Free Kindle Viking Warrior, new paperback edition of book 3, and more

The Strongbow Saga was once described by a reader-reviewer as (and I’m paraphrasing from memory here) “the greatest series you’ve never heard of.”  The original publisher, HarperCollins, did essentially nothing to promote the series and make it known. Readers have found it mostly via word-of-mouth recommendations from another,  by just happening upon it by chance, or–more recently–as a recommendation made by Amazon’s search engines.

To try to broaden the base of readers who have discovered the Saga, I once before, at the first of this year, offered the Kindle e-book version of book 1, Viking Warrior, free for a limited time. I will be running another free offering of the Kindle version of Viking Warrior beginning tomorrow, Thursday, August 16th, through Sunday, August 19th.

Those who have not yet ventured into the world of e-books may be unaware that it is not necessary to have an actual Kindle e-reader device to acquire and read a Kindle e-book. Amazon offers free downloadable Kindle e-reader apps for numerous devices, including computers, smartphones, and tablets. Once the free Kindle app is downloaded onto your device, the world of e-books–including the free copy of Viking Warrior, and numerous other free or very inexpensive books available through Amazon–can be acquired and read.

In other Strongbow Saga news, the new Northman Books paperback edition of book 3, The Road to Vengeance, is finally available. Its release was delayed long after the release of the new Kindle edition of book 3 due largely to some stubborn formatting issues. Its Amazon-U.S. store page is here.

Finally, I’d like to comment on a very thoughtful and interesting post made on July 27 by Claire, concerning the preview chapter of book 4, The Long Hunt. Specifically, Claire said: “I’m a bit saddened by the time skip [between the end of book 3 and the beginning of book 4]. In the previous books there is no real time lapse between them….”

That’s a very interesting observation, which I appreciate Claire making and would like to address. The lack of any “time skip” between books 1, 2, and 3 is due in large part to the history of how those books were written. In my very first draft, the Strongbow Saga was a single book. It ended in Paris, although somewhat differently than how book 3 now ends: the duel Halfdan fought was with Toke, who joined the Viking army near the end of the campaign, hunting for Halfdan, and Halfdan and Genevieve sailed off into the sunset–or at least back to Denmark–together.

That book did not sell, at least in part because I was an unknown, unpublished writer, and the manuscript was very long, which would have resulted in an expensive book to print–a big risk for a publisher. So I decided to carve out the first part of the story into a shorter book. That book sold to HarperCollins and became Viking Warrior (my original title for it was actually The Dane, but I did not get a vote in what to call it). My contract with HarperCollins was for a series (they did at least keep my series title, The Strongbow Saga): three books were purchased, with an option for more.

By that time, I had already decided that the existing ending in Paris was implausible, and too pat. It seemed gimmicky that Toke would conveniently show up in time to be killed, and I did not feel it would be “true” for Genevieve’s character, who had pledged her life to serve God as a nun, to just abandon that pledge and run off with Halfdan. So I rewrote the Paris ending to what it is now.

Originally, though, book 2, Dragons from the Sea (my title, which HarperCollins did keep) covered the entire Frankia campaign, and ended with the duel in Paris. I thought that just made sense, and would give a more satisfying experience to readers.  HarperCollins overruled me, though, and required me to split that part of the story into two books. Thus The Road to Vengeance, as a separate novel, was born. But because it actually was the second half of Dragons from the Sea, there is no break in continuity between the end of book 2 and the beginning of book 3.

My decision to begin book 4 back in Denmark, and skip–or more accurately, briefly summarize, in Halfdan’s thoughts–the sea voyage back to Denmark from Frankia, is a pacing decision. While I very much appreciate the fact that Claire and other readers love the details of day to day life in the story, in my opinion including a detailed description of the return sea voyage itself would not advance the story line at all, and would make the new book’s beginning too slow. But please, Claire and other readers, keep sharing your thoughts and ideas–I value them very much, and learn a lot from them.