Playing with fire!
Welcome back, everybody!
I’ve got a couple announcements I can share about my TWO upcoming books: Percival Gynt and the Inevitability of Fire (coming this Spring) and A Dark Hole Darkly (coming later this year).
And then we’re gonna kick off a playthrough of the Choose Your Own Adventure-style title novella from Inevitability of Fire, where YOU get to be responsible for all of the terrible decisions that Percival Gynt makes.
Let’s dive in!
A DARK HOLE DARKLY ARCS ARE READY
In my last newsletter (which you can read here), I introduced the book that’s coming AFTER Inevitability: a postmodern comic mystery novel about fandom and neurodiversity called:
Darkly won’t be available to BUY till later this year, but Advanced Reader Copies are available NOW in ePub format for reviewers!
So if you’re a book reviewer or, I dunno, best friends with a book reviewer, let me know and I’ll send you a copy.
AND SPEAKING OF ARCs…
The first review of Inevitability of Fire is in, from reviewer Helen Whistberry, and you can read it here!
Helen calls Inevitability "a fun, funny, and sometimes even touching reading escape that can be appreciated with or without having read Conspiracy of Days.”
But you don’t have to take Helen’s word for it!
THE INEVITABILITY OF FIRE, Part One
Now, as promised, here’s your first excerpt from Inevitability of Fire. The title novella is structured like (but legally distinct from) those old Choose Your Own Adventure-books, so when it comes time to make a decision WE’LL VOTE!
But be careful! Make the wrong decision and there’s always a possibility that you’ll get stuck inside the story forever!!! Maybe.
It begins like this:
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There are no choices. Not in life. Not in this universe. Every decision that we make is determined by every decision that came before it, spiraling back and back to the beginning of all things and projecting ever outward to the inevitable death of everything.
Go to 1.
Or don’t.
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Let’s assume we do that!
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1.
Despite all this, there’s still so much that remains unknowable, even to the most diligent historians.
Let us consider Percival Gynt, a man to whom I’ve devoted many years of research and many, many words. A man of singular importance to the current history of this universe and to some previous histories besides and to some other universes besides those.
Yet there’s a day in Percival Gynt’s life that remains a mystery even to me. A day for which there are certain certainties, but far more questions.
And despite years of painstaking investigation, I am no closer to answering those questions than I was to begin with. There are possibilities, yes, and those few certainties. But to understand it all at once, one must conceive of all possibilities at once. And only in understanding the entire matrix might one perchance stare through it to the truth.
So I submit to you a tale unlike any other I have heretofore proffered. A dark tale, yes. But one that must end, inevitably, in fire.
Go to 272.
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Okay, okay, but where are THE CHOICES???
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272.
It was Saturday morning, and Percival Gynt, having nothing better to do with his day, resolved to buy himself a large wedge of cheese.
If you’d care to know more about Percival’s mental state that morning and what might have moved him to acquire said cheese, please proceed to 243.
Or if that sounds dull as dishes and you’d rather get straight to the cheese, go to 14.
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Go ahead and vote and we’ll see the results next time!