DAWNRISE Release Date

 Many have been asking, so let me give ya'll the good and bad news about book 5.

Good news: It's still coming out this year!

Bad news: Due to COVID-19-related delays, it won't be available until December 8th.

That said, I think the good outweighs the bad. The Chaos Queen Quintet's conclusion is nigh, and I'm excited for book 5 to FINALLY be in your hands!

Alicia Vikander as Winter

I have a file on my computer of actors that more or less look like characters in the Chaos Queen Quintet. My publisher originally asked me to create the file to provide more detail for my cover artist. We ended up going in a different direction with the covers that didn't require character detail (and, for the record, I'm very happy about this--I love the more abstract look of the covers), but I still have the file.

And, if you write and you're anything like me, matching actors to your characters is sort of an irresistible right of passage of any large-scale story I'm telling. In a lot of ways it's important to the process for me, as well. Enhancing the way I see the characters in my head can go a long way.

One day I might blog more about that file, but for now I'm going to keep it under wraps. As a reader, I more often than not prefer my own images of characters, and I don't want to ruin that for anyone who feels the same way. Also, none of the actors in the file really seemed to completely work for any of my characters. Some actors are closer than others, but none of them really embodied my characters.

That said, a couple months ago I saw the new Tomb Raider film, and...well...I've found an actor that does.

The film itself was entertaining, but not much to write home about in most areas. However, Alicia Vikander plays Lara Croft with an impressive combination of vulnerability and strength. The whole time I watched the film, all I could think of was how great Vikander would be as Winter (especially from Book 3 onward--I won't say why because it'd constitute a mild spoiler--but she'd be fantastic as Winter from the beginning, tbh). Die her hair black, get her dark contacts, and she'd be the spitting image of Winter. Also, Vikander has serious acting chops, and that doesn't hurt.

Anyway. I think that's pretty cool!

For the record, if the Chaos Queen Quintet ever does get picked up for a screen adaptation, I'll almost definitely have ZERO input on casting. But still, a guy can dream!

Where to buy DUSKFALL

In other news, one of the many cool things that's been happening lately is seeing Duskfall pop up for pre-order in all kinds of places. I figured I'd collect all the locations I can find where DF is available for purchase and list them here, for your convenience (and for my ego).

You'll notice the gorgeous cover art is already up on most of these websites--I'm still completely fanboying out about that.

In most online places, Duskfall is available in trade paperback for $14.95 and in ebook format for $7.99.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

iTunes/iBooks

Kobo

I'll try to update these links as they become available!

DUSKFALL Cover!

Long time no blog!

So, some of you may have already heard this already, but I just have to post it here. Something awesome happened:

Yeah. That's the cover of my first novel, Duskfall, coming out June 21st. Well, what do you think of this cover, Chris? some of you may be asking. Allow me to respond.

IT.

IS.

AMAZING.

Folks, this cover is gorgeous. It is everything I've ever hoped for in a cover. It is beautiful, it is detailed enough to draw me in but subtle enough to leave me with questions (or at least I think it would if I hadn't read this book a dozen times already), it totally avoids typical fantasy cover cliches, I love the title font, I love the fact that my publisher came up with "Chaos Queen Quintet" (because that sounds much cooler than the "Chaos Queen Series"). I love it all. This cover is divine. (It reminds me of a UK Joe Abercrombie cover, which are some of my favorite covers of all time.) Huge thanks to the folks at Titan for coming up with such an awesome design.

So, yeah. I'm very happy about it.

That's all for now--there's a lot of other stuff going on right now that I'm excited to blog about, so hopefully I'll be posting a bit more in the future. But, in the meantime, here's some awesome things people are saying about my book cover:

My publisher, Titan Books, revealed the cover on their blog.

Stefan over at Civilian Reader had some pretty neat things to say about it.

My agents-across-the-Atlantic featured it on their blog.

More info to come!

Wait, it's almost July?

And suddenly a month has passed. Yikes.

I've been busy. First of all, what should, *hopefully* be the final-ish revision of Duskfall (you can tell how confident I am about them already, can't you?) has taken more time and effort than I'd hoped. Ain't that always the way. I'm happy to be wrapping them up, though.

I've also joined a writing group, so that has been cool. I'm sure I'll talk more about that later, but I'm very happy about it so far.

Oh, and I went to Alaska. Had an adventure or two. Because, you know, that's where I'm from and such.

Between those things, which are for the most part very awesome, and some decidedly not-awesome other things like Hugo award controversies and the recent murders in Charleston, I've been avoiding saying much on the internet of late. But I think I've collected myself a bit and I'm ready to jump back into blogger-ness, which means continuing my How I Got Published and #FIF Series (Serieses? Serieses'ses''''? Stupid english...), checking in more with general updates on my writing (including writing group stuff) and life in general (including Alaska stuff), and maybe even sharing some thoughts I have about recent events. So, that's that.

Fun with banners

I've been experimenting with different content that I'll include in my eventual website, and came up with these! Each file is a banner for one of the five main books in the Chaos Queen Series. They're certainly not professional on any level, but I feel pretty good about them given the minimal time I put into them and my minimal experience doing this sort of thing.

Just to clarify: these are not nor shall they be the covers of the books; Titan Books will take care of that, and within the next year or so I'm sure I'll be happy to reveal the cover of Duskfall to you all! But, for now, I figured these might make for interesting content--or, if nothing else, a practice in very very rudimentary graphic design for yours truly.

As you may have noticed in each of the banners, the current plan is to release a book each year, starting with Duskfall in 2016. As of now I don't see any reason why that plan will not work, but I suppose many authors have made similar statements (famous last words...) and, well, some books just take longer than others, I suppose. But I am committed--I feel confident in my production ability, and I think the schedule is more than just do-able.

(Speaking of which, I'm closing in on the ending of Dark Immolation, book two in the Chaos Queen Series! So things are sort of ahead of schedule, there--although revisions historically are a more arduous process for me than writing a first draft, so time will tell, my friends...)

If you've been around the blog or any of my social media sites, you've certainly seen the first banner, but the others should be new to you. So check them out!

~

Attributions:

"Duskfall banner," is a derivative of "Foggy woods" by Freedom to share.

"Dark Immolation banner" is a derivative of this work on pixabay by Utoplec.

"Midnight Void banner," is a derivative of "Fractal Texture spiral Dark Web Abstract Nether" by TextureX-com, used under CC BY. "Midnight Void Banner" is licensed under CC BY by Christopher Husberg.

"Fear the Stars banner," is a derivative of "Crux (Southern Cross) from Hobart, Tasmania" by Edoddridge, used under CC BY. "Fear the Stars banner" is licensed under CC BY by Christopher Husberg.

"Dawnrise banner" is a derivative of a photograph courtesy of Brad Husberg.

It's the little things...

...like seeing someone talk about me and my books on a webpage that I have not made nor had any hand in making. Check out the official announcement from my friends in the UK (DID YOU KNOW I HAVE FRIENDS IN THE UK WELL I DO), Zeno Literary Agency! DUSKFALL has officially sold both UK and US rights!

Guess what, folks!

IT'S OFFICIAL!

Let it henceforth be known that I, Christopher Husberg, shall have a novel, published and in bookstores and on Amazon and everything, in 2016!

I'm ecstatic to announce that Duskfall, book one of the Chaos Queen Series, will hit shelves roughly eighteen months from now, published by Titan Books, and I couldn't be happier about it...

...

...except for the fact that they're actually going to publish all five books in the series*, ZOMG YOU GUYS CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT?!?!

Image courtesy of robynize

So, basically, this is PHENOMENAL news and everything is wonderful and life is full of roses and smooth baby bottoms no wait that's not right life is as smooth as a baby's bottom yes that's what I meant because a life full of baby bottoms would be weird anyway if a picture is worth a thousand words than a gif is worth a thousand pictures right so that's like a million words so here's a few million words worth of me being excited:

Image courtesy of wedoitbetta

Image courtesy of PeetaEverdeen

Image courtesy of ReactionGifs

Whew. Okay, I think that's out of my system. Anyway, I'm excited, there will be a whole lot more news to come, everything is awesome (oh, I should have done THAT gif!), etc. etc., yay and such.

* A book a year, beginning next year! Yay! Except...wait...a book a year, that's 150-200k words per book, which means...maths are hard, wait, it means...it means...

Your friendly local desultory blogger, here...

Because this defines my blogging habits in all the ways:

desultory |ˈdesəlˌtôrē|adjectivelacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm: a few people were left, dancing in a desultory fashion.• (of conversation or speech) going constantly from one subject to another in a halfhearted way; unfocused: the desultory conversation faded.• occurring randomly or occasionally: desultory passengers were appearing.
Also, I'm hard at work on Book 2 of the Chaos Queen series*, and it's going well. It's actually been quite fun to get back into the characters of Knot, Winter, Astrid, and Cinzia. It's been so long since I've written actual new material for them (I wrote the first draft of Duskfall in 2010, believe it or not) that I thought it would be something of a disaster. But I'm happy to see that is not the case. So, that is happening, and it's making me happy.

My other Chaos Queen project, which was tentatively titled Dark Immolation but has now been tentatively changed to Deadnight, is on the backburner for now. In fact, that project may become something closer to a series of novellas/novelettes, depending on Things.

And, finally, I'm pretty sure I'm going to attempt a D&D-style campaign in the Chaos Queen world. It wouldn't happen until Christmastime-ish, but if it goes well it might be the first in a long series of similar campaigns. I've never GM/DM'd before, so this will be my first experience telling the story, but I'm looking forward to it. Fun times ahead. (And it's not all for fun, either--the idea is that it will help me explore different facets of the Chaos Queen world. Okay, you're right, that actually does sound fun to me. So it is all for fun.)

Anyway, that's me lately. And, in the spirit of D&D, and one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, enjoy the following laugh:





*  Did I mention I changed the series title from The Blood Queen to The Chaos Queen? Well, I did. It fits a lot better. Also, there are no WoW NPCs named Chaos Queen, so, added bonus.