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The Dead and the Rotten is Live!

After three long years since The Vile Realm, my new book The Dead and the Rotten - and sequel to The Vile Realm - has arrived!



Back at the beginning of the year I made a trailer for The Dead and the Rotten with the full expectation that it would be released comfortably within 2023. I thought, as I printed the book off for editing in February, that April would see a release at the earliest. Summer seemed more realistic and clearly doable. The weather even played ball, what with spring being more or less a complete washout, and only one month of summer being any good. But, you can't estimate the potential for a good butterfly to drag me away from the house...


So, we entered summer, and then summer drew to a close. While I wasn't completely finished with the book I had been reading, editing, and rereading in a cycle since the beginning of the year. What started off as 750 edits across a readthrough dropped down to 250, 100, 50... It felt like I was getting closer and closer. In the end, I finished the book in early September. Then a lot of life and stuff happened and all of a sudden it was December. It really is quite mad how quickly a whole year can just slip by. So, I finished up work for the year and immediately set to work finalising cover sizes, formatting, table of contents, and kindle e-book submission. While I expect any momentum that I had built up during the first half of the year was dead, it felt nice to be able to offer my new book and all previous books in the series for free over Christmas. I've definitely said it before in person, but I only write for others to read. I have no interested in making any money out of these books. I set the prices as low as I can, make them free when I can, and set the minimum price for the paperbacks.


Speaking of the paperback, I didn't quite have it in me to sacrifice Christmas Eve to Amazon's esoteric cover formatting equation. Instead, I went through that today. Somehow it all ended up being a lot easier than the last time, though I did have to resize the cover three times despite meeting the size requirements requested... The paperback will hopefully be available soon. Sorry about the spine...



Despite the lengthy gap between The Vile Realm and The Dead and the Rotten, my latest book was the easiest one to write so far. Perhaps this is me just being more comfortable with writing, with my characters. Maybe I just enjoyed writing a truly despicable, yet utterly shit antagonist. I hope everyone that picks this book up enjoys reading it as much as I did writing it. That said, with some of the themes I am reluctantly prepared for an onslaught of one star reviews...



Xotolo is waiting, ready to pounce from beyond the reality we know. Already it begins to sow its seeds within the populace of Traverne. Trust is gone. Now there is only doubt.


Most would call Xotolo an impossible task; a cosmic entity of a size and mind and power beyond comprehension.


Marigold would agree.


So forget the space-bound bag of flab just for one moment. Sear is in dire need of repairs. Now is the time to take on something small, to remember how things used to be before they changed forever.


One last, normal job...




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