Tag: books

More Book 4

Posted on by Austin Gunderson in News, Writing

If you’ve taken the plunge into Arlam and embarked upon the journey of 1,100+ pages which comprises A Sea Sought in Song, Wrath and Crimson Rime, and Loose the Sealed Tongue, you’ll be pleased to learn that the fourth and final volume of “The Heir and the Herald” tetralogy is now approximately 30% complete.

One of the methods I use to ensure stylistic continuity is meta-level symmetry. So for instance, each of my novels has the same overall structure: prologue, overture, sixteen chapters divided into two parts punctuated by a cadenza, epilogue. This symmetry isn’t something that’s apparent from page to page, and maybe not something readers would ever notice (without reading this blog), but I believe it helps to enforce a steady pace of action/reaction and rising tension.

Over the past five months I’ve written the following portions of Book 4:

  • Prologue
  • Overture
  • Chapter 1
  • Chapter 2
  • Chapter 3
  • Chapter 4

These sections comprise 30,000 words. I began at the blistering pace of one section every two weeks, but have since slowed by 50% due to the inadequacy of my initial outline to comprehend the plot’s rapidly-ballooning complexity. By the end of Loose the Sealed Tongue, the story had became a dizzying puzzlebox of interlocking conspiracies, and I’m afraid and excited to report that Book 4 begins that way, while occupying the expanded relational/emotional landscape represented by an additional POV character. Ideally, the outcome of all this meticulous plotting will be a proverbial unexpected-yet-inevitable conclusion to the series—a climactic resolution as satisfying as it is shocking.

In the meantime, Dear Reader, keep reading. The first three volumes of the epic saga of Hugh Conrad and Ilina Lightkeeper are available on Kindle and in paperback, and the first novel, A Sea Sought in Song, is available on Audible as read by the masterful Christopher Lane, narrator to Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton.

An immense adventure awaits you. And the best part is: the ending will be worth it.

The Sound of Arlam

Posted on by Austin Gunderson in News, Publishing

A lot’s been going on, and I’ve meant to post an update for some time, but I’ll have to delay the meaty details a bit longer in order to make a brief announcement:

A Sea Sought in Song has been read by Christopher Lane, one of Dean Koontz’s narrators. Get it on Audible today and immerse yourself in the gorgeous and terrifying world of Arlam!

If you have yet to enter the portal and brave the monster-haunted seas and face the blood-red highlands—if you’ve been too busy, too weighed down with the cares of Earth to lift a single page—then now is your time. An unimaginable adventure awaits your ears.

When Hugh Conrad picked up that jangling phone in the mud-strewn lobby of a two-bit Bangalore hotel one monsoon-slammed night in June of ’51, the last thing he’d expected to hear was the voice of the father who’d vanished off the face of the earth twenty-four years prior.

The second-to-last thing he’d expected to hear was that the old man really had left Earth.

Hugh considered himself a worldly man. Surviving childhood abandonment and the horrors of WWII to become a globetrotting treasure-hunter conferred some benefit, after all. But no amount of experience, skill, or raw ferocity had prepared him for the mission bequeathed by his father. Nothing in his whole world could’ve readied him for Arlam.

Arlam. A place of extremes—of both dream and nightmare. A land vast beyond imagining, ancient beyond reckoning, harsh beyond foreboding, beautiful beyond describing. A land usurped by a seemingly-invincible enemy.

It is there—through the portal, beyond the void, where a few months on Earth equates to seven alien centuries—that the last living descendant of Hugh’s father’s royal herald awaits the prophesied return of the ancient high king. Her name is Ilina Lightkeeper. She’s gorgeous, and learned, and utterly unprepared for the fulfillment of her prayers.

Her world needs a sovereign, not a brash barbarian.

It is these two individuals—the unready adventurer and the uneasy scholar, the heir and the herald—who must rally what remains of a defeated realm in order to withstand an evil beyond the scope of even their darkest fairytales. It is these two who must give up all they hold dear in service to prophesies they can’t begin to comprehend. It is these two who must reshape the face of Arlam.

Question is, can they let go of each other’s throats long enough to make it happen?

A Sea Sought in Song is a breathtaking plunge into peril and intrigue that only accelerates over time. Ferocious action, amplified by a unique magic system, unfolds against culturally-complex backdrops. This Indiana Jones-goes-to-Narnia adventure will delight fans of Tad Williams, Brandon Sanderson, and Patrick Rothfuss.

Writer of the Future Past

Posted on by Austin Gunderson in News, Writing

Welp, I did it: I finally got my name up on ol’ L. Ron’s shortlist. My story entry for the 1st quarter of 2023 was voted a Writers of the Future semifinalist.

Check out these RESULTS. My name’s the sixth one down on the semifinalist list: “Austin Gunderson from Utah.” Out of a sea of over 400 honorable mentions, my story broke into the top 2% of officially-recognized entries, and into the top fraction of a percent of total entries.

As was the case with my two previous WOTF honorable mentions, this semifinalist entry was an unaltered chapter pulled directly from THE HEIR AND THE HERALD, my epic fantasy series now available on Kindle and in paperback. I can say with complete honesty that the only quality which sets this chapter apart from its many fellows is that it, as a flashback narrative, is relatively self-contained. I invested no more than my usual care in its crafting. It’s a representative example of my prose.

So if you’re looking for a 1,100-pages-and-counting epic noir fantasy adventure with WOTF semifinalist-grade work on every single page … if you’ve always wished someone would write an Indiana Jones-goes-to-Narnia yarn and care how the story was told … then you won’t regret taking a portal to the world of Arlam.

But this is a bittersweet pitch. WOTF is a contest for amateurs. The fact that I can now attempt to sell you on my novels means that I’m no longer eligible to submit—I’ve officially “pro’ed out.” I sent in my semifinalist story twelve days before signing with my publisher. Little did I know how high would be the note upon which I was about to go out.

But in the close of one chapter, there’s the opening of another. And this new chapter is all about you, Dear Reader. You’re the judge now. And I’ve submitted to you a vast and ambitious entry.

I hope you like it.