Greetings!

My publisher, Curiosity Quills Press, has decided to put the ebook of Prophet of the Badlands (book 1 of the Awakened series) on sale for the next two days for .99.

Althea, the main character, is still my favorite of all the characters I’ve yet created. The first novel I finished writing, Virtual Immortality, was a bit too long to query out to agents and publishers, so I decided to set it aside. At the time I had two other ideas, Prophet, and Division Zero. Since I knew Prophet would be the start of a longer series with five prominent characters, I decided to write Division Zero first.

All the while I was writing Division Zero #1, it felt like Althea was standing behind me, bouncing on her toes, asking “is it my turn yet” every few minutes. After I had finished Division Zero to the point I started the querying process, I got going on Prophet. As I expected it would, the story exploded out of my brain. I remember having the week off from the day job, and I managed 126,000 words in about 11 days. The story wanted out.

A little more than halfway along, Althea decided to take issue with the direction I had planned for the story. It was as though she were beside me, shaking her head and tapping her foot. She had a rather firm idea of something she would not allow to happen, and I wound up listening to her and changing the outline in a way that rippled through the remainder of the series in a major way.

Anyway, with the sale on, I hope you take a .99 chance on entering the world of the Awakened… See the Earth in 2418, after a corporate war has ruined the interior of North America. See the Badlands, and the world around it through the eyes of a young girl struggling to find the courage to stand up for herself against those who would exploit her powers.

Happy reading!

-Matt