The New Season has been transferred to the paperback format, accepted and now live on Amazon.com. It’ll take more time for it to propagate around the world.

The cover came out pretty good, I was able to have a purple background so the image wouldn’t clash with the rest of the cover. There’s a new author picture on the back along with a new author blub.

285 pages, 6×9 trade paperback format.

I’ll leave you with a quip by Chaoschick from the book:

“Are they going to make it a holiday?”

In the book you’ll find out where, when and who was around at the time. And you’ll find out why it is funny.

The Tournament is entering a new season and the assassination attempt on Grabby has caused the Committee to call all the players back early.  Tournament Champions Iskandar Prime, with their star forward, Raven, vow to prove to the Tournament that last year was not a fluke.  However, the conspiracy against Iskandar continues even in the first match.  Down at double-A Bestmartin, Vysse is beginning her career but will be embroiled in the next attack by the conspiracy, right at Bestmartin itself.  Meanwhile, the investigation of the assassination attempt takes a weird turn and Raven ends up in court.  There are new teams and new problems to unravel as the season gets off to a roaring start.  Things are getting complicated!

I’ve just uploaded the Kindle version of Book 5 of the Raven of Iskandar saga – The New Season. It’s currently in review but you can anticipate it will be available on Amazon on Monday, February 15th.

The paperback is now in the works. I’ll let you know when it is uploaded. It’s mainly a change in formatting and it takes a bit of work to make everything look like the Kindle version. It’ll be a 6×9 trade paperback like the previous books in the series.

The writing for Book 6, currently unnamed, is already in process. I’m anticipating releasing Book 6 around November.

The website for the series, http://www.ravenofiskandar.com, will probably be moving hosting services sometime before August. The address will be the same, but I plan to make more use of the site by providing downloads and special members areas.

For the moment, if you sign up at the bottom of the page to follow the blog, you’ll become a member. So far there are two short stories in process for members only. Until the move, you’ll get the stories as pdf by email.

After the move, we’ll be talking merchandise and even free merch along with the free short stories.

In case you are wondering about the cover of Book 5, it’s a picture of Central City in the afternoon with both suns setting, the main sun, Tlarron, is off to the right which is giving you the long shadows. The smaller sun, Minimus, is shown floating in the purple sky behind the clouds.

I wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year with the additional wish that we will get back to normal sometime this year, 2021.

Book 5: The New Season, seems to be in its last round of edits. I have to read through one more time and see how the story flows. While I still want some things to be a mystery, you can’t just make things totally obscure. It feels awkward referring to the ‘older man’, but giving his name too soon would be a major revelation.

Here’s what I’ve come up with for the cover:

If you recognize the city, it’s from the home page of the website.

www.ravenof iskandar.com

There you can also see pictures of the team members in action and a gallery of the vehicles they encounter in matches. At some point I’ll be adding some biographies of the players, obviously with the ‘spoilers’ caveat.

Anyways, here’s to a great year to come!

Book 5 ‘The New Season’ is still in editing.  We’ll be heading into the third round of edits.

I don’t think I’d mentioned this before, but Book 5 will include a bonus.  It will include the short story ‘Foosball’ which was in the short story book ‘The Day the Elves Stole My Wife and other stories’.  This story relates how Calamity Angel and Dahija met and how they were promoted to the Prime team.

In addition, I am re-editing and expanding the first book ‘Raven:  The Call from Central’.  As you read the series, you may have noticed that some details changed, especially in relationship to the technical aspects of the matches.  I’m going back and ‘correcting’ them and expanding some of the scenes as they were fairly bare of description and emotion.

For example:

Old version

Josie was a dark human who stripped Raven of her beltpack and backpack, and led her in a trot down corridors.  Before Raven could get her mind around it, she was in harness and being pushed into a pod.  She had a brief thought as to how comfortably fit the harness was, when she was immediately on the field.

Her first thought was this is Niflheim.  Then she was nailed.  The match had already begun.  It was a free-for-all deathmatch with Instagib.  She was nailed twice more within the first minute, but then got her first frag.  After getting nailed again, she became angry.  She channeled it into concentration, and began to get frags.  However, she was getting nailed too often.  There must be 50 players on the field, she thought, and she was constantly getting nailed from behind.  It was a tough grind.  No subtlety here, too many competitors.  Spawn and frag, or be fragged.

The bell rang. Raven was exhausted and depressed.  Those 15 wild minutes had passed quickly.  She went through the traditional final greeting with the smile she could muster and then was back in the pod.  No extractor was there, so she let herself out of the pod and harness, and redressed.

New version

Josie was a dark human who stripped Raven of her beltpack and backpack, and led her in a trot down corridors.  They needed to hurry.  The lift bounced them up an uncertain number of floors and they continued running to a pod room. It almost looked like the janitor’s office and all four pods were empty.

“We’ll put you in here because I don’t know if there are any empty pods upstairs,” said Josie quickly. 

Before Raven could get her mind around it, she was pushed into a pod.  She did manage to get her top and jeans off.  Josie found an adjustable harness and connected it up.  She had a brief thought as to how well an adjustable would work when she was suddenly on the field.

Her first thought was this is Niflheim.  Then she was nailed.  The match had already begun.  It was a free-for-all deathmatch with Instagib.  She had a super shock rifle in her hands.  She was nailed twice more within the first minute, but then got her first frag.  After getting nailed again, she became angry.  She channeled it into concentration, and began to get frags.  However, she was getting nailed too often. 

There must be 50 players on the field, she thought. Overloaded.

She was constantly getting nailed from behind.  It was a tough grind.  No subtlety here, too many competitors.  Spawn and frag, or be fragged.

The bell rang. Raven was exhausted and depressed.  Those 15 wild minutes had passed quickly.  She went through the traditional final greeting with the smile she could muster and then was back in the pod.  Josie wasn’t there, so she let herself out of the harness just as she had done so many times at home, and opened the pod.  Her clothes lay on the floor just where she discarded them in a rush.  It seemed a fitting end to a disaster.

Right now I’m not sure if I am just going to update the first book or do an entire re-release.

Book 6 has no working title as yet.  I’m collecting ideas and have a few things written, but this will be the first book that won’t have any material to start from.

I was thinking of what kind of stuff I could offer as bonuses and began writing a story about how Gothgirl joined Iskandar Prime.  This would go back at least 12, maybe 15 years, so the Iskandar team and situation would be vastly different.  Of course, Grabby and Soria are on the team and of the rest you’ll finally meet the real Baroness, the person depicted in that poster on the wall in Raven’s bedroom on Necris.

The Gothgirl story has gotten pretty long already, so I’m toying with the idea of making it a book on its own.

That all for now.  I hope that all of you are having a Merry Christmas and you have my prayers for a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

A Merry Christmas from Raven, Chaoschick and the Prime team and the entire Iskandar organization, and the author that they drag along with them on their adventures.