Lineage Released

Me? Terrified? Never.

Drunk? Oh yes. I am prepared to get my drink on.

Lineage took me four years to write. I'd just finished the original draft of Hunter fall 2007 and I started Lineage, got 30K in. Stuff happened. I didn't pick it up again until this past summer and I finally beat that fucker into submission in November, four years to the date after I started it.

I love it. I love Peri (I don't like her and I don't want to have dinner with her, to be sure, but she's like one of my kids). I love the themes. I love how things start to come together. I love how much more it sets up. I love the fucked-up-ness of its heroine and the things that happen.

I am tremendously proud of it.

And I hope you will love it too, gentle reader.

Be prepared: it is different. I repeatedly warned that Hunter was different from Bloodlines and I don't think anyone believed me until they started it. This is different from both of those as well. Lineage is graphically violent in the ways the others weren't. It is about a person who does very bad things.

The one thing I try to make each book have in common, though, is the honesty of it. This book is honest. This is the first part of Persephone Takata's story and it is as true to her as I could make it. My job as the storyteller is to never flinch, to stare down whatever darkness I encounter and plow through it.

In this case, with guns. And improvised explosives. And also piano wire for garroting.

My final bit of warning: I don't recommend reading this series back to back unless you're re-reading. Everyone I've talked to who has gone from one to the other (lately the lovely Jaime Saare with Hunter to Lineage and my editor from Lineage copyedits to beta-ing Exhumed) had major adjustments to make so...just consider a break in between.

As always, buying the ebook from Mundania Press (and the print book from anywhere) will get you a bonus short story, and in this one it's a story called Sunrise, written from Nate's point of view. All books contain the first chapter of Exhumed, due out this summer. And if you're looking for me online right now, there's a list of places I'm visiting here--and check out Mel's site as she's talking lots of Skyla-stuff today, as well as giving away a book and making me teary.

I sincerely hope you enjoy. Now I'm off to drink (so I won't know if you don't).