I'm excited to announce that The Hunter's Fall, Book 2 of Children of the Wildings, is now available! In this latest installment of the adventures of the Vendine family, Blake ventures into the harsh, unmapped Dragonbone Mountains; Blake and Comfort get back on the same page (literally if not figuratively) and have a few issues to work out; Garis, Vera, and Kessie and assorted other friends and family are drawn into the fight, and we learn more about the dragons that have reappeared in the Wildings after disappearing a thousand years ago or more. Plus Silas and Lainie, of course!

Blake Vendine, mage and bounty hunter, heads into the forbidding Dragonbone Mountains in search of notorious outlaw Wiley Wedlin and the powerful, unknown mage who is controlling the dragons. His search takes him on a journey through unmapped canyons and deserts that stretches his skills, determination, and will to survive to their limits.

Realizing that Blake is in over his head, Comfort, Lainie, and Silas set out after him as Comfort struggles with the choice she must make between the man she loves and his quest for justice, and his quarry, the father she's been searching for for years.

In the meantime, the dragons’ master enters into an alliance with hostile A'ayimat and makes an impossible, ruinous demand of the Wildings settlers. With the few other mages living in the Wildings, Garis, Vera, and Kessie join the fight to protect the settlers.

But even with Blake risking his life to find and capture the dragon master, will a handful of mages and friendly A'ayimat and the non-magical settlers be enough to win a fight against dragons and the mage who is powerful enough to command them?

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I just (yesterday) finished the final edit on The Hunter's Fall (Children of the Wildings Book 2), which means it's past time to reveal the cover!

In this book, we get a little more up close and personal with the dragons, plus we also get Blake and Comfort back on the same page (literally if not figuratively).

Here's what it's about:

Blake Vendine, mage and bounty hunter, heads into the forbidding, unmapped Dragonbone Mountains in search of notorious outlaw Wiley Wedlin and the powerful, unknown mage who is controlling the dragons.

In the meantime, the dragons’ master enters into an alliance with hostile A'ayimat and makes an impossible, ruinous demand of the Wildings settlers. Comfort, Garis, Vera, and Kessie - and Silas and Lainie - are drawn into the fight to save the settlers from the dragon master’s demands.

But even with Blake on the case, how are they going to fight against dragons and the mage who is powerful enough to command them?

So why is the book called The Hunter's Fall? Three reasons, and I'll try to keep them non-spoilery:

1. At the end of book 1, Blake had made progress on some of his issues, but as book 2 begins, he's regressed rather badly.

2. He literally falls (twice!) into a canyon (yikes!)

3. Failure suddenly seems imminent when he *falls* (get it?) into the hands of the bad guys (not a spoiler because this is something that pretty much has to happen in a fantasy book).

Watch for the further adventures of Blake Vendine, along with Comfort, Garis, Kessie, Vera, and Silas and Lainie, coming soon to your favorite ebook store!

So, two months later (time flies!) I guess I should announce that The Hunter's Vow, Children of the Wildings Book 1, is now available! This new series follows the adventures of Silas and Lainie's grown kids, especially Blake, who has followed in his father's footsteps and become a bounty hunter. Silas and Lainie refused to sit by quietly while their kids have all the fun, so they have a part to play, too. The Hunter's Vow is available as an ebook at all major and many smaller ebook retailers as well as from my own store. Print (paperback and hardcover) to come.

Links to buy The Hunter's Vow

Also take note of the snazzy new typography and graphic treatment on the cover, from Catrin Russell at Subtle Touch Creations (who also did the cover art for the Children of the Wildings books). I splurged and got all the Wildings books done (Daughter, Defenders, and Children) and also the Mage of Storm and Sea books. I love the new look, and I hope I'll be able to give the rest of my books the same treatment eventually.

For months now, I've been up to my eyeballs in revisions and edits on Children of the Wildings, but now, finally, The Hunter's Vow, book 1, is almost ready for release! I'm finishing up one more final cleanup edit, then formatting and some other prep work, and then The Hunter's Vow will be launched into the world! I don't like giving an exact release date, but watch for the release announcement in the next couple of weeks.

For now, it's time for the cover reveal. Introducing Blake Vendine (yes, that's Silas and Lainie's Blake, little Blake from Defenders of the Wildings, all grown up) and Comfort Garvin:

And, why, yes, that is a dragon in the background. Dragons are mentioned in Defenders of the Wildings as being long extinct from the Wildings. But could the truth be otherwise??? I've never written dragons before, so this was a lot of fun.

Anyway, here's what it's all about:

Blake Vendine, mage and bounty hunter, has made it his calling in life to hunt down outlaws and bring them to justice for their crimes. During his search for the notorious con man and renegade mage Wiley Wedlin, he crosses paths with a woman named Comfort who wants to find Wedlin just as badly as he does... for completely different reasons. He doesn't want help on his hunt, but, looking down the barrel of Comfort's revolver, he realizes he doesn't have much of a choice but to let her join him. He definitely doesn't want to fall in love with his rival, and Comfort returns the sentiment, but they soon find they might not have much choice about that, either. And just as Blake and Comfort find a hot lead on Wedlin, a thousand-year-old mystery comes to life and changes everything.

A new series in the Wildings world, featuring the next generation of the Vendine family, filled with magic, adventure, and romance. This series comes after Daughter of the Wildings and Defenders of the Wildings.

Books in Children of the Wildings:
Book 1: The Hunter's Vow - Coming soon!
Book 2: The Hunter's Fall - forthcoming
Book 3: The Hunter's Flight - forthcoming

I checked my calendar, and it's time for my (almost) yearly blog update! Heh, I really do mean to stop in here more often.

What I've been up to the past year:

Revisions on Children of the Wildings. This project has been a bear. It has more supporting character subplots than anything else I've written. Of the six Vendine kids, the four oldest have their own plotlines, and getting all the timelines straight and making the different plotlines connect to each other has been a lot of work.

Also, there's a lot of writing advice about knowing your characters' flaws and inner wounds and having detailed outlines of what they need and how they change and so on before starting to write. I tried this with Children and also with Mage of Storm and Sea, and the results confirm what I already subconsciously knew: if I try to figure all this stuff out in advance, I *always* get it wrong. So I've been having to do a lot of character work, reworking what they really want, what drives them, what they have to overcome, how they react to things, and so on.

I got some good beta reader feedback on the first book from some of my author friends, and did beta reads on their books in exchange, which also kept me busy for several months.

The project code-named "The Wise." I love this story, it's built on a fragment I wrote a long time ago and never knew where to go with it. I've got most of a draft, but (as I see I mentioned before) the original ending petered out into an ending for a story that wasn't the one I wanted to write. So it's undergoing major rewrites and I'm also developing the concept more deeply. It has a lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romance and a rebellion against a shadowy cabal of magical elites that controls all the magic in the land.

I've also been doing a lot on my subscription membership on Ream. (Ream is kind of like Patreon but designed specifically for authors and books.) The main thing is a book of the month club I'm calling The Wildings Literary Society, which has been a lot of fun. I'll go into more details in another post soon, but if you want to come check it out before then, here it is: Kyra Halland on Ream

So I guess I've been neglecting this blog for a while. Here's what I've been up to in the past 15 months:

Released the Mage of Storm and Sea Complete Series box set.

Finished the draft of Children of the Wildings, did a basic revision to get the timeline and subplots all straightened out, and now I'm about 2/3 through the big, deep revision.

Wrote the rough draft of another project (working title The Wise, though that's pretty much become obsolete). This is the expansion and completion of an old fragment. It fizzled out into the wrong ending, so I set it aside and will do an extensive rewrite once I've finished a couple of other things.

Went on another two week trip to Germany with my husband. It was awesome.

Started a readers' club on Ream, a new subscription platform, sort of like Patreon but specifically built by authors for authors and readers. You can Follow me on Ream for free, or I've got paid memberships starting at $3.00 per month. Depending on your membership, you get exclusive early access to my latest work in progress, bonus content, discount codes for my online store, access to my backlist on Ream and to my reader community, and more! I'll go into this more in a later post, but I hope you'll come check it out and see what it's all about.

I also want to mention my online store again. It's on Payhip, a widely-used ecommerce platform, with secure payment processing by PayPal (so no, you don't have to give me your credit card number) and book delivery handled by the helpful people at BookFunnel. Get 10% off your entire purchase every day with coupon code WELCOME10!

As suggested by having my own store and a subscription program, I've been rethinking and restructuring my writing/publishing business, moving away from being so dependent on a few big stores and towards building a more direct relationship with a community of readers. I'm excited about what lies ahead, and I hope you'll join me for it!

I am so excited to announce that Storm of Magic, book 3 of Mage of Storm and Sea, is finally available! This epic conclusion to the series was a very difficult book, but I finally got it wrestled into shape. It's Leshi and Esavas's most dangerous and heartbreaking challenge - and my longest book ever!

Even though it took so long (I started writing the first draft of this series in September of 2018) and was a struggle at times, I loved writing Mage of Storm and Sea. It was inspired by books I read when I was younger, where I just loved the hero and wanted to see him find love and a happily ever after, but it didn't happen. So I decided to write that story myself. To me, Esavas is the perfect combination of badass and hapless, and when it looks like nothing will ever go his way again, I was so excited to introduce him to Leshi. Sunshine to his grumpy, much younger but she's the one that has her act together, and just the right mix of brave, sensible, and innocent to balance him. I loved writing them, and I hope you've enjoyed reading them (or will, if you haven't started the series yet!)

After losing everything else, they found each other.

Now Leshi and Esavas are ready to begin their new life together in Yevoruta, the city of the mages. But the battles of the past raised more questions than they answered, questions that themselves must be answered if Esavas and Leshi are to lay the ghosts of the past to rest and find peace in their new life.

But beneath the mannered, elegant surface of mage society lies treachery, and the search for those answers could cost Leshi and Esavas everything as they face the difficult - and heart-wrenching - challenge of stopping the evil that threatens to consume the life of their beloved Islands.

Now available at your favorite ebook stores for $3.99. But if you buy it direct from my store, you can get 20% off any and all the books in the Mage of Storm and Sea series using coupon code STORM20. Expires 22 Jan. 2023. My store is hosted by PayHip, a widely-used ecommerce service; payments are processed by PayPal (so you don't have to worry about giving me your payment info!) and book delivery is handled by the pros at BookFunnel.

So here it is, January of 2023 already, and here’s that long-promised post with news, plus some other updates and a look ahead.

First of all, news I’ve been meaning to share for a while. I’m really excited to have finally opened my own store! This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I wanted the extra measure of independence of having my own store, and I’m looking forward to doing some special things with it, exclusive discounts and bundles and so on. For now, I’m only selling ebooks; print books are something I might think about in the future.

Right now, you can get 10% off your entire purchase in my store with coupon code WELCOME10, plus I’ve got a few pop-up discounts hiding here and there. The store is hosted by PayHip, a widely-used ecommerce service, with payments processed by PayPal (and I plan to add Stripe as well), so you don’t have to worry about giving me your credit card info! And book delivery is handled through BookFunnel, who make it easy to load your books onto your devices.

Also, I’m in the process of updating all my print books, both new paperback editions and I’m adding case-laminate hardcovers on Amazon. These have the cover art and text printed directly on the cover; if Amazon ever makes it possible to do the fancy hardcovers with dust jackets, I’ll be on that as well. (There’s a print service that some authors use that does these, but it charges a lot of up-front fees.) But if you want something more substantial than a paperback, the case laminate covers look very nice. All the Wildings books, Daughter and Defenders, are now available in the updated paperback and hardcover editions, and I’m slowly working on the rest. A bunch of my books still have the old cover art on the print covers, so I really need to get this done!

In other news, Beneath the Canyons is no longer a permafree ebook (at least, once I finally get Amazon to un-free it on the last few sites!). Having a long-term free book has been my main marketing strategy for the last 4+ years, but now I feel like it’s time to shake things up a little and try some different things.

I’m nearing the end of the final FINAL (and this time I really mean it!) edits on Storm of Magic, book 3 of Mage of Storm and Sea. This is the Book that Ate My Brain, it had major, major issues, but even though it’s taken so much time and work, I’m very happy with how it’s turning out. Hoping to release it next week!

To celebrate, the prequel to Mage of Storm and Sea, Dreams of Magic, is on special for 99 cents this month.

Next in the pipeline: I’m nearing the end of the draft of Children of the Wildings, another trilogy set in (in case you didn't guess) the Wildings world. Now that I’m near the climax of the series and know where everyone needs to be and what they’ll be doing, I’ll need to go back and fill in the subplots. But I’ll be wrapping up this first draft sometime in the next few months. Then comes the revision, yikes. I’m working out some refinements to my revision process so that hopefully it won’t take so long!

I’m also working out ideas for a new trilogy, set in an entirely new world. The working title for this one is “The Wise.” (Hint: they actually aren’t as wise as they think they are.) And a couple of other projects I’m not ready to talk about yet.

For 2023, I’m working on increasing my productivity. Time management is one issue I’m addressing, and like I mentioned above, I’m making some changes and refinements in my writing and editing processes. Between the release of Mages’ Uprising, the last book of Defenders of the Wildings, and Winds of Magic, book 1 of Mage of Storm and Sea, was over two years, and I really don’t want to have that long a gap between books again!

Wishing you a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2023, and stay tuned for Storm of Magic release news!

I am getting close to the final *final* edits on Storm of Magic, book 3 of Mage of Storm and Sea. Which means it's time for the cover reveal! Storm of Magic is my longest book ever, and one of the most challenging ones. It's been through two major rewrites and a lot of smaller changes and adjustments, but I think it's finally almost to where I want it. This is a story I've been wanting to tell for a very long time, and I'm so glad it's almost complete. No release date yet; keep on eye on my newsletter for more info!

And now, on with the cover reveal!

Here's what it's all about:
After they lost everything else, they found each other.

Now Leshi and Esavas are ready to begin their new life together in Yevoruta, the city of the mages. But the battles of the past raised more questions than they answered, questions that themselves must be answered if Esavas and Leshi are to lay the ghosts of the past to rest and find peace in their new life.

But beneath the mannered, rigid surface of mage society lies treachery, and the search for those answers could cost Leshi and Esavas everything.

Coming soon to your favorite ebook store!

Last chance to get these huge anthologies to help support Ukraine humanitarian relief! Fierce Hearts is over 1000 pages of epic romantic fantasy and fantasy romance set in fantasy worlds; Adamant Spirits is jam-packed with paranormal romance, romantic urban fantasy, and science fiction romance. The print editions, paperback and deluxe hardcover, took a long time to produce because they are absolutely enormous! But they're gorgeous (check out the under-jacket art by Therena Carlin on the hardcovers!), and, like the ebooks, they are only available through the end of September. So far this project has raised over $27,000 for food and medical supplies for people affected by the war in Ukraine. If you don't have your copies yet, grab them while you still have the chance and help us bring this project to a big finish! All proceeds go to the International Rescue Committee for Ukraine humanitarian relief.

Ebooks available at multiple ebook stores. Print editions are available on Amazon in various markets, and at Book Depository with worldwide shipping.