Hi, all! My name’s Brian McClellan, author of the Powder Mage trilogy from Orbit Books. My second book, The Crimson Campaign, will hit bookshelves, e-readers, and MP3 players worldwide on May 6th, 2014. It’s the sequel to my flintlock epic fantasy debut, Promise of Blood. Needless to say, I’m a little excited.

The Crimson Campaign starts up where Promise of Blood left off and takes us deeper into the world of flintlock rifles, black powder sorcery, vengeful gods, political intrigue and international war. Inspector Adamat tracks a psychopath holding his family hostage, Field Marshal Tamas is cut off behind enemy lines with no hope of rescue, and Taniel Two-shot finds himself friendless in an army he once thought he knew.

To fill the time between the first and second novels, I wrote a number of pieces of short fiction set in the Powder Mage universe and featuring side characters from the novels. It started as a kind of a lark (hey, I have this story idea, I think I’ll write it and see if anyone likes it), and the response ended up blowing me away. People seemed to really love the idea of crawling deeper into the world. The first of these stories “The Girl of Hrusch Avenue” is available as a free download for the next eleven days courtesy of A Dribble of Ink. It features a young Vlora surviving on the streets of Adopest. I hope you enjoy it. Read More »