Hey !

Author Update

It's holiday season, which means a lot of great celebration and family time and a shift into a different kind of busy-ness. With archery team practices coming up for now three of our kids, choir practices and other events, and work taking a crazy busy turn, the writing has had a bit of a nose dive as of late. Writing was scarce over the last couple of weeks, but that is the nature of life. Though I haven't made a ton of progress on actually writing anything new, I do have some great updates for some of the books in the later phases of the process.

The final touches on Dwarf Blooded are nearly done, which means the only thing between this book and you is me uploading everything and hitting publish. I would have loved to get this book out to you a couple months ago, but life happens. That said, I hope my next email to you it 'guess what? you can buy Dwarf Blooded now!' Siren Blooded (book 6) is still in writing phase, and books four and five are written and just waiting for my grubby editing fingers to start tearing them apart.

It was brought to my attention as of late that the book pages on my website (www.dankenner.com) have certain--challenges which prevent you from purchasing some of the types of books. I apologize profusely, and hope to have that fixed soon. If you tried recently to buy books directly from my shop and ran into problems, let me know and I'll make sure you get what you want. As we so often see in construction sites--'pardon our dust' when it comes to my website.

Not to beat a dead horse, but late pledges are still available for the Kickstarter if you missed it (these could end any day now, so don't wait too long)

Get Last Minute Pledge in!

Lastly, I'm thrilled to say that December's short story is now live!

"Ines thought working at a bookstore would be simple—until the shelves rearranged themselves, her boss disappeared, and a goblin crawled out of a book.

Now trapped inside a labyrinth of enchanted aisles, Ines must outsmart magical creatures, survive a maze that changes with every turn, and uncover the truth the shopkeeper has kept hidden for years. With only a silver letter opener and a stubborn streak, she ventures deeper into the heart of a bookstore where stories come alive… and not all of them are friendly.

The Spellbound Stacks is a cozy, fast-paced fantasy about courage, found magic, and the worlds hiding between the shelves.

"

Read December's Short Story HERE

Homestead Update

We had our first really hard freeze just a couple days ago, which brought a whole new slew of troubles to the homestead. This isn't the first time we've had to deal with freezes and animals in general, but it is our first with pigs. I had already ordered some in-water heating elements to keep their water from freezing, but due to a system error, those were delayed. Unfortunately, that meant when the freeze hit, the metal nipples the pigs use to extract their water broke. Well, it wasn't just the freeze. Pigs are really hard on--pretty much everything. If it isn't buried or secured firmly, they'll toss it around their pen. So--I'm having to manually water them--very regularly, because they knock a trough of water over in ten minutes. Who knew they were strong like super pigs? I didn't.

Along with the cold comes the unfortunate situation of cows laying in freshly dropped manure. (I know, it's a bit TMI, but it's what we deal with). Heaven knows their thick hides and chunky bodies could keep them warm, but I suppose they think it's not enough. So, they lay in the warmest thing they can find. No, it's not their clean and dry bedded house that my sons and I clean out every day--it's the manure they just freshly dropped. Nice, cows. Very nice. As you can imagine, hand-milking a cow that does that is not glamorous. Alas, it is reality.

We've been trying our level best to have Lucy bred for the past couple months, but it's been difficult to catch her at the right time. Once we discovered that her sass levels increase to ten (kicking the bucket as we milk, running away from us to gallivant in the now-dead pasture, etc.) then it clued us in to what to watch for. After a few attempts, we may have caught it at the right time this week. We'll have to wait a bit then do a pregnancy test. (bet this it the first time someone's mentioned doing a pregnancy test to a cow to you).

Free Story

Click HERE to Read the First Two Chapters!

warm regards,

Dan