Feast of Chaos
Four Feasts till Darkness, #3
by Christian A. Brown
Date of Publication:
September 23rd 2016
Publisher: Forsythia
Press
Cover Artist: Dane at
Ebookcoverlaunch
Genre: Dark Fantasy/
Literary/ Romance
BLURB
Menos has been destroyed. No corner of the
realm of Geadhain is safe from the Black Queen’s hunger. Zionae—or the Great
Dreamer, as she has been called in ancient tongues—has a thirst that cannot be
quenched until all of Geadhain burns and bleeds. She preys on the minds of weak
men and exploits human folly for an unhuman end. She cannot be defeated in her
current state, but the answer to her downfall may lie in the land of her past.
It is with this aim that a Daughter of Fate,
Morigan, and her brave and true companions venture to the mysterious
Pandemonia, the land of chaos itself. Ancient secrets and even older power lurk
in its swamps and deserts. Life itself becomes uncertain, but the Hunters of
Fate have no choice: Pandemonia must give up its secrets if they want to find
the Black Queen’s weakness.
Elsewhere in the realm, alliances form and
break. Dead men rise and heroes fall. Eod prepares for war. In hiding, Lila,
the bearer of its destruction, will be given a chance to atone and answer for
her sins. Will her actions save Eod, or has she damned it with her crimes?
Buy Link: Amazon
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/rURqUni_lco
Romance on a Budget . . .
Here’s the thing: producing books that can stand toe-to-toe
with what the big publishers are putting out costs money. Good editors cost
money; they’re not charities, and as with any professionals who know their
worth, you can only negotiate them down so far. Even going by the average rate
of $35-50/ hour, you can rack up a sizable invoice for a single pass of
copy or line editing (my books get four, then galley reads). After all that, we
haven’t even gotten to the post-production costs of PR and advertising. Is it
daunting? Of course. But if you want to succeed, or even happily fail—knowing
you gave it your best—you have to take chances. I won’t tell you exactly how
much of my savings I’ve spent on making this series, though I will say that it
has been a lot. Enough to make many of you balk. That’s material for a later
blog, though, and since I’ve had some emails and inquiries about the cost of
writing, I’ll certainly add that to my TBW (“to be written”) pile.
We’re here to talk about love. It’s been ten years since I
fell in love. My partner and I have known poverty, death and the whole range of
shitty and wonderful experiences that life could serve us. When we met, we had
nothing aside from our feelings and our crappy jobs. We lived in a basement
apartment and ate pierogis, heaps of broccoli (mostly stems, then, not
florets), and discounted meat, since that’s all we could afford. We were happy,
even if we were poor. Today, we’re not rich by any means, but we are
comfortable. The same was true when I started my writing career, and we had
finally reached that point in life where things were stable, financially and
emotionally. We were considering adoption at that time, however, it was a
choice between raising a family or chasing the dream of bringing the world
in my head to life.
Like any true, loving partner, mine encouraged me toward
the latter. It hasn’t all been wonderstruck romance, though. When you make the
decision in a relationship for one of you to effectively rack up exorbitant
costs with little immediate return, things have to be cut from the budget.
We’ve gone on less dates, fewer trips and spent more nights at home than in
previous years. More than once, we’ve settled into a bit of a slump, from which
we eventually stir ourselves—love, as I’m sure you know, has ebbs and flows.
We’ve had to discover new ways to romance one another that aren’t expensive
dinners, vacations, or material shows of affection.
We discovered that often the most romantic thing you can do
doesn’t cost money. It’s the time that matters, the hours or moments spent
where that person knows you were thinking of them. An example. Recently, we let
our cleaning lady go; she was cheap, wonderful, and only coming every two
weeks, however, she was an expense, and the books need to be balanced. We tried
to keep up as best as we could, though there was always a bit of lingering
laundry, and neither of us enjoyed the hour-long task of doing the hardwood
floors in our apartment. Tensions and mess began to pile up. We started
bickering and forgetting the whys of our love. When I realized we were
slipping apart over such a silly domestic issue, I took action. One Friday,
when J came home from work, it was to a spotless, candle-lit, gleaming home:
cleaned floorboard to dusted light-fixture. Oh, and I had chilled glasses in
the fridge and had prepared a premade Manhattan for each of us. Yum.
We had a nice dinner, enjoyed our drinks and talked, really
talked as we had when everything was new and we were still hiding parts of
ourselves from each other. All from cleaning the friggin’ house. I’m a Virgo,
so a need for organization is in my nature. However, it’s a side of my nature
that I’ve applied more toward writing and cerebral pursuits than to physical
ones (well, I guess exercise would be the exception). As outspoken as I am
about gender roles and non-conformity, I’ve made it a habit now: “getting the
home ready for my man.” And that’s not me being hypocritical, it’s me being
practical. It costs me nothing other than a great deal of sweat and three hours
worth of labour to make my partner’s week finish on a note of relaxation and
bliss. Heck, I’m actually happy when I’m cleaning. Feels good to be
industrious! Who knew? But the greatest lesson I’ve learned from becoming a
househusband, is that romance doesn’t have to be expensive, it only has to be thoughtful.
All my love,
—C
Heathsholme was quaint—Central
Geadhain’s darling, as the locals proclaimed. Looking down upon it, passengers
on skycarriages were often struck by the fact that the realm possessed the look
of a joyfully made quilt. Red-leafed orchards, yellow fields of flax and corn,
patches of blue brocade that were swimming pools and watering holes…all
threaded with brown branching roads. Sweet winds blew down from the North
year-round, bearing only cool and refreshing properties until winter rose to
claim the throne of seasons. When the North wind came, it froze Heathsholme’s
pools into skating circles and decorated the large trees with grand chandeliers
of ice. In the depths of that season, the staunch apple trees finally died. Their
fruits fell to the ground and were collected. Their blossoms broke from their
branches and filled the air like flocks of migrating winter birds. During this
season, families came from the West, South, and East to visit Heathsholme and
enjoy great outdoor festivals of food, music, mulled cider, and wine—for which
the region was also famed.
Partly on account of the season’s
coolness, these celebrations happened around great bonfires. At night, when the
happily drunk howled at the moon, a primal spirit took hold, and effigies of
nameless spirits were burned in the pyres. No one could remember why or how the
Vallistheim tradition had been born, only that it was a remnant of the customs
once imposed by Taroch. The ancient warlord had been fascinated by the Northmen’s
rites, and had introduced many of them to Central Geadhain. Vallistheim—the
winter festival—was believed to bring bounty and luck in the New Year. Over
time, polite society had done away with many of the less pleasant sacrificial
details to make the ritual friendlier to outsiders. Now only one cow from each
of the barns and byres that rose on rings in the hilled highlands around the
heart of the township was cooked in a great feast, without having been ritually
slaughtered first.
In the uncultivated grasses past the
city proper and its farmlands, a dedicated explorer could find the remains of
crumbled churches that had been built to honor the now vanished religion of
Taroch’s fancies. Runes that the sages had translated into such names as Freyallah,
Odric, and Helhayr were found chiseled in the mossy arches of these grounds.
These sites of an ancient religion were thought by modern minds to be haunted
or perhaps protected by the ancient spirits or warriors mentioned in the
stones. It was the sort of refuge where a monster, fearful of being seen, could
find sanctuary.
Buy Link: Amazon
Author Info
Bestselling author of the critically
acclaimed Feast of Fates, Christian A. Brown received a Kirkus star in 2014 for
the first novel in his genre-changing Four Feasts Till Darkness series. He has
appeared on Newstalk 1010, AM640, Daytime Rogers, and Get Bold Today with
LeGrande Green. He actively writes a blog about his mother’s journey with
cancer and on gender issues in the media. A lover of the weird and wonderful,
Brown considers himself an eccentric with a talent for cat-whispering.
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