My first novel Monarch of Lightning has just been published!  I don’t have my author’s copies yet.  I’m looking forward to their arrival so I can place one on my bookshelf.

You can see the cover art (and purchase it, if you’re so inclines) here:

http://store.albanlake.com/product/monarch-of-lightning/

The publisher is Alban Lake.  They specialize in science fiction, fantasy and horror.

Here’s a quick synopsis.

Just having killed her husband’s assassin, a pregnant Janvian has one year to claim the throne of Lorcha for herself and her child.  With conflicts tearing apart clan alliances, no where is safe.  Remembering the tales her grandfather told her of a secret place in the middle of the desert, she makes a desperate flight across the storm-battered Wilde to find sanctuary with the Mirage Clan, who might not exist.  She does not know she is being manipulated by mystics into exposing her child to the Wilde’s lightning.  It is up to her uncle and her sister to hide Janvian’s absence and to keep the clans loyal to the unborn child meant to be their next monarch.

Just got back from Minicon 51, an annual science fiction and fantasy convention held in Bloomington MN.  It was great being surrounded by people who love to read and write and draw and make music–and talk about it.  Usually when I’m out and about I do a lot of people watching, but at Minicon and other such gatherings I enjoy book watching.  I check out what people are reading when they have a few minutes before a panel starts, and what they carry around, and what titles they look at in the hucksters’ room.  People are enthusiastic about what they read and will gladly give a stranger (me) a review of their current–and past–reads.  Years, even decades, after devouring a book a person can describe it in detail.  We breathe in the written word like air and it becomes part of us.  We inhale the stories and make them our own.