Publishing Archives - The Mindflayer

NEW BOOK & COVER REVEAL: DARK HILARITY

Hello everyone.

Life has been very busy of late in the mindflayer’s pelagic dwelling place. I have had a few epiphanies, and I have re-focused my energies and intentions. That all translates into this: I am now fully committed to becoming an independent author!

As a result of that, I am announcing my next novel, Dark Hilarity! Check out the cover and blurb below!

Tara Dufrain and Nicola Morgan are eleven year old girls growing up in the ‘90s, obsessed by Valentine Killshot, a metal screamo band. In particular, they’re enamoured by the lead singer, the mysterious yet charismatic Jed Maine who bears the epithet “The Cretin”. In Jed’s lyrics, he describes a world beyond the Dark Stars that he hopes one day to reach. The girls think it’s all just make-believe they share together, until a freak, traumatic incident makes this world very real.

As adults, Tara and Nicola try to come to terms with the devastating catastrophe that changed their lives growing up, but to do so they will have to step once more into Jed Maine’s world, and confront the man who took everything from them.

Dark Hilarity is My Best Friend’s Exorcism meets The Never-Ending Story, a fantasy that explores addiction, depression, and the healing power of friendship.

I have no doubts in my mind that Dark Hilarity is the best thing I have ever done. This is for several reasons. Firstly, I’ve been taking a lot of time to work on my craft and improving my prose sentence-by-sentence . But secondly and perhaps more importantly, because I have finally found a way to write about some really personal stuff that happened in my childhood. There are some elements of this people might find surprising or even shocking. It is not my intention to be provocative to shock for shock’s sake, but there are things that I have finally been able to explore in fiction which I never could before. Not all of those are bad things, however. The friendship at the heart of this novel is very real, and has been one of the most redeeming things in my life.

Finishing this book nearly killed me (it’s longer than my usual fare at 110,000 words, but more than that, the emotional dimension of it was so much deeper than anything I had attempted previously), and I wrestled for a long time with whether I should be pursuing agents and publishers, or going my own way. Ultimately I realised I could not “sit” on this novel for years waiting for someone to notice. I had to show it to you, to share it with you. Every word is infused with love. And love is for sharing.

The book will be released in full (paperback and Kindle) on 31st January 2021. Meanwhile, you can pre-order the Kindle from one of the links below! Please do pre-order and help me generate some momentum and interest in this!

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon CA

If you’re a reviewer and would like an ARC, please reach out to me via the Contact form of this website, or the usual email address!

Blog, Games, Publishing

NEW BOOK & COVER REVEAL: DESECRATED EMPIRES

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re safe and well during these weird and unpredictable times. I’ve been hard at work in the creative laboratory, and I can now announce my next project, Dead World: Desecrated Empires, produced in collaboration with fabulous writers Robert Monaghan and Edward Kennard. In addition, we also have a fabulous artist, my own mother Linda Sale, producing some incredible illustrations! Here is a teaser of one I love:

Arcturus, The Black Hand, one of many intriguing characters to be found in Dead World!
by Linda Sale

But what is Desecrated Empires? I’m glad you asked!

Desecrated Empires is the ultimate RPG experience and must-have book for lovers of dark fantasy world-building. Set in the twisted and foreboding universe of Dead World, Desecrated Empires allows you to craft taut and immersivenarrative experiences using its unique, strategic rules-system. The “Era of Empires” story-arc, characterised by blood and betrayal, introduces a sophisticated “Competitive Team Play” model that will unleash the full cathartic power of your role-play campaigns. Take control of an adventurer and create your own unique legend, build a campaign as a Dungeon Master using Desecrated Empires’ omnifarious world-building toolkit, or utilise the special mechanics and tactical nuance of Desecrated Empires’ combat to command armies, build empires, form rebellions, lay sieges, and wage cataclysmic wars in a mythical world.

Features:

11 Races (including esoteric or maligned races, such as Featherfolk, Plantfolk, and Undead); each Race hasmultiple unique origins that create further variation
14 unique Classes, each of which offers a radically different style of play, from classic brute Warriors to masters of manipulation such as Illusionists
Every Class can choose one of two paths, empowering players with even more choice, and meaning there are 200+ potential adventurer Race/Class combinations
A progressive Skills system that allows adventurers to learn further crafts outside of their Class, including Blacksmithing, Alchemy, and Arcana; these aren’t static but also progress as you level and learn.
A unique combat system that eschews the clumsier elements of role-play combat in favour of more strategic and tactical gameplay; imagine the precision of an RTS game inserted into a world full of lore and epic stories.
A Bestiary & Diseasary with 100+ entries, each with beautiful descriptions and in-depth mechanics, including many monsters and characters entirely unique to Dead World’s strange universe.
Detailed lore-descriptions of every item, from the humble “Rope” to legendary artefacts such as the “Bloodthirst Cowl”!
With succinct and precise rules-wording, get your Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual all in one explosive volume! No need to buy multiple books.

Here is the epic cover-reveal!

We anticipate Dead World: Desecrated Empires being ready in early 2021! We’ll keep you updated on our progress. Over 97,000 words are written so far, but we have even further yet to go. The whole thing is going to be beautifully produced and brimming with lore and magic!

To get announcements like this even earlier, you can subscribe to my Patreon. In addition, all of my Patrons gain FREE copies of my Kindles / eBooks, including this one!

Blog, Publishing

RE-RELEASE NEWS! THE HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE ARE BACK!

THE NEXT RE-RELEASE BY THE MINDFLAYER…

As some of you know, I recently faced a small crisis in my book publishing career. Due to a thoughtless and frankly disconcerting change to a publishing platform I had used for ten years, many of my books were either disappearing or no longer yielding me any royalties. I promised you all that as a result of this I wouldn’t be giving up, but migrating my books into a new platform and giving them a rebirth. The first of these efforts was the Black Gate: Omnibus, which features all three books of my Black Gate trilogy in one volume! I cannot begin to express my gratitude to all those that supported this effort, many of whom had already read the Black Gate trilogy in its entirety but still went ahead and bought the Omnibus anyway. My thanks goes out to you with the full knowledge I can never repay this insanely kind act. Gods bless you all.

I’m now pleased to announce the next effort.

And it’s not one but TWO books! A double-re-release!

My tome Nekyia is going to be removed from the old publishing platform and re-released as it was originally intended: as a two-volume set entitled Four Horsemen and The Fifth Horseman. Both of these books have faced numerous setbacks and obstacles to being published, including two publishers reneging on contractual agreements to publish them (hence why I was forced to release it as one very unwieldy volume – to differentiate it as a “new” title). But now, at last, they can be released as intended, and my, my, the apocalyptic heralds are looking better than ever! Just look at those covers…

Thanks to Likozor, who also did the art for Black Gate: Omnibus, for the insane covers.

Both texts have been edited and improved. Four Horsemen features a new introduction with some additional insight into how the book came about. More than ever before, I want to tie together my underlying multiverse, and so these books really make it clear how Four Horsemen and The Fifth Horseman relate to the Black Gate series.

I hardly sold any copies of Nekyia. I think it was arguably my worst-ever performing book, especially considering its cost to produce. I only blame myself for this. The old publishing platform I used meant it cost me £20.50 to print the damn paperback, so I had to sell it for £21.00 (and made only 50p per copy – if that). I know that price is way too high, and quite apart from the price of entry, it was 800 pages long (but unlike the Black Gate: Omnibus, which is a similar length but cohesive, Nekyia was chopped seemingly haphazardly: divided into two halves, the first part then furtherdivided into four, and the second part divided into five, and so on). It was confusing and broke the story up in ways that made it a slog to read. They were always meant as two interrelated books, not as one.

So, the tale of Nekyia is finally coming out as it was always meant to be, and I can’t wait to share these two books with you in this unique double-release! If you want to check out the blurbs, you can head on over to the Amazon page (where the Kindle is already available!)

FOUR HORSEMEN

THE FIFTH HORSEMAN

Paperbacks are on their way!

Blog, Publishing

URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT: MY BOOKS ARE GOING TO DISAPPEAR

The goddess of darkness and a man who fell on her knees in front of her. Fantasy illustration. Black and white background.

Hey everyone,

I don’t really know how to begin, so I think it’s best I just say it how it is.

As many of you know, the majority of the books I’ve released over the years have been self-published. To do this, I used a platform, which I won’t say the name of, but it wasn’t Amazon’s in-built one. This platform had a lot of features that were really useful to authors and a wider distribution network than just Amazon’s. I have used them for a decade now, and never had any problems until now. I’ve probably produced over 50 books with them if you include works I’ve produced collaboratively with other authors and also clients.

But earlier this year, they made a dramatic change. I won’t go into all the boring and technical details, but suffice to say my faith with this platform has utterly disintegrated. The new system is unusable and almost all of my old data has been damaged in some way. I have lost sales and revenue significantly. Most of my books are no longer distributing and if they are, I’m not being paid when they sell. Ten years of work has been compromised. It’s been very stressful and tough. I’m not the only one affected by this – thousands of authors have, including some great writers you know and love. We’ve been chatting about this at length, though I’ve kept silent about it publicly, waiting for solutions to emerge, but it seems none are forthcoming. This is real and happening. So, I thought I finally had to air it.

I should say, if you’re a Writing Collective author reading this and you’re concerned, then your books are okay! We’re monitoring it daily, but we think that due to the way they were set up, they will not be affected in the same way as my individual books.

I am never one to despair! With destruction comes new beginnings. I am going to be working on removing my work from this platform and republishing it on new platforms. This will likely mean my books disappearing from Amazon over the next few weeks / months (or at least becoming “out of stock”). This is sadly unavoidable if I want to reclaim the rights, which I certainly do. But the good thing is that I’m not powerless here. In the words of Escanor from Seven Deadly Sins:

The books WILL be re-released! And on a better platform, which gives more creative freedom, and overall a better deal for me. I’m not going to be able to re-release them all overnight, as there are simply far too many. But I am going to work on rebuilding my list book by book. I’m going to try and make it fun – letting people vote on which books come back next, making a game of it. I already have plans for the first couple of books, and boy are they going to look better than any book I’ve released previously. At the end of the day, I had fun writing these books, and so as challenging as this process is, we should still try to claim something fun and positive from it.

The first thing I’m going to release to start this process of resurrection is Black Gate: Omnibus – a collation of all three books in the trilogy into one epic volume! This will be coming out June 2020.

The Black Gate trilogy is kind of a calling card for me as a writer, so it makes sense that this is the first book to be risen from the ashes. Check out the cover reveal below! I think it might be my best-ever book design-wise – I’m still trying to keep going forward through this! (thanks to Lizokor for the amazing artwork).

Don’t worry, all the major books I’ve published will be coming back. Some of them needed updating and proofing anyway, so in some strange way, this has been good: it means further refinement and improvement.

One other thing I would mention is that if you really like my work, and want to see more of it, one way you could help me during this difficult time is by becoming a patron. I have recently set up a Patreon account, where I’m sharing never-before-seen writing and behind-the-scenes videos every month. The good thing about being so prolific, is that even with these setbacks, the surface of my creative output has yet to be even scratched. There’s enough in the archives to keep us all entertained for years.

Patreon is proving a really fabulous and vibrant community, and its growing daily. So please, if you’re interested, take a look and consider backing me; I’ll be eternally grateful.

To all those who have read, reviewed, shared, and studied my books over the years: I salute you with every one of my mindflayer tentacles. You’re the best, the bomb, and you’ve literally helped keep me sane and alive. I promise never to give up, never to surrender, and to keep fighting the good fight. You guys make it all worth it.

Lots of love,

Your friendly neighbourhood mindflayer

Become a Patron!

Publishing

13Dark

†3Dark is a unique project that will showcase both the written and visual artwork of some of this century’s greatest creatives including Richard Thomas, Moira Katson, Eden Royce, Veronica Magenta Nero, Christa Wojciechowski as well as newer voices such as Matthew Blackwell, Andy Cashmore, Samuel Parr, Tomek Dzido, Anthony Self, Ross Jeffery, Jamie Parry-Bruce and Tice Cin. All of their work will explore the sacred and profane, the holy and damned, the beatific and the demonic. If you want an idea of what kinds of stories will be on offer, think of the kind of subtle supernaturalism and religiosity of something like True Detective, or Craig Clevenger’s story ‘Act of Contrition’ from The New Black.

The aim is to release 13 unique never-before-seen short stories, monthly, in digital and paperback form, accompanied by custom artwork from Shawn Langley, and with cover artwork by grandfailure. These editions will be beautifully produced, melding the visual and written elements, offering unique insight into our world. Each story will be edited and have a foreword written by me. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of something colossal.

Our first issue of 13Dark: Dead Voices will be coming out around August and will feature stories from Samuel Parr, Tice Cin and Ross Jeffery.

I hope you’ll join us on this dark descent into the heart of the divine.

And dark.

Find us on IndieGoGo