It’s Spider Goddess Day!

The Prosekiller Chronicles: Rise of the Spider Goddess (An Annotated Novel) is out today in print and electronic format! This is a little different from my other books, but the urge to Kermit-flail and run around telling everyone to BUY MY BOOK while simultaneously clicking to refresh my Amazon ranking every seven seconds is unchanged. I’m starting to think authors should simply be tied up like Odysseus when our books come out…

Summary:

In 2006, DAW Books published Jim C. Hines’ debut novel Goblin Quest. But before Jig the goblin, before fairy tale princesses and magic librarians and spunky fire-spiders, there was Nakor the Purple, an elf who wanted nothing more than to stand around watching lovingly overdescribed sunrises with his pet owl Flame, who might actually be a falcon, depending on which chapter you’re reading.

This is Nakor’s story, written in 1995 and never before shared with the world. (For reasons that will soon be painfully clear.) Together with an angsty vampire, a pair of pixies, and a feisty young thief, Nakor must find a way to stop an Ancient Evil before she destroys the world. (Though, considering the relatively shallow worldbuilding, it’s not like there’s much to destroy…)

With more than 5000 words of bonus annotation and smart-ass commentary, this is a book that proves every author had to start somewhere, and most of the time, that place wasn’t very pretty.

A Few Advance Reviews:

“Every new writer has a Rise of the Spider Goddess inside them. Now it’s been published, there’s no need to write it. Chock-full of essential advice, self-mockery, and compassion for the beginner, it’s a hilarious reminder that we all start somewhere.”

–Sean Williams, author of The Slug in the Sky (age 15) and the #1 NYT Bestselling Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (age 39)

“We can often learn more from the mistakes of others than from their successes. Hines has been kind enough to put his own errors on display as an object lesson for the student writer: everything from cliches of prose to morally dubious characterization, from paper-thin worldbuilding to continuity errors big enough to fly a dragon through. If you want to know what not to do, read this book.”

–Marie Brennan, author of World of the Elementals (age 10) and Voyage of the Basilisk (Tor Books, age 33)

“Jim deserves a Darwin Award for releasing this masterpiece of Words! In! Order! into the wild. I admire him greatly. If the Bulwer-Lytton contest gave prizes for whole books, this one would win by a mile. Eye of Argon look out! The Spider Goddess is about to steal your crown.”

–Diana Pharaoh Francis, author of City of Terrible Night (age 16), and Trace of Magic (age 47)

Guest Posts and Other Links (to be updated throughout the week):

• The Big Idea (at John Scalzi’s site)
• How To Turn Your D&D Campaign Into A (Really Bad) Novel (at Chuck Wendig’s site)
• Rise of the Spider Goddess. What was Jim C. Hines thinking? (at the Little Red Reviewer)
• The Hardest Part (at Bullspec)

Buy the Book (please):

• EBOOK: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Smashwords | Google Play
• PRINT: Amazon | B&N