Hey awesome,

We've just finished moving (still in New England, just a new, longer-term place), and my brain is basically static, so I'll keep this to three exciting updates and my panel schedule for DragonCon. Ready?

You may have heard some of my first news on a podcast or at a con, but I've officially signed the contracts so I'm absurdly excited to tell you that my next big project(s) will be in the incredible David Weber's Honorverse.

I started reading Honor Harrington in high school, and kept up with it through the years - and my little nerd heart is in complete delight/excitement/aaaaa-ness about the whole thing. I have the distinct and bittersweet honor to follow in Eric Flint's footsteps and work with David to complete the Crown of Slaves storyline in the Honorverse. It's huge and amazing and I will do my level best not to let anyone down. Have you spent time with Honor Harrington? If yes - what are your favorite parts of the amazing universe David Weber has built over the years?

Earlier this year my debut solo novel went out into the world with a cover that I remain deeply obsessed with. I am so, so excited to share that Sam Kennedy's fantastic art has been nominated for a Dragon Award!!!

If you've already voted, hooray, I hope the things you loved get the recognition they deserve! If you haven't already, you have until 8/30 to cast your vote for the nominees right over here. And if you're willing, consider my personal favorite cover of the year for illustrative cover. Here it is again, as a reminder/excuse to look at it again:

And in other immediate book news, did you see that Valkyrie's Chosen is out in the world? This is Bryn's book, covering her first moves as the Director of the Valkyrie's Initiative, and it's...a bit of a rollercoaster. Not the smoothest part of her life, that's for sure. I've included a snippet below - if you like urban fantasy shenanigans, I hope you'll enjoy this - and let me know what you think?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the reward for being good at your job is more work.

This is bullshit.

Bullshit I fell for more than once in my career, though none quite as spectacularly as when I agreed to become the director of the Valkyries Initiative.

I had a lot of time to think about exactly how many bulls were producing exactly how much excrement given I was on perpetual reconnaissance to build a team that could stand up to an interdimensional threat. It was a task I’d been given by the absolute asshole who was my boss’s boss, and the worst part of it—the absolute worst—was that I actually wanted the job.

Which meant I had played right into Cynthia Witherbot’s hands.

Which meant I was an idiot.

An idiot with a whole lot of new work and responsibilities that would most likely get me killed.

I’d been perfectly happy in my old job. Bryn Siegmund, specialty recruiter for specialty Shooters. For over a decade I’d sourced, charmed, and secured some of the world’s most talented operators to join Life Enders, Incorporated—LEI—both for its First Class Shooter program, handling the legal, contracted assassination everybody knew about, and the trickier Second Class, dealing with magic and the weird shit everybody very much didn’t know about.

When I thought about it that way, my new job wasn’t so different.

Except that once I assembled this team I’d have to run it. While going up against the most dangerous woman I’d ever encountered in the course of my surrounded by dangerous people life.

So that was promising.

I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to make my eyes sting, yanked my thoughts back on track, and continued strolling down the sidewalk as though I had nothing on my mind beyond lunch.

Very few parts of Dallas allowed people to walk to anything, but thankfully my current target could nearly always be found in this cute, expensive, walkable little neighborhood, and so my interminable stakeout allowed me a few chances to stretch my legs while my thoughts spun.

Three weeks ago, my boss’s terrible boss had sent me on a standard information-gathering assignment.

Shockingly, it had in fact turned out to be not at all an information-gathering assignment. It had been a complete and utter shitshow from start to finish, and also something of a test.

In that time, I learned a few things. One, the world was even stranger than I, a deeply experienced Second Class qualified Shooter for LEI long steeped in magic, had believed it to be. Two, there was a woman out there who was even more terrifying than Cynthia Fucking Witherbot. Three, Cynthia Fucking Witherbot—one of her many formal names—was still The Worst. Four, the pressing threat to LEI from the terrifying woman and her organization, the Spider, could not be addressed within LEI’s current modus operandi.

Which left me walking the streets of Dallas, tailing a potential asset Cynthia Fucking Witherbot, assistant director of the entirety of LEI, the head of Field Operations and the Special Activities Division, had identified as a top candidate for the Valkyries Initiative.

My potential asset had not yet realized I was following her—not a great sign.

While I was very, very good at what I did, I wasn’t an active Shooter. I stayed in practice, given the realities of my job, but hadn’t murdered anyone for hire—LEI’s legal, public business—and a Shooter, contracted and in LEI’s pay, should have at least shown some awareness of me.

So either I was better than I thought, my target was worse than Cynthia thought, or most likely of all, the woman had noticed me and was deciding what to do about it.

Which meant it could be a trap. Or a prank.

I didn’t really have time for either of those options—I had an entire team to build and so far Cynthia’s list had been fifty-fifty in terms of what and who I’d decided I needed, given the constraints of what the Valkyries Initiative was meant to be.

Fact: LEI existed, as far as the public was concerned, to enforce properly filed and paid for contracts taken out to end specific people’s lives. We did what it said on the tin: Life Enders, Incorporated.

Fact: LEI’s actual, more pressing, purpose involved keeping the world safe from the many, many interdimensional threats that bled through on a far too regular basis.

Fact: The Spider, a multi-pronged criminal outfit equally international in scope, had taken insult with at least one, if not both, parts of what LEI did with its time and resources. As such, they were organizing more and more shady people to take us down. Not forthrightly, not some kind of gang war, but like their namesake creature, digging their fangs in and sucking LEI dry from the inside. The Spider… also did what it said on the tin. Headed by a mysterious figure, seconded by the woman soon to become the bane of my existence: Alida Polk.

Fact: the Spider was in the process of flipping, corrupting, or removing as many LEI assets as they could get their fangs into, and they’d had a surprising amount of success.

Fact: Cynthia Fucking Witherbot—whom some referred to as the British Bitch for reasons including her being British and a bitch, but whom I far preferred to refer to as Cynthia Fucking Witherbot—had decided the best way to counter the Spider was an outside taskforce, one she could disavow and have no connection to. And she put me in charge of it.

Fact: I kept turning these facts over and over in my head because I’d been bored, but now my target was finally, finally, on the move.

She had ducked into a small shop that I passed, crossing the street to keep an eye on it—however, the shop was a super modern boutique with very few displays and I had a correspondingly clear line of sight.

My target was no longer in the shop.

Which meant my target was likely circling back behind me, because a Shooter wouldn’t run. A Shooter would want to know who was tailing her and why.

I ran some quick math, counted to three, and spun on my heel while shifting to the side, my gun on the wall side of the sidewalk, held low and hidden from other pedestrians.

Face to face with my target, I smiled. “Asset Jenkins, I presume.”

The next book in the Valkyries, Melissa Olthoff's Shadows May Fall, is out next month - and whewwwww it is SO so good. We're about to have a heck of a lot of fun with the Valkyries, and I really hope you'll join us.

Speaking of fun - DragonCon is somehow NEXT WEEK?!? Will I see you there? I'm bound to be going everywhere, not sleeping, but you can definitely find me in the following places:

I can't believe how soon it is. But for now I've gotta get to work - so much exciting stuff ahead (also an office I have to finish unpacking, then start packing for DragonCon, but...details...)!

Til next time,

Marisa