BLOG — Sherrill Nilson

Hunter will be published next week for Advanced Review. If you'd like a copy, send me your physical address and I'll mail you one as soon as I get the copies. I'm working on Falling, Adalta Vol. III to publish next year.

Here is the first chapter of Hunter, and in two weeks I'll post the first chapter of Falling, or rather, the working copy of the first chapter.

In the meantime, while you'r waiting for your copy, Karda is available on B&N and Amazon for print, and Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Ibooks and Google Play for ebooks. Fun reading for these dogs days of summer before the world comes back from vacation in September.

Chapter One.

Tessa Me'Cowyn paced from her window to her bed to the door. She pressed her ear to the varnished oak. She could hear clashes of metal on metal, shouts, screams, running feet echoing up to the corridor, growing closer, louder, ever more threatening.

Or was this finally rescue?

After weeks as a hostage in Readen’s keep, the elegance of the furnishings, the thick rug, the private bathing room didn't make Tessa feel any less trapped.

My copies of Karda Adalta Vol I came for me to send to advance readers. And my grandsons came, to bicker. to eat endlessly, to strew very large shoes in my path, and to watch videos on their phones.

Actually, they’ve had a great time. Visits with other cousins, swimming, movies, a rafting trip with my daughter, Jeri, on the Illinois River on the edge of the Ozarks. Lots and lots of Coneys and pizza and hamburgers and fries and bickering.

My car is pretty small—a convertible with a tiny back seat—and two of the boys are six feet and over and the other is not far behind. All of them have giant feet. If I live through this visit, next time I’m renting a real car so there will be room for their feet. They did enjoy the one day we could have the top down, hands in the air, yelling, laughing, except for the one who was embarrassed by his little brother and his older cousin. After that, they decided it was too hot.

So between driving the three of them around––everytime going through the “I call shotgun” “No, it’s my turn.” “No, I can’t fit back there” and so on and so on––trying to keep them fed, and attempting to convince them that chores were not cruel and unusual punishment, I worked.

I sent out my newsletter, worked on the list of people who wanted review copies––let me know if you want one. The edits to Hunter Adalta Vol II got done, and I rewrote the last three chapters. I managed to get Karda up on Amazon (that’s still not finished), got envelopes to mail the books––I didn’t get enough––addressed them, and as soon as my cards and things come from Vistaprint I can sign and mail them

I also went over edits to Chapter One of Falling, book three, and tried to work on Chapter Four. But I gave that up.

Before they came, I was reading Circe, the fantastic book by Madeline Miller, about the woman who turned Odysseus’ men into pigs when he was on his interminable way home to Penelope. Miller is a consummate wordsmith, no wonder the book hit #1 on the NYT bestseller list. If I could work words like she does—oh my, I wish I could. I’ll be glad when things get back to normal here, and I can get back to her book. Writers need to read writers, and she is one of the best.

But for now, Karda is available on Amazon, although there are still some issues to work out with them, and the official launch is not till July 28.

The writing life is exhausting. This is not a long, lazy, summer. But the boys got the GIANT BLACK WIDOW SPIDER out of the grill on the back porch, and I knocked off the GIANT WASP’S NEST which was empty and about an inch in diameter. Then they grilled hamburgers. It was quite the adventure.

Is it September yet?

Chapter One of Hunter, Adalta Vol. II

The Long Lazy Summer That Isn't