Hey awesome,

It is icky hot here. I have returned to my New England roots and shed any southern Louisiana and Texas conditioning I might have built up over two decades...and so, I haaaaaate the sweaty weather. Bring me sweater weather!

Ugh. No because then it will be winter... It's fine! There's plenty of sunshine and I'm staying busy, mostly inside air conditioning. Last weekend, I got to hang out at a brand new Barnes & Noble while Kacey Ezell, Trisha Wooldridge, and I all had signings. We met a ton of awesome folks, had celebratory bacon, and oh my goodnessss was it a delight to see families browsing and people leaving with stacks of books.

My fellow readers: I loooove you. It makes my heart so happy to see a healthy bookstore ecosystem. Which I of course contributed to...spend two days in a bookstore and not leave with a whole new TBR mountain? Not this girl.

Speaking of TBRs, how about a deal or two? The audiobook for Beyond Enemies is 50% from now until August 11th! And in the world of free, Undercurrents is the free short story on Baen.com for the next month, and it's a lead-in to A Plague of Magic. If you want to get a little teaser appetizer, meet Dagore, and get a peek into the world of the novel ahead of September 2nd, you can get it riiiight now!

If you check it out, let me know what you think?

A Plague of Magic, as you may know, is part of Baen's Feral for Fantasy summer, and my fellow Feral Ladies and I did a recent update on how that's all going. I believe it's our most unhinged video to date, given the scarcity of brain cells we all had access to, but you can judge for yourself here. Then let me know the verdict: totally normal or completely off the rails?

I have a feeling I know the answer, but it's fine, here we are, feral. And there are so many books to be obsessively feral for! In fact, there are three coming out next week that you may be interested in (one is mine), because ooooooo they're good:

First up: July 22nd you've got Shami Stovall and Words of Power. She has a first chapter challenge up, and she's not wrong: it's freaking awesome!! As is the tagline: Power is not given. It's taken. AAAAAAAAA

Then on July 25th you can kick off your weekend with not one, but two fabulous books. Charli Cox has this fabulousness:

Whistles of the Wendigo is in the JTF Universe and it is a fantaaaastic entry:

When the war ends… a new nightmare begins.

The smoke of the Civil War has barely cleared when another battle ignites—this time, on the homefront. A fiery prohibition movement is tearing the state apart, and the governor calls in the US Army’s 6th Cavalry to keep the peace.

But peace is the last thing they’ll find.

On patrol, Sergeant David Wilkerson and his troop ride straight into a ghostly fog—and straight into hell. A terrified horse disappears—a mangled carcass returns. Something ancient and hungry has awakened.

The saloons go silent. The townsfolk go missing. The line between law and chaos is about to be crossed.

Now, with tempers boiling and terror creeping in from the shadows, Wilkerson and his men must ride into the unknown, face what lies in the mist…

...and stand as the last defense between Heaven and Hell.

THEN, Chris Kennedy and I happened to write the 100 (ONE-HUNDRETH!!!) book in the Four Horsemen Universe: Shades of the Past.

AKA, "Tentacles. Why is always tentacles?" - Jan Colby, probably. This kicks off Exodus, the final main storyline of the universe. It's all (all 100 books!) have been leading to this! If you haven't checked out the 4HU yet, this is an ok place to start, but you might want to check out the Phoenix Initiative (it's not 100 books!), which serves as an entry point and also, funnily enough, was kicked off by me and Chris with The Lyons' Pride.

Are you caught up in the 4HU? Are you ready for the end? There are some long-running secrets revealed in Shades of the Past, and even more uh-oh moments that kick off this big storyline. I can't waaaaait to hear what you think!

Now I'm going to return to plotting my dragon hoard photoshoots...for reasons!

Til next time,

Marisa