Time Enough To Say Goodbye

Excellent author/professional grump PT Dilloway has released the excellent Volume Two of his superhero series, "Tales Of The Scarlet Knight."  I read both books 1 and 2 and have loved them.  Here is his entire post announcing it; find out more about a free giveaway on his blog, and the book is currently on sale for just $0.99!  Less than a buck!

Two-Cent Tuesday: Volume 2 is Here!

Today is the official release day for Time Enough to Say Goodbye, Tales of the Scarlet Knight Volume II.  Yes, that's quite a mouthful.  The good thing is that makes it easier to find in search engines, which is what I keep telling all these people who give their books one-word titles because they think it's cool.  Search engine optimization!

Anyway, like Volume I, Volume II costs only $2.99.  If it still says $299.99 somewhere that's because they haven't updated the site yet.  So just go to the Smashwords page and you can download it in whatever format you want:  Mobi for Kindle, ePub for Nook/Kobo, or PDF to read on your PC.  It is on Amazon & B&N but I make more money if you buy it from the Smashwords site.  I'm just saying.

Volume II actually has a long history to it.  I wrote the first draft starting in August 2009.  I remember that because it was the first book I wrote on my netbook.  I remember I wrote the first chapter in a Big Boy restaurant in Novi, MI just to test the newfound freedom of not needing a power cord.

I was never fully happy with that first version of the story.  It seemed like it needed something to make it more exciting.  The character of the Watchmaker especially was kind of boring.  I decided to rewrite it last year.  Except the rewrite didn't end up being much more exciting in a lot of ways.  Michael Offutt beta-read it and eventually we came up with the idea of introducing demons!

Demons already existed in a prequel story I'd written, one that focused on the witch character, Sylvia Joubert.  I hadn't really used them in any Scarlet Knight stories, but they seemed like a natural fit.  That allowed me to rewrite the Watchmaker and make him a scarier, more badass villain than before.  It also altered Marie Marsh's character by giving her some new abilities.

So now I think Volume II is a lot better than that early draft.  At the same time it still retains the best elements from that.

Like most of the Scarlet Knight stories, the plot revolves largely around sacrifices that need to be made.  For Emma Earl, aka the Scarlet Knight, the sacrifice is those people who are the ones she cares about the most:  her parents.

If you read the end of the first book then you know Marie Marsh has a weird pale eye that lets her see into the past and communicate with a little girl in the 19th Century named Veronica.  With some help from a mysterious old man who calls himself the Watchmaker, Marie finds a way to use her eye to actually go back in time to 1876 so she can save Veronica from dying from a fever by bringing her to the present.

This changes the timeline and suddenly Emma finds herself back at her old house with her parents still alive.  Even better yet, Emma is about to marry Dan Dreyfus, the love of her life.  Can Emma give all that up to put things right again?  Can Marie give up Veronica to put things right again?  And what's the deal with the Watchmaker?  Hurm...

If that's not enough of an enticement, let me just say this:  the end battle involves demons, ninja witches, and a giant worm.

You know you want it, and for $2.99 why not?  Go buy it now!

LET ME SAY THIS: That end battle was incredible.