Rast will be available soon.

If the planned release is on schedule, Rast will be published in a little over two weeks. I guess it’s time for me to make sure that this blog site – switched to Rast matters – begins to look like that.

I already have one potential reviewer anxiously awaiting the novel. I have several others who have reviewed my Iskander novels waiting in reserve. I haven’t actually contacted them yet, I’d better wait until I have the published file to hand, but I expect most of them to agree to give Rast a read. Then there are the reviewers in Lea’s long list at MuseItUp. Other writers say that reviews are not as good promotion as word of mouth recommendations, but they are on the route to getting those.

I’m one of thousands of novelists in a catch 22. People hesitate to buy my work because they don’t recognise my name: they don’t recognise my name because they’ve not read my work.

Next I’ll paste in my latest promotional blurb for Rast – do you think it will draw readers?


In Rast, magic is not a convenient parlour trick, it’s a deadly force that takes no prisoners. Those who must wield it are doomed, for it never ceases to work within the mind and nerves until it destroys its master.

And now, the time of the interregnum is here; the reigning sorcerer king, the Drogar of Rast, is struggling for a last grasp on magic power while his heir, Prince Egon, must take up the deadly mantle. Egon is fearful but courageous in his duty. Not one peril threatens Rast, but many.

While he struggles to tame the magic to his command the mechanistic Offrang adventurers arrive to seize the land for their empire. The Offrangs don’t just disbelieve in magic, they treat any attempt to discuss it with withering scorn. Then, when the Drogar falters, the North Folk sweep out in their multitudes to cover the land of Rast at the behest of their depraved Casket of Scrolls. Deepning too, a creature of earth magic in its mountain pools, stirs to gain power enough to conquer Rast.

The Prince’s sweetheart Jady does her best to support him, but she is not strong enough in the power of the lineage to bear him a magic wielding heir. She sets out to meet the caravansi of the cousin princess who is sent to be his consort with duty and anger both warring in her mind. The crisis will reveal surprising enemies, surprising friends, and as the Drogar tells Jady, “Even a Drogar may not see a future not yet determined.” While Egon goes west to spy on the Offrangs and Jady makes her way east, the oracle provided by the Pythian that lives in a cavern beneath the palace reveals, “You have no high point to see the scattered threads but must trust to those who grasp them.”

Everyone has a part to play in the preservation of Rast.