Sorry for inconvenience and thanks for reading!

EDIT: All of the changes have been made and Sword of Dreams is back in print!

Sword of Dreams was one of the sort problematic books we’ve ever written. It went through more drafts and rewrites than anything else. We had more last-minute changes and fixes than any author wants to see in his or her work. But in spite of all that – or maybe because of it – it’s one of our proudest accomplishments. It’s not perfect, but it’s ours and it’s done. It’s out there now, in the big wide world and we’ve got our fingers crossed that you’ll all enjoy it, or at least find it in your heart to forgive its faults. It was a fun and difficult ride for us. We’ll look back on it fondly, sure, but will be glad never to have to do it again.

Next week, we’ll be starting all over again! Well, not all over. We’re about midway through the second Dead Beat volume. All of the stories are written, but they need edits and some fixes. It never ends, does it? But then, we wouldn’t want it to. For all the worry and weariness, I happen to think I have the best job in the world… that just happens to pay about $0.05 an hour.

Fear not, Sword of Dreams will be distributed across all major print and ebook stores. It should be up on Amazon in digital format in the next 24 hours. The others may take longer, but we’ll keep you posted.

Thank you all for the patience and support. Thanks especially to Sean Emerson and Lacey Waymire for their repeated readings of the manuscript, and to Tony Lavely for his great eleventh-hour edits.

Like all of our books, Sword of Dreams is self-published. If you find errors, please let us know and we’ll be more than happy to fix them! If you bought the ebook, we’ll send you an updated copy. Thanks!

Good night for now… I’m beat and ready celebrate another completed novel with some much-deserved ice cream and sleep. See you all tomorrow!

EDIT: Sword of Dreams is available for Kindle from Amazon.

But now we’re just about done. Aron and I are proofing the final formatting and we should be pushing the completed files through to Amazon, Smashwords and CreateSpace by tomorrow night. We’ll notify you as Sword of Dreams becomes available at each store.

Hold tight! We’re just about finished…!

On to book news! We got the very last edits from our lovely volunteers and have finished entering them, they required one fairly major rewrite, but wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. We’ll give it a week or two to marinate and then give it one last read-through. Then it’s ready for publication!

We also just received the artwork for the Hammer of Time cover from Rowena. We should have the posted in the next week or so. It’s gorgeous, of course. Rowena does beautiful work.

That’s it for now!

Honestly, I’ve never been good at it. I can only post so many updates in the actual writing. I wrote so many words, edited so many chapters. That is the stuff of Tweets, not blog posts.

For a while, I tried posting on industry news. Stuff about publishing and book news… But I rarely had anything interesting to add. And the last thing the Internet needs is another book blog. I’m not good enough a blogger or dedicated enough a news reader to do it very well. Besides, LLS is supposed to be a blog for my readers, not other writers. I stopped trying to be a publishing blogger more than a year ago.

So what should I be posting? Obviously, I’ve never figured that out. Any ideas? Or am I worrying about nothing? I’m sure there are plenty of writers out there who don’t update their sites often. Right?

“Evil perseveres not at the hands of bad men, but at the inaction of good men.”
- The Books of Light (23 PA)

Fifty-seven years ago.

Gavriel Euvo stood at the edge of a field of withered, brittle gray grass that rippled in the freezing wind. He shoved his large hands into the pockets of his coat.

It was always dark on Zeos. Dark and dry as the inside of a coffin. The low sky churned with brown clouds that blotted out the tiny orange suns and turned the moons into invisible monsters that tugged jealously at the muddy Zeon oceans.

“Gavriel? Are you sure about this? What if things don’t work out at the university? I don’t know where we’ll be then. Gavriel? Love, did you hear a word I said?”

“Hm? Yes, I did.”

Gavriel shook an arm free and put it around his wife’s thin shoulders. He could feel the sharp angles of her bones through her skin and clothes. Jaissa Euvo was only thirty-seven years old, but a hard life on Zeos had lined her face with worry and streaked her hair in gray. Still, she was no less lovely in her husband’s eyes.

Gavriel pulled Jaissa close and kissed her furrowed brow. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I heard you, Jai, but you’re worrying too much.”

“And I don’t think you worry enough,” she told him, but finally smiled. “Your head’s always up in the clouds. You’re never down here in the mud with the rest of us.”

“I’m a philosopher. That’s my job.” Another kiss. “And that’s why you fell in love with me.”
“On the very first day of class, great teacher,” Jaissa teased, and then grew serious again. “Do you think they’ll approve the transfer this time?”

“I do. The Alliance Education Board likes what they’re hearing. It might take a while for the datawork to go through, but then they’ll sponsor our move out to Tynerion.”

“Tynerion.” Now Jaissa was looking up at the sky, too, as though pure desire could pierce the thick Zeon clouds and see through to the bright stars beyond. “God, I can’t wait. Zeos is no planet for Sarru.”

“And speaking of our tiny devil…”

Gavriel crouched and held out his arms to the little girl running toward him through the colorless grass. It was still early, but her patched jumper was already covered in a layer of colorless dust.

Sarru leapt into her father’s embrace with a squeal. The eight-year-old had her mother’s graceful dancer’s build and beautiful sky-blue eyes. She waved a streamer of shiny orange plastic at Gavriel, too close and too fast to read.

“Come on! We’re going to be late!” Sarru shrieked.

“Late for what, honey?” Jaissa asked, full of mock confusion. “I’m not sure what we’re doing out in this God-forsaken cold. We must have gotten lost! Maybe we should just go home and get warm.”

“No!” Sarru cried. She slid out of Gavriel’s arms and stomped her foot in the grass. “We’re going to the fair, remember? Xiv and Dinna are already inside! If we don’t go soon, they’re going to do all the good rides without me!”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” said Gavriel seriously. He took the plastic advertisement from Sarru and picked her up. “Come on, let’s go. I think I have some tickets in one of my pockets.”

With his daughter giggling and tugging on his beard, Gavriel led his family out across the field. The fair was too small for the large venue, with brightly-striped tents stretched few and far between. Brilliantly lumapainted rides would have been lonely were it not for the long lines of eager children waiting for their turn to be thrilled.

At the gate, Gavriel handed his tickets to a man who winked at the impatiently fidgeting Sarru and made her promise to have a good time.

“I will,” she assured him with childish gravity. She wriggled free of Gavriel and hopped down to the ground. “I’m going to find Xiv and Dinna!”

“We’re right behind you, sweetheart,” Jaissa said.

They followed their daughter until Sarru discovered her friends – a small, silver-skinned Ixthian boy and a taller human girl with Mirran stripes – already in line for the garishly flashing *Whirly-Swirly*. Gavriel put his arms around Jaissa again and watched Sarru bound over to the other children, cheerfully ignoring cries of dismay from the rest of the line when she cut in beside her friends.

“She’s going to miss them,” Jaissa sighed. “After we move to Tynerion, she’s probably never going to see those two again.”

“Sarru’s a sweet girl. She’ll make new friends.” Gavriel gave Jaissa a reassuring squeeze. “But it’s all the more reason for her to have fun with them now.”

Dinna’s mother had bought her a huge cone of lavender cloud-candy, now proudly shown off and shared with Sarru and Xiv. Sarru managed only a few mouthfuls before the spun sugar stuck to her fingers. She giggled and tried to wipe it off in Xiv’s fine white hair. The Ixthian boy dodged Sarru, but Dinna caught on to her friend’s game and dropped a clump of candy onto Xiv’s head.

“Hey!” he protested. “Stop it!”

“Xiv’s a smart boy,” Gavriel said contemplatively. “It would be such a waste for him to become a miner like his parents. Maybe when we’ve been on Tynerion for a while, I can fly Xiv out on a scholarship.”

“Really?” Jaissa looked worried again. “You think you could do that? There aren’t very many scholarships.”

Gavriel smirked. “No, there aren’t. But what’s the point of power if I can’t abuse it a little? Once I’ve got some clout with the Tynerion universities, I’ll see what I can do for Xiv. Dinna, too, if I can. It would be good for Sarru, after all. Like you said, she’s going to miss them.”

Xiv’s hair was full of purple candy now. He fought back against the giggling girls, but to no avail. All three children were screeching and covered in dyed sugar.

Jaissa sighed. “Well, I’d better go save Xiv, or those girls are going to end him long before college age.”

She disentangled herself from Gavriel’s arms and went to the children. Sarru and Dinna shrieked and feigned ignorance of their crime, cramming the last of the sweet evidence into innocently smiling mouths. Jaissa just shook her head and picked candy from Xiv’s hair.

Her own hands were quickly covered, sticking fingers together and sending all three children off into gales of laughter. Jaissa giggled as she licked her fingers in a vain attempt to clean them. His wife looked no different than the other girls now, Gavriel thought with a grin.

The frozen air shifted as the wind picked up, tossing the low-hanging clouds into sudden motion. They swirled and danced like ink in water. It could almost have been beautiful. Almost. Gavriel squinted up at the sky again. There were stars hidden out there, and worlds better venaformed than Zeos. Worlds like Tynerion, centers of light and learning.

Thank God I can finally take my family there, away from all of this muck and dark.
Someone was screaming – not the mechanical shrieking of the rides or children at play, but a sharp cry of absolute terror.

It was Xiv. He was standing over a heaving, thrashing knot of motion on the ground, pointing and screaming. The little boy’s thin, keening wail cut through the wind and music of the carnival. Dinna fled the scene, weeping and pulling on her green braids.

Jaissa was on the ground, twisted in unnatural convulsions. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her heels drummed on the rocky ground. Thick red foam boiled up from her mouth and streaked her cheeks in gore. Sarru lay beside her convulsing mother. The little girl tore at her own throat with her fingernails as she gurgled and choked.

Gavriel ran to his family, scattering frightened fairgoers. He fell to his knees and gathered his wife and daughter into his arms.

“Relax, Sarru. Just take slow, deep breaths. Someone call a doctor!” he shouted.

Jaissa twisted like a worm impaled on a hook. Sarru thrashed in her father’s arms and tried to scream, but all that came out was a strangled choking sound. He pried her hands away from her neck and stroked her hair. There was blood under her nails.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Sarru. No… No, don’t fight! Just try to calm down and breathe. Sarru!”

The little girl contorted sharply. Blood erupted from her nose and mouth. Her eyes – so beautiful and bright blue, just like her mother’s – went wide as her eardrums ruptured with a small pop. Sticky red poured down over Gavriel. He held his daughter to his chest as she died, screaming silently in agony.

When the medics finally arrived, they found Gavriel clutching his wife and child, begging them to breathe.

****

Sky blue.

Why did they call that pastel color sky blue? There were no blue skies on Zeos. It was supposed to be soothing, calming, Gavriel guessed. He hated it.

Gavriel stared at the walls of the waiting room. It was a tiny room, a private place to receive bad news. A prison cell.

A tall Ixthian woman came to tell him what had happened. Her clean lab coat – the same lying color as the walls – was embroidered with the quartered circle of the CWA Medical Corps.

It was the candy, she explained in a smooth, soothing voice. The dye had reacted with deoxylene, an airborne by-product of the mines. The mixture was harmless to most people and resulted in nothing more than a mild cough, but a rare genetic abnormality made it fatal to Jaissa. She had passed the same trait on to her daughter. No one could have predicted it. No one could have known.

That was it. A one in a billion random chance. An accident. There was no one to blame. No one would pay the price for his family’s death. The mining methods were extensively tested and verified for safety. Nothing would change. Nothing could change.

The doctor asked Gavriel to sign the datadex she held, giving the hospital permission to sequence Jaissa’s blood so that they could screen other Zeon citizens for the same problem. Gavriel took the datadex, staring at the plastic screen. He could see nothing but reflections of the blue walls. Screenings? Why? To save some stranger from one horrible death, only to deliver them to another? To be crushed by a car as they carry their groceries across the road? Murdered by a jealous lover in a fit of rage? Just to choke to death on a pill meant to save their pointless, pathetic life?

Gavriel flung the datadex across the empty waiting room. It shattered into splinters against the wall. The doctor jumped, startled, and asked Gavriel to calm down. Her voice seemed muffled, echoing as though from a great and uncrossable distance.

Why do you live? Gavriel wondered Why do I live? We’ll only die. We all die, alone and in pain.

Gavriel grabbed her by her slender silver neck. The smooth, slightly rubbery Ixthian skin was so fragile under his strong hand. Her compound eyes shone red with fear. The doctor fought against Gavriel, but he was larger and stronger. She could not even scream. Just like Jaissa, just like Sarru, dying in terrible silence… He crushed her throat, choking until she went finally still.

Gavriel held the Ixthian there and stared into her eyes until they went dark. Flat black. Dead.
Dead and free.

But until then, it’s time to return to Sword of Dreams. Have I mentioned how much I hate juggling multiple projects? At any rate, I’ve heard back from all of our beta readers and editors. A couple of them are making second passes for small details, but it’s time for Aron and I to do our final edits. So that’s what I’ll be up to for the next two weeks. We’re getting really close to publishing Sword of Dreams. At the end of next month, we’ll send it out!

Today is also my mother’s birthday. Cancer took her life while I was in college and I miss her everyday. Anvil of Tears is dedicated to her memory. I never would have been a writer without her influence.

I love you, mom.

There are some issues, to say the least. The first is my own damned fault: my fingers hurt! I had now idea how hard I typed until I came up against an unyielding glass surface. The autocorrect is a little annoying, mostly because I haven’t yet figured out how to tell it not to change the word. This is going to get annoying when I get to some prose writing.
The limitations of an Apple device are a problem, too. I freak out about having no file explorer. I haven’t been a Mac user since grade school and the difference betweenk this and a Windows machine are making me a little nuts.

The biggest problem, though, is a lack of ability to create my books. There are some good writing apps, but when I downloaded Pages, I was in for a nasty shock… There. Is no ability to modify my styles for ebook or print publication. Just as bad is Photoshop Touch, which sounds cool but won’t let me import my old Photoshop files as layered images. It also won’t let me specify print dimensions and resolution. Well. That was a waste of ten bucks.

I really doubt that the iPad will replace my netbook. So far, it’s just too limited. But then, my dad hated his for a long time, and now he swears by the little bugger. We’ll see how I feel about it in a few days.

UPDATE: It’s been another day and the iPad – named Stumble – is growing on me.

UPDATED UPDATE: After another couple of days working with Stumble, I’m getting the hang of it and growing quite fond of the little machine. I did manage to snap a good-sized crack in the cover, but these things happen. Especially to me. I’m clumsy.