The Qwillery

How would you describe the Jötunn War?

The Jötunn War is our latest addition to the Vikingverse, the first of a four-issue graphic novel series and a companion piece to the All Father Paradox.

If you’ve read the novel, it adds some more depth and detail to the worlds-spanning war that concludes the novel. And if you haven’t, it makes a perfectly good jumping off point to explore.
The premise is simple: what if the Vikings never lost? What would the modern world be like if Norse laws, appetites and mythology had shaped it instead of Christianity?

Fast forward through 1000 years of alternate timeline and you come to the Jötunn War - a point in time analogous to the Great War, or World War 2. There are all kinds of social pressures that irk Great Powers, like the Emancipation of the Serfs or the Russian Revolution, the Scramble for Africa and the Rise of Nationalism. The Viking Empire is no different: while the pace of progress has been accelerated (Vikings didn’t burn their scientists as witches…), when the thralls rebel, turning to the artifice of Norns to help them escape their bondage, the Natural order is thrown into chaos, causing a war that rages across the Nine Homeworlds for decades. The comic shows the last gasp battle for Utgard, the last stronghold of the Jötnar.



The Jötunn War is your first comic, coming just months after the All Father Paradox novel. Do some of our favourite characters make an appearance?

Over the course of four issues, you’ll see all kinds of familiar faces, some drawn from the novel, some from real life. Of course, this is Gest’s story and told from his POV. There is something of the Eternal Champion about him, because of his immense longevity - down to a Norn’s curse in the cradle – he has seen the whole swept of history and now stepped up for the decisive battle. Along the way, he is joined by Alviss Presterleah and Njall Armstinnr – two great 1960s icons in our world, whose names easily translate back into Old Norse. In the Vikingverse blurb, we often talk about the storied heroes of mankind being drawn into the Vikingverse in new and brutal guises - those two are an especially long way from the All-American idols we know and love.

Of course, in later episodes, you get to see other major characters as the Battle for Utgard continues but we won’t reveal all of those just yet…



Did you find writing a comic easier than the novel?

History is full of titanic battles, from David vs. Goliath to the Axis vs. Allies, but The Jötunn War is literally as big as it gets. There is a kind of visceral urgency to the comic form, you can have fun that you can’t easily manage in a novel.

I used to storyboard documentaries and TV spots in my days as broadcast Producer. It was surprising how similar the two things are, and once I got started, it all came to life quite quickly. In actual fact, because the whole script – descriptions, directions and captions – is only 3000 words per issue, it is the artists who bear the real burden! The real challenge became helping Dev design a Drakkar that looked like it could fly, or an infantry helmet that makes aesthetic sense for a future Varangian. I’m excited that he has captured the vision so clearly.

Norse mythology is a fascinating lens through which to take a view of the world – and I have heard at readings and conventions what a compelling idea it is. But not everyone has the time to read 90,000 words, and so a comic is a better start to their journey.

What the two forms do have in common is the resonance of the Old Norse quotes. Whether drawing from the wisdom of the Hávamál or reciting a skaldic poem about battle, the words have a real impact.



The Jötnar themselves, why did you choose to portray them that way?

In a word where Christianity has been put to the Viking sword, there are no angels or devils, but combatants will always strive to demonize the enemy. It’s how you motivate the populace to back a war – feed them fear and loathing. I liked the idea of turning that on its head, of having the nightmares of Norse mythology come back to haunt the Empire.

One interesting thing about the word Jötunn is that it doesn’t really mean giant – in the Old Norse orthography, it is much closer to words like consume, gluttony and voracious. I wanted to make the rebellion an existential, primeval, devouring threat – not just Vikings in white helmets. The sagas are clear that the Jötnar take many forms, some as beautiful as the dawn, some as hideous as - well, Týr’s nine-hundred headed grandmother is a good example (She is mentioned in Hymiskviða if you want to read more about her).



And the Kickstarter has already funded? Congrats!

Everyone involved is hugely grateful for the support and attention we’ve attracted. The Kickstarter funded after the first week, which means we can print the first issue. Our stretch goals include the ability to fund the printing and distribution of the second part, which is raring to go. So, if you like the cliffhanger built into the first episode, and you’ve got a taste for the Vikingverse, you’ll want to make sure to help us get further into the story!

The Jötunn War

A war as old as time, where fate itself hangs in the balance. In the Vikingverse, the Norse rule the stars with restless fleets and an iron will. But when the thralls rebel, turning to the artifice of Norns to help them escape their bondage, the Natural order is thrown into chaos. The Jötunn War has been fought across the Nine Homeworlds to contain the threat, a battle against the stuff of ancient nightmares, red in tooth and claw, Jötunheim is the rebellion's last redoubt, an indignity the Empire plans to cleanse with flame and fury. The Jötunn War. Go big or go home in a body bag.

About Ian

Ian Stuart Sharpe was born in London, UK, and now lives in British Columbia, Canada. Having worked for the BBC, IMG, Atari and Electronic Arts, he is now CEO of a tech start up. As a child he discovered his love of books, sci-fi and sagas: devouring the works of Douglas Adams, J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and George MacDonald Fraser alongside Snorri Sturluson and Sigvat the Skald. He once won a prize at school for Outstanding Progress and chose a dictionary as his reward, secretly wishing it had been an Old Norse phrasebook. The All Father Paradox is his first novel.



Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter @vikingverse

Twitter @IanStuartSharpe

About Outland Entertainment

Outland Entertainment was founded as a creative services company in 2008 by Jeremy Mohler. Since then, Outland has worked for a wide variety of clients across the world. Outland specializes in assembling creative teams and managing projects. Contact them via their site form or go to www.outlandentertainment.com.

The All Father Paradox
Vikingverse 1
Outland Entertainment, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 414 pages

What if an ancient god escaped his fate…and history was thrown to the wolves?

Churchwarden Michaels thought it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy old man who stood in the graveyard, hellbent on studying the thousand-year-old Viking memorial there. But when things start changing and outright disappearing, Michaels realizes there is more to this old man than meets the eye. Now, Michaels finds himself swept up in an ancient god’s quest to escape his destiny by reworking reality, putting history—and to Michaels’s dismay, Christianity itself—to the Viking sword. In this new Vikingverse, storied heroes of mankind emerge in new and brutal guises drawn from the sagas:

A young Norse prince plots to shatter empires and claim the heavens…
A scholar exiled to the frontier braves the dangers of the New World, only to find those “new worlds” are greater than he imagined…
A captured Jötunn plants the dreams of freedom during a worlds-spanning war…
A bold empress discovers there is a price for immortality, one her ancestors have come to collect…

With the timelines stretched to breaking point, it’s up to Churchwarden Michaels to save reality as we know it…

There is something otherworldly about an old Norman church. A sanctity, certainly; the trappings of Christian worship both exude and compel hushed reverence. A sense of community perhaps, as the Anglican Communion struggles to fill the gaps left by austerity, providing food banks now alongside village fetes and raffles. But there is always something beyond that; something in the very fabric of the building, buried deep in the centuries old stone. The best of those churches are keepers of ancient tales, conduits that speak of England’s green hills and forests and what lies beneath.

I was married in one such church, parts of which date from the 12th century, set on falling ground to the west of my home town. The churchyard contains St Withburga's Well, supplied by a spring that is said to have issued forth from the burial place of Withburga, who laid the foundation of a church and convent there, the first Christian settlement in the area in the year 654. She lived and died in an era of unprecedented change. Her father was Anna, King of the East Angles, pagans who came to the British Isles with iron and fire, who believed the green church of the woods heard their prayers more clearly than any monument of stone.

But it is stone that has proved the most enduring store of the pagan story.

At the north side of Gosforth village on Wasdale Road, Cumbria, stands the ancient parish church of St Mary and, in the churchyard the equally ancient and famous Gosforth Cross. This magnificent cross has stood on the same spot for over a thousand years. The monument is a very tall, slender cross made from red sandstone, richly decorated with some very exquisite carvings of Norse gods, Christian symbolism and mythical beasts. It is at the heart of the All Father Paradox and takes pride of place on the cover. I chose this cross as my central motif for the novel because, like Withburga’s well, it has been witnessed to endless change. We can only imagine who built it and why, or what manner of men have toiled in its shadow over the course of that millennium.

Christianity was in the north-west of England long before of course. Roman soldiers had spread the faith, and left traces when their armies were withdrawn. Wandering saints and preachers came up the Irish Sea from Rome, such as the man later venerated as St. Patrick or Bega of St. Bees, bringing their religion to the Anglo-Saxons who settled there. There is no definitive proof of a church in Gosforth before the Viking Age, but it would have been Celtic, made of wattle and daub, and it too, would have been focused around the local holy spring.

The Vikings swept through Britain with series of invasions throughout the 10th century, and for a time controlled the area of northern England known as Danelaw. Names of towns, roads, and families still in existence today attest to this Scandinavian stronghold. But, like the Angles before them, it seems as though the conquerors were quickly conquered by the customs and beliefs prevalent in their new land. The Gosforth Cross speaks to this unique juncture in time, a world halfway between the pagan and the Christian. It was first identified in 1886 by the amateur antiquarian Charles Arundel Parker. His findings were a sensation in an age obsessed with Vikings (Wagner's Ring Cycle debuted just ten years before), the Victoria and Albert Museum quickly had a replica made. Parker demonstrated that the cross showed scenes described in Norse myth, such as Loki bound, the god Víðarr tearing the jaws of Fenrir, and Thor's failed attempt to catch Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent.

I'd written about the cross having researched it online - I went so far as to commission a local photographer to go and snap some shots of it - but I'd never seen it in person. The cover artist, Jeremy Mohler, had sent me his first concepts in the spring of 2018. He'd quickly zoomed in on the cross and the conflict between the two protagonists as the best way to grab people's attention. It captured the scene brilliantly - the coastal gusts of wind, the otherworldly hues, the sense of an oncoming storm. But before the All Father Paradox was published in October, I knew I had to see the Gosforth cross for myself.

So, in July that year, my wife, son, daughter, mother and step-father all travelled up to the Lake District. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I realized, I didn't just want to imagine the cover scene, I wanted to recreate it. So, I reached out to a local Viking re-enactor, the splendidly named Science Viking (look him up!), and with my wife on photo duty, we did out best to recreate Jeremy's work. It was an oddly cyclical series of events, but very much fitting for the themes of the book.

Of course, we couldn't conjure Yggdrasil or call forth Huginn and Munin, but it was a fun photoshoot all the same!

Science Viking and Bronwen Sharpe

Ian Stuart Sharpe at the Gosforth Cross

The All Father Paradox
Vikingverse 1
Outland Entertainment, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 414 pages

What if an ancient god escaped his fate…and history was thrown to the wolves?

Churchwarden Michaels thought it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy old man who stood in the graveyard, hellbent on studying the thousand-year-old Viking memorial there. But when things start changing and outright disappearing, Michaels realizes there is more to this old man than meets the eye. Now, Michaels finds himself swept up in an ancient god’s quest to escape his destiny by reworking reality, putting history—and to Michaels’s dismay, Christianity itself—to the Viking sword. In this new Vikingverse, storied heroes of mankind emerge in new and brutal guises drawn from the sagas:

A young Norse prince plots to shatter empires and claim the heavens…
A scholar exiled to the frontier braves the dangers of the New World, only to find those “new worlds” are greater than he imagined…
A captured Jötunn plants the dreams of freedom during a worlds-spanning war…
A bold empress discovers there is a price for immortality, one her ancestors have come to collect…

With the timelines stretched to breaking point, it’s up to Churchwarden Michaels to save reality as we know it…

The All Father Paradox
Vikingverse 1
Outland Entertainment, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 414 pages

What if an ancient god escaped his fate…and history was thrown to the wolves?

Churchwarden Michaels thought it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy old man who stood in the graveyard, hellbent on studying the thousand-year-old Viking memorial there. But when things start changing and outright disappearing, Michaels realizes there is more to this old man than meets the eye. Now, Michaels finds himself swept up in an ancient god’s quest to escape his destiny by reworking reality, putting history—and to Michaels’s dismay, Christianity itself—to the Viking sword. In this new Vikingverse, storied heroes of mankind emerge in new and brutal guises drawn from the sagas:

A young Norse prince plots to shatter empires and claim the heavens…
A scholar exiled to the frontier braves the dangers of the New World, only to find those “new worlds” are greater than he imagined…
A captured Jötunn plants the dreams of freedom during a worlds-spanning war…
A bold empress discovers there is a price for immortality, one her ancestors have come to collect…

With the timelines stretched to breaking point, it’s up to Churchwarden Michaels to save reality as we know it…

The Results

The 2018 DAC Cover Wars Monthly Winners

It's time to vote for the 2018 Debut Author Challenge COVER OF THE YEAR! Below you will find the 12 monthly winners in alphabetical order by book title (excluding "the" or "a" or "an", etc.).

Vote for your favorite from the monthly 2018 Winners!

I'm using PollCode for this vote. After you the check the circle next to your favorite, click "Vote" to record your vote. If you'd like to see the real-time results click "View". This will take you to the PollCode site where you may see the results. If you want to come back to The Qwillery click "Back" and you will return to this page.

Voting will end sometime on January 15, 2019 unless voting is extended.

Vote for your favorite 2018 Debut Cover!

The All Father Paradox

Anna Undreaming

Empire of Silence

Endsville

The First Protectors

Free Chocolate

From Unseen Fire

Implanted

The Philosopher's Flight

The Sky Is Yours

Walking Through Fire

What Should Be Wild

 

pollcode.com free polls

The All Father Paradox
Vikingverse 1
Outland Entertainment, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 414 pages

What if an ancient god escaped his fate…and history was thrown to the wolves?

Churchwarden Michaels thought it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy old man who stood in the graveyard, hellbent on studying the thousand-year-old Viking memorial there. But when things start changing and outright disappearing, Michaels realizes there is more to this old man than meets the eye. Now, Michaels finds himself swept up in an ancient god’s quest to escape his destiny by reworking reality, putting history—and to Michaels’s dismay, Christianity itself—to the Viking sword. In this new Vikingverse, storied heroes of mankind emerge in new and brutal guises drawn from the sagas:

A young Norse prince plots to shatter empires and claim the heavens…
A scholar exiled to the frontier braves the dangers of the New World, only to find those “new worlds” are greater than he imagined…
A captured Jötunn plants the dreams of freedom during a worlds-spanning war…
A bold empress discovers there is a price for immortality, one her ancestors have come to collect…

With the timelines stretched to breaking point, it’s up to Churchwarden Michaels to save reality as we know it…

The Results

The October 2018 Debuts

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. What is the first fiction piece you remember writing?

Ian:  I don’t remember so much the piece as the word. I scribbled down something in a creative writing class including the description of a politician as “tergiversatory”. I remember my English teacher calling me over to ask what on earth it meant (it means evasive, or prone to switch sides).

I was clearly a pretentious twelve-year-old.



TQ:  Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Ian:  Undoubtedly a hybrid. The essence of the All Father Paradox are these set pieces, moments in an alternate timeline. Each of those is like a segment jigsaw, they have to fit the big picture. But within each of those stories, I found that the characters took on a life of their own – their Viking voyage, so to speak, was full of wanderlust and abandon. Moreover, because the book hinges of these little bits of history repeating, these echoes of previous chapters, you’d find that what you planned was constantly pummelled with waves of implications. Adaption was the only way the DNA blueprint could survive.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Ian:  The on ramp. The starting point for the story. New writers, top tip: I wouldn’t advise eliminating spoken dialogue from your arsenal.

In the All Father Paradox, we quickly meet some Benedictine monks who have taken a vow of silence. To be authentic to the characters and the period, they couldn’t talk. That means the entire scene has to be carried by internal monologue and exterior description. And because this is an unfamiliar scene – how may readers know intimate details of Charlemagne’s Saxon Wars 1250 years ago? – I had a fair amount of world building to do.

The monks had to go first in sequence, for reasons that will be obvious to someone who picks up the book, but boy howdy, sign language is a pain in the neck to write.



TQ:  What has influenced / influences your writing?

Ian:  When I am writing, the temptation to through in a flippant, tangential, irrelevant or downright obscure reference can only come from Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. They are like two Good Omens demons, wittering on my shoulders. But also, George MacDonald Fraser, who wrote Harry Flashman into just about every conflict the British Empire had across the Victorian era. Reading him humbug the potentates of Europe and beyond was a riot.



TQ:  Describe The All Father Paradox using only 5 words.

Ian:  What if the Vikings won?



TQ:  Tell us something about The All Father Paradox that is not found in the book description.

Ian:  We talk about the storied heroes of mankind, emerging from the sagas in new and brutal form, but we don’t say how, or why.

One of the long marches of our civilisation has been from mysticism through humanism to empiricism and rationalism. Simply put, our thinking about our place in the universe has evolved. I think one of the most interesting things I had to do was develop Norse thinking, from its Iron Age roots, into the Modern era. I’d removed Christianity from the equation early on, so what would the new formula look like? What does a world that places a great tree, Yggdrasil, as its central pillar look like?



TQ:  What inspired you to write The All Father Paradox? Why Vikings?

Ian:  The book is partly about demons and being demonised. Stories are simplifications, designed to resonate across the ages, to stick in the mind. One of the best ways to do this is to paint someone in the blackest light.

Take the arch-fiend Lucifer, for instance. If you explore the meaning behind the word, you find some academics making the case for the name meaning “morning star” and referring to a failed coup by the son of the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. Looking down the long lens of history, it is breath-taking how perspectives change. One minute he is a prince, the next he is The Prince of Darkness.

A similar thing happened to the Vikings. Do you really think they were smell, horned-helmeted barbarians? Or does the record need setting straight? That was my impetus.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The All Father Paradox?

Ian:  It really ran the gamut between Old Norse sagas and poring through NASA data about exoplanets. That’s the challenge with writing about a civilisation, I wasn’t so much world-building as universe creating.



TQ:  Please tell us about the cover for The All Father Paradox.

Ian:  The cover is an illustration penned with great care and attention by Jeremy Mohler at Outland, the publisher. It is a faithful representation of a real place – St. Mary’s Church, and the 1,000-year-old Viking Cross that can still be found in the churchyard there. The cross, the convergence of religions it represents, and the battle that revolves around it are captured perfectly in Jeremy’s scene.



TQ:  In The All Father Paradox who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Ian:  Churchwarden Michaels was the easiest to write, because he represents the England I grew up in, and is therefore an amalgam of people I knew and know. As a contemporary voice in the novel, and the frame of reference for the reader, he is designed to be a sympathetic, if flawed, character.

Conversely, at the other end of the time spectrum, the monk Folkward was hard to write – not just because of the vow of silence but because of the sheer bloody mindedness and unflinching devotion it took to be a Dark Age monk. I simply don’t have that “worshipfulness” in me.



TQ:  Does The All Father Paradox touch on any social issues?

Ian:  The All Father Paradox touches on religion, the role of women, the collapse of civilization, military coups, the perils of migration, and ultimately ecology too. I wanted to write a novel that started in the Dark Ages, that held a cracked mirror to the age we are in. There are candles, flickering in the darkness, throughout. I hope they are illuminating in some small way.



TQ:  Which question about The All Father Paradox do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Ian:  In the novel, I explore the notion that “like ripples emanating from a single, solitary drop, the waves [of change] will roll though history”. I’d like someone to sit down and plot them, join the dots, find the parallels. And then ask – as per Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, scene 2): "What's in a name?”

And I’d answer, “everything, names have power and meaning, start looking for your clue there”



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The All Father Paradox.

Ian:  Here is a quote that references Churchwarden Michaels and the cross on the cover, and the sheer Englishness of it all.

“Tea, he reflected, would be especially welcome on a day like today. Michaels had always thought it a shame to leave the cross standing out in the British weather. One thousand years of this, it was a miracle that it had survived at all, but there it was: a wealth of detail carved into fifteen feet of red sandstone, round at the base, rising to a square top with a cross head, each of the four sides carrying images of a horseman, dragons, serpents, and all kinds of gorgeous, interlaced patterns.”

And then this is a rejoinder to him, drawn from later in the novel, that speaks to what is unfurled:

“So, my little sparrow. You are back in my hall. Back in my Midgard. Your Christianity is being ripped from the past like so much rot. You have seen the dark winter outside, the worlds of the Álfar and the Jötnar. The realms of the dead, all joined by the great World Tree. Are you so certain of what went before and what is to follow?”



TQ:  What's next?

Ian:  There is a sequel, already underway. You might think it difficult to pen a follow up to Ragnarok, but the old Icelandic skalds managed it and I am following gin their footsteps. There is also a plan to “fill in the gaps” – the novel was always designed as a springboard, a way to create the Vikingverse. Now it exists, we have a myriad of stories to tell, some standalone, some crucial to the overarching plot. We’ll do that not just with novels, but with comics, games and who know what else!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

The All Father Paradox
Vikingverse 1
Outland Entertainment, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 414 pages

What if an ancient god escaped his fate…and history was thrown to the wolves?

Churchwarden Michaels thought it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy old man who stood in the graveyard, hellbent on studying the thousand-year-old Viking memorial there. But when things start changing and outright disappearing, Michaels realizes there is more to this old man than meets the eye. Now, Michaels finds himself swept up in an ancient god’s quest to escape his destiny by reworking reality, putting history—and to Michaels’s dismay, Christianity itself—to the Viking sword. In this new Vikingverse, storied heroes of mankind emerge in new and brutal guises drawn from the sagas:

A young Norse prince plots to shatter empires and claim the heavens…
A scholar exiled to the frontier braves the dangers of the New World, only to find those “new worlds” are greater than he imagined…
A captured Jötunn plants the dreams of freedom during a worlds-spanning war…
A bold empress discovers there is a price for immortality, one her ancestors have come to collect…

With the timelines stretched to breaking point, it’s up to Churchwarden Michaels to save reality as we know it…

About Ian

Ian Sharpe was born in London, UK, and now lives in British Columbia, Canada. Having worked for the BBC, IMG, Atari and Electronic Arts, he is now CEO of a tech start up. As a child he discovered his love of books, sci-fi and sagas: devouring the works of Douglas Adams, J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and George MacDonald Fraser alongside Snorri Sturluson and Sigvat the Skald. He once won a prize at school for Outstanding Progress and chose a dictionary as his reward, secretly wishing it had been an Old Norse phrasebook. The All Father Paradox is his first novel.



Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter @vikingverse

Twitter @IanStuartSharpe

Each month you will be able to vote for your favorite cover from that month's debut novels. At the end of the year the 12 monthly winners will be pitted against each other to choose the 2018 Debut Novel Cover of the Year. Please note that a debut novel cover is eligible in the month in which the novel is published in the US. Cover artist/illustrator/designer information is provided when we have it.

I'm using PollCode for this vote. After you the check the circle next to your favorite, click "Vote" to record your vote. If you'd like to see the real-time results click "View". This will take you to the PollCode site where you may see the results. If you want to come back to The Qwillery click "Back" and you will return to this page. Voting will end sometime on October 31, 2018, unless the vote is extended. If the vote is extended the ending date will be updated.

Vote for your favorite October 2018 Debut Cover!

The Allfather Paradox

A Conspiracy of Truths

Mage Against the Machine

The Oyster Thief

The Quantum Magician

Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return

Strange Ink

The Witch of Willow Hall

Zero Sum Game

 

pollcode.com free polls

Happy Tuesday!

There are 3 debuts this week:

Strange Ink by Gary Kemble;

Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return by Martin Riker;

and

The Allfather Paradox (Vikingverse 1) by Ian Stuart Sharpe.




From formerly featured DAC Authors:

The Shadow of the Exile (The Infernal Guardian) 1 by Mitchell Hogan;

Bright Ruin (Dark Gifts 3) by Vic James;

The Phoenix Empress (Their Bright Ascendency 2) by K Arsenault Rivera;

and

There Before the Chaos (The Farian War 1) by K.B. Wagers.

Debut novels are highlighted in blue. Novels, etc. by formerly featured DAC Authors are highlighted in green.

October 9, 2018

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Vulkan: Lord of Drakes	David Annandale	SF - The Horus Heresy: Primarchs
Inferno!	David Annandale Peter McLean Evan Dicken Mike Brooks Steven Fischer Josh Reynolds Nate Crowley Danie Ware Guy Haley	F - Tales from the Worlds of Warhammer 1
The Line of Polity (ri)	Neal Asher	SF - Agent Cormac 2
In the Night Wood	Dale Bailey	DF/CF
White Dancing Elephants	Chaya Bhuvaneswar	SS
Power Failure	Ben Bova	SF/HSF/PolTh - Jake Ross Series 3
Postcards From Impossible Worlds: The Collected Shortest Story	Peter Chiykowski et al.	HU/SS/F
Persepolis Rising (h2tp)	James S. A. Corey	SF/SO/SE/AC - The Expanse 7
Colonial Horrors: Sleepy Hollow and Beyond (h2tp)	Graeme Davis	Sus/H - Anthology
Covert Game (h2mm)	Christine Feehan	PNR/GenEng - GhostWalker 14
Einstein's Shadow: A Black Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable	Seth Fletcher	Sc/Astronomy
Flowers and Foul Play (h2tp)	Amanda Flower	PCM - A Magic Garden Mystery
Life is Strange: Welcome to Blackwell Academy	Matt Forbeck	Video Games/PopCul
The Rift Coda	Amy S. Foster	SF - The Rift Uprising Trilogy
Wolfsbane	Guy Haley	SF - The Horus Heresy
Shadow of the Exile	Mitchell Hogan	F - The Infernal Guardian 1
The Haunting of Hill House (ri)	Shirley Jackson	MTI/Gothic/H
Bright Ruin	Vic James	CF/Dys/F - Dark Gifts 3
Saga of Recluce: Books 1-5: The Magic of Recluce, The Towers of the Sunset, The Magic Engineer, The Order War, The Death of Chaos (e)	L. E. Modesitt Jr.	F - Recluce Series
Strange Ink (D)	Gary Kemble	H/SupTh
100 Fathoms Below	Steven L. Kent Nicholas Kaufmann	H/SupTh
Be Our Ghost	Kate Kingsbury	PCM - A Merry Ghost Inn Mystery 3
Legacy of Dorn	Mike Lee	SF - Warhammer 40,000
The Art of Assassin's Creed Odyssey	Kate Lewis	Video Games/Art
The World of Lore: Dreadful Places	Aaron Mahnke	SocSc/Folklore/Mythology/Anthro/ SocHist - The World of Lore
The Sevenwaters Trilogy: Daughter of the Forest, Son of the Shadows, Child of the Prophecy (e)	Juliet Marillier	HistF - Sevenwaters Series
Austral	Paul McAuley	SF/AP/PA
Killing Commendatore	Haruki Murakami Philip Gabriel (Tr) Ted Goossen (Tr)	LF/MR/Hist
Star Trek: Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library Maps from the Star Trek Universe	Larry Nemecek	PerfArts
Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return (D)	Martin Riker	HU/GH/LF/Absurdist
The Phoenix Empress	K Arsenault Rivera	F/HistF - Their Bright Ascendency 2
River Into Darkness	Sean Russell	F/FR - The River Into Darkness Omnibus
The Allfather Paradox (D)	Ian Stuart Sharpe	HistF - Vikingverse 1
Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah	Gav Thorpe	SF - Warhammer 40,000
The Milkweed Triptych: Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, Necessary Evil (e)	Ian Tregillis	AH/TT - Milkweed
There Before the Chaos	K. B. Wagers	SF/SO/AC - The Farian War 1
The Compendium of Magical Beasts: An Anatomical Study of Cryptozoology's Most Elusive Beings	Veronica Wigberht-Blackwater Melissa Brinks	F/MR/SF/TT/FairyT/FolkT/LM
The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin: A Library of America Special Publication	Lisa Yaszek (Ed)	SF - Anthology

October 12, 2018

TITLE	AUTHOR	SERIES
Drawn Up From Deep Places	Gemma Files	H - Collection

D - Debut
e - eBook
Ed - Editor
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
h2tp - Hardcover to Trade Paperback
Il - Illustrator
ri - reissue or reprint
tp2mm - Trade Paperback to Mass Market Paperback
Tr - Translator



AC - Alien Contact
AH - Alternate History
Anthro - Anthropology
AP - Apocalyptic
CF - Contemporary Fantasy
CoA - Coming of Age
Cr - Crime
CW - Contemporary Woman
CyP - Cyberpunk
DF - Dark Fantasy
Dys - Dystopian
F - Fantasy
FairyT - Fairy Tales
FL - Family Life
FolkT - Folk Tales
FR - Fantasy Romance
GenEng - Genetic Engineering
GH - Ghost(s)
GN - Graphic Novel
Gothic - Gothic
H - Horror
Hist - Historical
HistF - Historical Fantasy
Hist M - Historical Mystery
Hist R - Historical Romance
HistTh - Historical Thriller
HSF - Hard Science Fiction
HU - Humor
LC - Literary Criticism
LF - Literary Fiction
LM - Legend and Mythology
MedTh - Medical Thriller
MR - Magical Realism
MTI - Media Tie-In
Occ - Occult
P - Paranormal
PA - Post Apocalyptic
PCM - Parnormal Cozy Mystery
PerfArts - Performing Arts
PNR - Paranormal Romance
Pol - Political
PolTh - Political Thriller
PopCul - Popular Culture
Sc - Science
SE - Space Exploration
SF - Science Fiction
SFR - Science Fiction Romance
SH - Superheroes
SO - Space Opera
SocHist - Social History
SocSc - Social Science
SP - Steampunk
SpecFic - Speculative Fiction
SS - Short Stories
Sup - Supernatural
SupTh - Supernatural Thriller
Sus - Suspense
TechTh - Technological Thriller
Th - Thriller
TT - Time Travel
UF - Urban Fantasy

Note: Not all genres and formats are found in the books, etc. listed above.

Shaun Barger

Mage Against the Machine
Saga Press, October 30, 2018
Hardcover and eBook, 512 pages

Harry Potter meets The Terminator in this action-packed adventure about a young man who discovers that everything he believed about his world is a lie.

The year is 2120. The humans are dead. The mages have retreated from the world after a madman blew up civilization with weaponized magical technology. Safe within domes that protect them from the nuclear wasteland on the other side, the mages have spent the last century putting their lives back together.

Nikolai is obsessed with artifacts from twentieth-century human life: mage-crafted replica Chuck Taylors on his feet, Schwarzenegger posters on his walls, Beatlemania still alive and well in his head. But he’s also tasked with a higher calling—to maintain the Veils that protect mage-kind from the hazards of the wastes beyond. As a cadet in the Mage King’s army, Nik has finally found what he always wanted—a purpose. But when confronted by one of his former instructors gone rogue, Nik tumbles into a dark secret. The humans weren’t nuked into oblivion—they’re still alive. Not only that, outside the domes a war rages between the last enclaves of free humans and vast machine intelligences.

Outside the dome, unprepared and on the run, Nik finds Jem. Jem is a Runner for the Human Resistance. A ballerina-turned-soldier by the circumstances of war, Jem is more than just a human—her cybernetic enhancement mods make her faster, smarter, and are the only things that give her a fighting chance against the artificial beings bent on humanity’s eradication.

Now Nik faces an impossible decision: side with the mages and let humanity die out? Or stand with Jem and the humans—and risk endangering everything he knows and loves?

Sonia Faruqi

The Oyster Thief
Pegasus Books, October 16, 2018
Hardcover and eBook, 304 pages

Two worlds collide when a mermaid and human man meet, plunging readers into a vast underwater realm brimming with adventure and intrigue.

"The mermaid’s scales were bronze, and they shimmered like hundreds of pennies arranged close together. Her immense blue-green eyes gave a look of fragility to her face, yet he found her eyes unsettling. She was leaning against a thirty-foot-long shark, which emerged from behind her and opened its mouth to reveal a great big cavern lined with hundreds of teeth—a black tunnel ready to swallow him."

Coralline is a mermaid who is engaged to the merman of her dreams. But when an oil spill wreaks havoc on her idyllic village life, her little brother falls gravely ill. Desperate to save him, she embarks on aquest to find a legendary elixir made of starlight.

Izar, a human man, is on the cusp of an invention that will enable him to mine the depths of the ocean. His discovery will soon make him the richest man on earth—while threatening merpeople with extinction. But then, suddenly, Izar finds himself transformed into a merman and caught in a web of betrayal and intrigue. Meeting Coralline in the ocean, he decides to join her on her quest for the elixir, hoping it will turn him human again.

The quest pushes Coralline and Izar together, even though their worlds are at odds. Their pasts threaten to tear them apart, while a growing attraction adds to the danger. Ultimately, each of them faces an impossible choice. Should Coralline leave her fiancé for a man who might betray her? And Izar has a dark secret of his own—one that could cause him to lose Coralline forever.

Magnificent and moving, set against a breathtaking ocean landscape, The Oyster Thief is a richly imagined odyssey destined to become a classic.

Hester Fox

The Witch of Willow Hall
Graydon House, October 2, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 368 pages

Two centuries after the Salem witch trials, there’s still one witch left in Massachusetts. But she doesn’t even know it.

Take this as a warning: if you are not able or willing to control yourself, it will not only be you who suffers the consequences, but those around you, as well.

New Oldbury, 1821

In the wake of a scandal, the Montrose family and their three daughters—Catherine, Lydia and Emeline—flee Boston for their new country home, Willow Hall.

The estate seems sleepy and idyllic. But a subtle menace creeps into the atmosphere, remnants of a dark history that call to Lydia, and to the youngest, Emeline.

All three daughters will be irrevocably changed by what follows, but none more than Lydia, who must draw on a power she never knew she possessed if she wants to protect those she loves. For Willow Hall’s secrets will rise, in the end…

S.L. Huang

Zero Sum Game
Cas Russell 1
Tor Books, October 2, 2018
Hardcover and eBook, 336 pages

A blockbuster, near-future science fiction thriller, S.L. Huang's Zero Sum Game introduces a math-genius mercenary who finds herself being manipulated by someone possessing unimaginable power…

Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good. The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she'll take any job for the right price.

As far as Cas knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower...until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master.

Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she's involved. There’s only one problem...

She doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.

Gary Kemble

Strange Ink
Titan Books, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook

Spine-chilling horror in the vein of Joe Hill. After moving into a new house, journalist Harry Hendrick wakes up with tattoos that aren’t his…

When washed-up journalist Harry Hendrick wakes one morning with a hangover and a strange symbol tattooed on his neck, he shrugs it off as a bad night out. But soon more tattoos appear: grisly, violent images which come accompanied by horrific nightmares - so he begins to dig deeper. Harry’s search leads him to a sinister disappearance, torment from beyond the grave, and a web of corruption and violence tangled with his own past. One way or another, he has to right the wrongs.

Derek Künsken

The Quantum Magician
The Quantum Evolution 1
Solaris, October 2, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 480 pages

The breathtaking debut from acclaimed short story writer Derek Künsken.

THE ULTIMATE HEIST

Belisarius is a Homo quantus, engineered with impossible insight. But his gift is also a curse—an uncontrollable, even suicidal drive to know, to understand. Genetically flawed, he leaves his people to find a different life, and ends up becoming the galaxy’s greatest con man and thief.

But the jobs are getting too easy and his extraordinary brain is chafing at the neglect. When a client offers him untold wealth to move a squadron of secret warships across an enemy wormhole, Belisarius jumps at it. Now he must embrace his true nature to pull off the job, alongside a crew of extraordinary men and women.

If he succeeds, he could trigger an interstellar war… or the next step in human evolution.

Martin Riker

Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return
Coffee House Press, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 256 pages

After he dies, Samuel Johnson inhabits one body after the next, waiting for a chance to return to his son.

When Samuel Johnson dies, he finds himself in the body of the man who killed him, unable to depart this world but determined, at least, to return to the son he left behind. Moving from body to body as each one expires, Samuel’s soul journeys on a comic quest through an American half-century, inhabiting lives as stymied, in their ways, as his own. A ghost story of the most unexpected sort, Martin Riker’s extraordinary debut is about the ways experience is mediated, the unstoppable drive for human connection, and the struggle to be more fully alive in the world.

Alexandra Rowland

A Conspiracy of Truths
Saga Press, October 23, 2018
Hardcover and eBook, 464 pages

A wrongfully imprisoned storyteller spins stories from his jail cell that just might have the power to save him—and take down his jailers too.

Arrested on accusations of witchcraft and treason, Chant finds himself trapped in a cold, filthy jail cell in a foreign land. With only his advocate, the unhelpful and uninterested Consanza, he quickly finds himself cast as a bargaining chip in a brewing battle between the five rulers of this small, backwards, and petty nation.

Or, at least, that's how he would tell the story.

In truth, Chant has little idea of what is happening outside the walls of his cell, but he must quickly start to unravel the puzzle of his imprisonment before they execute him for his alleged crimes. But Chant is no witch—he is a member of a rare and obscure order of wandering storytellers. With no country to call his home, and no people to claim as his own, all Chant has is his wits and his apprentice, a lad more interested in wooing handsome shepherds than learning the ways of the world.

And yet, he has one great power: his stories in the ears of the rulers determined to prosecute him for betraying a nation he knows next to nothing about. The tales he tells will topple the Queens of Nuryevet and just maybe, save his life.

Ian Stuart Sharpe

The Allfather Paradox
Vikingverse 1
Outland Entertainment, October 9, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 414 pages

What if an ancient god escaped his fate…and history was thrown to the wolves?

Churchwarden Michaels thought it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy old man who stood in the graveyard, hellbent on studying the thousand-year-old Viking memorial there. But when things start changing and outright disappearing, Michaels realizes there is more to this old man than meets the eye. Now, Michaels finds himself swept up in an ancient god’s quest to escape his destiny by reworking reality, putting history—and to Michaels’s dismay, Christianity itself—to the Viking sword. In this new Vikingverse, storied heroes of mankind emerge in new and brutal guises drawn from the sagas:

A young Norse prince plots to shatter empires and claim the heavens…
A scholar exiled to the frontier braves the dangers of the New World, only to find those “new worlds” are greater than he imagined…
A captured Jötunn plants the dreams of freedom during a worlds-spanning war…
A bold empress discovers there is a price for immortality, one her ancestors have come to collect…

With the timelines stretched to breaking point, it’s up to Churchwarden Michaels to save reality as we know it…