On July 24, the sequel to The Dark Lord, The Darker Lord, came out in ebook format, and on September 4, the paperback is released! I’ll be a guest at RavenCon 13.5 in Richmond, VA on September 21-23, and I’ll be doing a reading at one of my favorite places, Fountain Bookstore! Please come out and see me if you can!

If The Dark Lord was about our love of fantasy, science-fiction, roleplaying games, The Darker Lord delves a little more into fantasy and sci-fi literature. Like the first book, it contains lots of references, and at some point, we’ll have to do a complete list. It pokes fun at university life, but also deals with some more serious issues about how the sub-worlders are treated. There’s lots of humor, and Avery’s life doesn’t get any better. The Qwillery said that it was “darker” than The Dark Lord, but still lots of fun. 

Speaking of the Qwillery, they interviewed Jack Heckel (John and myself) on Twitter. We were using the Harper Voyager US account, and if you search for #darkerlordchat, you can find the whole interview. They did one for the first book #darklordchat, if you want to go back to the start of the series. They may be putting up the whole interview on their site in the next few days.

Writing the book was difficult because we went through an editor change (we loved both editors), and it has a touch of the middle book syndrome. When we return to Avery, he’s at a coffee shop in New York City reading The Dark Lord and failing to recall the end of the book. With Eldrin and Dawn’s encouragement, he tries to get himself together and teach his first class at Mysterium University, only to have Sam and Ariella from Trelari walk into class. Oh, and have the Mysterium send enforcers to question their admissions. What results is a chase that goes through the dread Student Records building and across dimensions, where a few old friends show up and a few old problems return. The end is a little bit of a cliffhanger, in the vein of Empire Strikes Back, we’ll answer them in The Darkest Lord out this winter.

I wanted to share a little text from The Darker Lord that we had to cut due to editing (in the words of Avery):

Take oil. What makes more sense, that millions of years ago gigantic lizard creatures died, got buried, and then over the millennia turned into a liquid that you could refine and burn as a fuel? Or, that a couple hundred years ago wizards from Mysterium found a way to tap into the magical flow lines of Terra, and to extract, purify, and embody that magical energy in liquid form?

And a bonus part:

People will often use the expression, “I jumped out of my skin” when they’ve been surprised by something. Taken literally, this expression is both ridiculous and impossible. Unless you’re a lizard-man or a poorly constructed zombie, most people simply don’t come detached from their skins that easily. Other than the chunk Harold’s claws nearly dug out my shoulder, my skin remained solidly attached to my body.

While those two didn’t make the novel, there’s lots of other fun insights in that vein.

Thank you for reading the books and following the blog! Please comment if you have any thoughts or questions. All the best!