With the Kickstarter now funded, I thought I’d share a bit more of the story as well as what’s inside these early-release books.

Special Edition Features

Two books in one:

Bonded Crowns is the duology of Appointed and Ascended that will be released individually next year. While you have to wait for the books in individual format, you can grab the completed story in one chunky paperback or hardback (876 pages).

Autographed and full color title page:

The title is in color as well as the signed blessing.

Colored Maps:

New maps by A C Cartography of Eelarga and Muintir will be in color in the paperback and hardback copies.

Stretch Goals

Everyone who backs now has extras that will be tossed into their box when the campaign is finished.

Currently achieved: Deleted scenes from the book. In the middle of the action, I had a story of Shawnahur meeting up with a young puckling drover. It slowed the book down, but I went ahead and edited it with Part the Wor(l)ds Editing. It now is waiting to be formatted into a pdf or ebook to send out to my backers.

Other options up for vote:

Stretch goal #2 is $1,000 and will unlock one of the following

Coloring pages–Shawnahur’s poems and songs, zentangle dragons, horses, pucklings, and more. 28 images in all

Puckling ditty–While in the fields, Shawn’s brother taught him a ditty that helped pass the time, later it helped Shawn appear insane when he was captured by the enemy.

Dragon Lullaby–Composed and written by a local musician, this is the song that Hest hums to calm horses and that Keenah hums to activate the magic in the seer’s ring.

Puckling stickers–vinyl stickers of pucklings drawn by Zion Valet.

The next stretch goals will unveil other options such as additional maps of Shawn’s journeys, endpages for the hardback books, sprayed edges, and an embossed design on the hardback books.

A Peek Inside

Shawnahur has met up with a young boy who’ll become his squire. The smayden is a weapon much like a glaive.

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They rode in silence for a span or so before the lad pointed up past his knee and asked, “Did you kill a Hameen to get that?”

“Hm?” Shawnahur had hardly been paying attention; they’d finally hit a stretch of open road between towns where Duhara could manage the terrain without guidance.

“The smayden. Did you kill the Hameen who owned it?”

“Nay, not this one.”

“Another?”

“Aye, the one the king holds belonged to their champion in the south. That one was me.”

“I’m glad. Any more?”

Shawnahur rubbed a hand across his face, trying to block out the sight of Linnea’s husband—Yohan; he’d never be able to forget the name she’d cried—and the others. He shuddered. “Too many to count.”

“Good riddance.”

He pulled the horse to a stop and turned in the saddle, fixing Athlone in his gaze. “Listen, boiwith, if you’re going to ride with me, there’s something we have to get straight. Hameen are human, just like us. If you ever end up in battle with me, you’ll treat the enemy like you’d like to be treated. Do you understand?”

“Mm.”

“Nay, I need to hear you give me your word.”

“Aye, duene. Whatever you say. They don’t keep with such honor, though, you know.”

“Mayhap, nay, but one step when I walk the halls of the dead, I’ll face Jeeah knowing I pleased him.”

When he didn’t get an answer, just a contemplative look out into the wilderness, Shawnahur tapped Duhara’s flanks to get them moving again.

“You actually believe that, don’t you?” Athlone finally asked.

“With all my heart, boiwith. I’ve seen enough to know that if I deny their humanity, I lose mine, too. ‘Tisn’t the way to follow Jeeah, who made us all and bears the sorrows of both sides.” He paused, gathering his fortitude. The story might land badly, and ‘twas still a raw enough wound that ‘twould sting him if it did, but he felt it needed to be told. “My first battle, I thought I was defending a child, and I killed a man in hand-to-hand combat. Turned out ‘twas his son. Watched the whole thing.”

“Oh.” Athlone’s response sounded like a punch to the gut had driven it from his lungs.

“Aye. His wife saw it, too, and after the battle I had to knock down a Muintirian soldier who wanted to pull her straight off of her husband’s body and take her for himself.”

That was met with silence, but Shawn could feel a tightening in the lad’s posture behind him.

“Then someone came to drag him off to be burned, and I thought…” Shawnahur’s chest constricted. “I thought, ‘This is the last memory his family is going to have of him.’ So I did what little I could—treated his body with some dignity. Carried it myself, kept it from being buried under the rest of the dead. If ’twas one of ours, ‘twould be what I’d want them to do.”

“They don’t.” The lad spat, though with less venom than Shawnahur had expected.

“Mayhap, but I won’t stoop to become like them, no matter how much death I face or deliver.” Shawnahur’s hands tightened on the reins, and another heavy silence fell over them; he decided to leave the boy to his thoughts. ‘Twas a struggle, he supposed, for one who’d never even had the chance to fight back, to be the victor standing over a dead enemy. A victim would have different feelings. Different things to submit to Jeeah’s ways, if he accepted them at all.