What a fitting time for a historical fantasy novel set in World War I, here at the centennial end of the war. What a long and winding road this tale has taken.
As many of you know, the Strangely Beautiful saga has had a fraught journey. When The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker had its debut, it did smashingly well, won many awards and hit Barnes & Noble's bestseller list, as did it's sequel, The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker, but by the time the award-winning prequel came out, The Perilous Prophecy of Guard and Goddess, the publisher, Dorchester, was in a downward spiral and soon went belly-up, throwing my career into chaos, taking with it a ton of money owed me and halting the end of the series. It threw a huge wrench into my career, an event I'm still trying to recover from even many books and series later.
When Tor picked up the series for re-issue and redistribution with Strangely Beautiful and Perilous Prophecy, I was thrilled and emotionally overwhelmed by the chance to finally finish the final chapter: Miss Violet and the Great War, which will be coming to you Feb. 26th, 2019. It is a loving tribute to my beloved Guard and their family.
It is available for pre-order in digital and paperback via all retailers and so I hope you'll pre-order a copy today! It would help the trajectory of this series to have a much happier ending!
Here is Miss Violet's striking cover:
It's very stirring to me to be writing this at this time, this weekend, the centennial end of The Great War that was in no way great, in every way devastating. The research for this book gutted me.
I try in Miss Violet and the Great War, to cope with the severity of staggering loss, the senselessness of trench warfare, the struggle to find hope. But this series is always about hope in dark times, a timeless quest, and I hope you will care about it as much as I do.
When I went to Europe on a multi-city journey to research the novel, I wrote about my most visceral experience: the Ossuary at Verdun in France, a battlefront that faced some of the highest casualties in the war. I hope you'll read my essay and be moved by the experience as I was.
Cheers, Blessings, Happy Haunting and thanks in advance for pre-ordering Miss Violet and the Great War to support the end of a series Tor Books calls a 'foundational work of Gaslamp Fantasy'.
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