Free Novel September!

Long Days in Paradise is FREE! for the month of September. Just use the Code: YE63E. This is due to a celebration of the fact that the series is now complete and the second and third novels are even more awesome than the first. I even recently received a phone call from a reader of the third novel she was so excited about it. Yes, that's right, someone actually rang me to say just how cool it was. Okay, so it was my sister, but she probably reads about ten times more books than I do, so I was suitably impressed. I think you will be too.

And wait, there's more. I'll even throw in a excerpt from The Face of Destiny, the third shards novel, since you went to the trouble of reading this far. See, it was worth it after all...

Soon the passages were lit by patches and slices of reds and yellows issuing from cracks in the huge and occasionally creaking timber panels above, and there were dusty expanses he could peek at through gaps he passed from time to time. Okay, so he had no idea where he was going, but he was making good time.

Until the cockroach.

At least Jorden assumed it was a cockroach. It had the right shape and it scuttled in much the same way – though sluggishly compared to one of Tasmania. It was just slightly larger. Well, actually it was a lot larger. It was the size of a large dog, although not the same shape. It was lower to the ground and wider and more... cockroach shaped.

It came closer, Jorden backing. He wasn't sure what a giant cockroach was likely to eat, but the size of its serrated mouth parts didn't fill him with any confidence about it being a strict vegetarian. It was almost as bad as facing a polythorn back in Maeruna, yet he doubted he had the advantage of it being repelled by his anger. At the moment he was feeling fear and he hoped it wasn't attracted by that.

Then another shape slid from the shadows and there was a flash of metal in the shards of light. Jorden jumped aside as the metal point of a weapon caught the cockroach on its armoured thorax. He saw it flinch and back; then scuttle away.

Jorden stared and blinked. He had been saved by girl in a bright yellow dress carrying a very large sewing needle. It was over half as long as she was, with a point and eye. Definitely a giant needle. He could only continue to stare. She did much the same for a moment, but Jorden noticed there was something different about her. She was not the same as others he had seen in the House.

He looked carefully. “You don't have wings,” he found himself saying. Normally something like that wouldn't be out of the ordinary, but here...