'The Axis of Shadows' is about to Become the Next Release on Feb. 1st!

Click Book Cover for Link to Damnation Books for Novel!

I wrote this third book in my 'Silent War' Steampunk Horror series many years ago, when my skill at learning how to write a novel (with skill) was still new. My ambition, as it still is, was burning and energetic, but my skill at word-craft was much less than my overall years of experience of story-telling deriving from decades of Gamemastering. That gaming experience is now going on thirty-years. These novels ALL derive from my campaigns actually and a setting that I conceived that was my gritty anti-Steampunk world. While the others were just about to ride on the emerging trend that has since fallen a little, everything in those settings was pretty, oh so Victorian and filled full of fancy. I wanted mine to be dark, gruesome and filled with a Post-18th Century Early Modernistic malaise mixed with Gothic horror and high action, told in First Person. A bit ambitious for a series from an inexperienced novelist but I DID secure a book deal with a Small Press with it all. Not bad. I am planning on writing a campaign world book to accompany these novels, and likely for Troll Lord Games logically, to supplement Jason Vey's Steampunk system soon. 

                                 Click Book Cover for Link to Damnation Books for Novel!

Each book is a chapter sort of in the life of my main character as he finds his way in this secret society of Vampire Hunters, the Shadow Society of Vampire Hunters, across the world in the 19th Century and uncovers a terrible parasitic bond between the vampires and Mankind. Since the Dawn of Man's civilization, and really because of it, the Upiri, or Vampires have been feeding and trying to herd us into their livestock one way or another but we have managed to fight them off due to the secret society's efforts. In these centuries of Silent Warring a little of the Vampires' advanced Atlantian technology leaks out to the world and its civilizations giving us our next marvels and progress along the way. Some of our greatest 'discoveries' were due to these accidental hidden staches of ancient technologies found by Mundane Man instead of being confiscated by Shadow. 

Click Book Cover for Link to Damnation Books for Novel!

It is a long story, and an ancient one. Book four, 'Atlantica' will reveal the Vampires' ultimate goal after their true origins are revealed in this third book 'The Axis of Shadows'. Once this terrible plot of uncovered it is a race against time as they set into motion something that Mankind has been too slow to discover. The war against them then is at its ultimate apex as the Upiri will play their age old plot, one that Mankind is too short visioned to perceive. These Upiri are not just shambling corpses of our own dead bent on feeding and destroying us, they have a larger plan. Mankind must devise a plan to stop them that is even smarter and unexpected, that will catch them and their bizarre intelligence off-guard. If these first four books work out to be a success, then I DO have envisioned from eight to twelve more planned in the series that will span history all the way to World War 2. 

  

Prince Rhun ap Maelgwn Gwynedd Returns! But...where did he ever really go you ask?

2015 is turning out to be what might be a superb year and it has barely even begun yet! As the first few weeks began several great things have unfolded, opportunities and long-awaited hopes crystallizing at last!

What I am rambling about is this...even though my still fresh and new Celtic adventure series 'The Island of the Mighty' had only released the first novel 'The Sullen Queen' last summer, I had many delays in getting you the second, 'Within a Dark Mountain', and completing the third 'A Perilous Pursuit' last fall regretfully, but a recent promising turn of events has now appeared! 

This opportunity was always there but I didn't seize it, and now I am fully. What I mean to say is, soon, the series will indeed be re-released, re-edited, with a new look, meaning a brilliant new cover, possibly even interior art, and more! Just to remind my fans of Troll Lord Games these novels are the Celtic adventure modules I have written, in order, put to prose, one by one. There will be a novel for each module, as the adventures of Prince Rhun ap Maelgwn of Gwynedd and his companion (as you will discover in book #2) Llewella, make their way through Post-Roman Britain, Ireland and the Otherworld one tale at a time. Ideally, there will be, as I have posted many times before here, up to thirteen tales in this series, written in a style inspired by Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander.

- 'The Sullen Queen' is my bonus adventure module for the Codex Celtarum 'A Sylvan Gambit'.
- ''Within a Dark Mountain' is 'Goblins of Mount Shadow'
- 'A Perilous Pursuit' is 'The Crimson Pact'

See...I DO have a masterplan with my many projects....

Daroganau Fyrddin - Merlin's Prophecies

"And at a certain time, as the narrative shows, it happened that Gwenddydd saw certain rare dreams on various nights. All these she carefully retained in her memory until she should find a place and time to relate them to Myrddin her brother. Against that time Gwenddydd prepared bread and butter on a herb cake of wheaten bread with various drinks in various vessels, every drink in its grade as its nature demanded, as wine in silver, and mead in a horn, and the beer in sycamore, and the milk in a white jug, and the water in an earthen jug. All these she placed in order besides the bread and butter inside the harbour to which Myrddin was wont to come, when he was in his senses, to take his nourishment."

-Ystoria Myrddin Wyllt

The time may soon come to pass that my Master's research or thesis on Geoffrey of Monmouth's dubious 12th century 'Prophetiae Merlini' (or 'Prophecies of Merlin'), thrown into his rather famous 'Historia Regum Brittaniae' ('History of the Kings of (the) Britain(s) will be published after all! I know this was a wordy paragraph...slightly, but I think I may already have a publisher, a Welsh one at that, and rightfully so!

In the next week I will prepare the required proposal and what they need then wait for their word. Once I know for sure I will announce the publisher and give links and fanfare. This is my first serious non-fiction, academic publication, with hopes of many future ones to follow. I have many...

If I enter into the Celtic Studies Doctoral program as well in the next month then I will be aggressively producing more scholarly work for print and publication in time. With the new theories and thinking emerging in my field, it opens up amazing new possibilities not had before, and I hope that I am the only one to find them!

Aside from my half dozen Arthurian Celtic adventure modules, Codex Celtarum, and my 40+ times teaching the subject in nearly a decade at college level, this is next opportunity I get to put my Masters in Arthurian Studies from the University of Wales Lampeter (Prifysgol Cymru Llanbedr-Pont-Steffan) to good use!

Rex quondam, Rexque futurus!