
Probably should mention that the Kindle version is already available on pre-order. Here’s the link.
One thing I like to do now and then is take a flash story, generate illustrations, and put it on YouTube with my own narration. Something separate from the folklore. This piece is called “A Memory of Old Songs.” I think I’ll put them in a separate playlist and just call it “Story Time.”
The Seventh Law of Power is nearly 81k in rough draft now. I think it’s going to end in a…no, on second thought I don’t think I’ll commit to that just yet. But I do see it coming back full circle to Book1, The Long Look. How we get there is the fun part.
And here we go. Now (Friday, May 26, 2023) and for a limited time (ending Monday) the Kindle version of my dark fantasy novel The Blood Red Scarf is free on Amazon in all markets. Anyone interested in free fantasy can also sign up at Hello Books below to get other promotions in addition to this one. Or just follow one of the links below depending on your home store. If yours isn’t below, just search on the ASIN B005LAOMMQ and you’ll find it. Just do it before Monday, because that’s when it ends. Hello Books, of course, runs promotions all the time. Just not this one after the weekend.
Not that I need a Lert. (Sorry, old fannish joke).
Ahem.
There will be a price promotion on my novella , Hereafter, and After, starting tomorrow at 8 A.M. PST, and lasting…well, not that long before the price starts going back up. This novella was originally published as a limited hardback from PS Publishing. Here’s what Charles de Lint had to say about it in Fantasy and Science Fiction:
” (It) allows Parks to poke gentle fun and make some serious commentary on our belief systems, and it gives us a terrific read. Hereafter, and After is a story that would have made Robert Nathan or James Branch Cabell proud — and probably would James Morrow, too, who’s still alive and could read it. And it certainly shows that Parks has the chops to work at a longer length.”
Been a while, but I’m still blushing.
Since one or two of you expressed interest, I’ll start off with a brief progress report on the 4th (and I think final) book in the Laws of Power series, working title The Seventh Law of Power. I mean, there are seven laws total and Marta’s looking for number 6 and 7. Once she finds the 7th, well, the point of the whole thing will finally be made manifest. And there will be a point, I promise. That’s the plan. A lot is going to depend on how the next few sections go. As it stands, I’m approaching the end of Chapter 3. Marta’s getting a new servant with a lot of baggage. About 200 years of it.
And Tymon the Black is coming out of the retirement he was never really in.
I still plan to post at least a few opening chapters along the way, but not until I’m far enough along that I know I won’t be doing major cuts/rethinks to the first few.
Other Business.
I really don’t like the word “rebranding,” as it implies I’m a brand. Which I’m not, for yay or alas. But every now and then revisions must be made, and not just in stories. One of my earlier books, The Ghost War, only has one review, and it’s a crappy one, mostly because the reader looked at the cover, assumed it was something in my Yamada series, and was disappointed. While a quick scan of the description should have knocked that idea down, to be fair I see the point. While I think it was a very nice and evocative cover, some of the armor being worn certainly shows a far east influence. Here was the original cover:
So I changed it to something which still fit the story (the main character soul-casts into a raven’s body at several points) but couldn’t possibly be mistaken for a Yamada story at first glance, like so. This isn’t about which cover any of us might prefer. The point is if the cover was misleading anyone, it needed changing, so I did. Here’s the new one.
Problem, if not solved, perhaps prevented from propagating. Here’s the thing though—I’m still showing what I still think is a pretty decent book (while I was cleaning up the text for the re-release, I read a few scenes I didn’t even remember writing, and thought “Dang, this guy can write. Ego? A little.). And yet here it sits with one 2 star review. Not very enticing.
So here’s the request: Anyone who’s read the book but never left a review, would you consider it? I’m not asking for anything more than an honest review, but at least this time let it not be about the cover. That would be a pleasant change.
Richard Parks 