I’ve been sitting on this news for a while as there was some legal stuff involved and I had to wait for the details to be finalized. BUT! I can now finally announce that SONGBIRDS BOOK ONE: EVENSONG’S HEIR has been picked up by a major publisher for a multi-book deal!!!!
I can’t give too many details as there’s still development going on behind the scenes. However, I can let you know about some exciting things happening with the book. My publisher’s marketing team has been working full-throttle to bring Songbirds up-to-date with the latest fiction trends.
First of all, there’s going to be a new title! As an author, of course I can’t be expected to pick the best title for my book, and it’s better to leave that to the bookselling pros. The title of the first Songbirds novel is now STEAMBIRDS OF VALNON BOOK ONE: BILLY L. DOVE AND THE EVENSONG MECHANISM. Really it’s such a better title I’m ashamed it ever had another one. But don’t worry! The story is exactly the same. Except for a few minor updates suggested by my editors, and hey, that’s their job! They want my book to sell well, right? So now the island of Valnon is a floating city which is kept aloft by the perpetual singing of the Steambirds.
Of course, there was some concern from the sales department that the gender balance was off in the original manuscript. There were just too many boys! And my reasoning that they had to be boys because so many of them are castrati was way off. I wasn’t thinking outside the box at all. So Willim is now Billy, a spunky young girl who dreams of becoming the Dove of Valnon, and won’t let gender bias and biological barriers stand in her way! She constructs a fantastical device known as the Evensong Mechanism, which allows her to replicate the miraculous song of famed inventor (and Valnon’s founder) Horatio T. Alveron. On her way to present the device to the Temple, it is stolen and Billy is nearly kidnapped by Air Pirates, but she is rescued at the last moment by Nicodemus Grayson, a former mercenary turned alchemist with a heart of gold. He promises to help Billy track down the mechanism, but only if she uses it to join in Grayson’s sworn vengeance against Lord Ravensbane, the Preybird who kicked Grayson out of the Godswords, burned down his house, slaughtered his cattle, ravished his sister, burned his Bible, and utterly ruined his Prentice’s Cotillion date with Rowena Kestrel (now also a girl).
And OMFG wait till you see the ideas they have for the cover! It’s going to look amazing. Billy’s on the cover of course, dressed in her holy Platinum Corset, and in a dramatic pose that shows off both her awesome cleavage and her shapely butt curves. She’s armed with the Blessing Blunderbuss nozzle attached to the Evensong Device (bit of a spoiler, but that’s okay) and Grayson is standing by with his ancestral winged goggles close at hand.
I don’t mind saying it, even if it might be a little bit of a jinx, but I think I have a bestseller on my hands, here.
(And if not that, then at least a respectable joke for April Fool’s.)
