New Alex Verus Novella – Gardens

And we’re ready to go!  The new Alex Verus novella, Gardens, is written, edited, copy-edited, and available for pre-order on the Kindle Store.  Release date is about a week and a half from now, on Monday 31st October 2022.

This is my second ever novella;  the first, Favours, was written and released last year.  I mentioned at the time that I was using Favours as a sort of trial balloon to see whether there was enough interest in Alex Verus novellas for it to be worth it for me to keep publishing them.  As it turned out, Favours sold reasonably well, so I’m bringing out another!

While Favours took place between books #6 and #7, Gardens is a sort of extra epilogue to the Alex Verus series, taking place several months after book #12, Risen.  Here’s some more about it:

• Gardens is 32,000 words long, or about 1/3rd the length of an average Alex Verus novel.
• This novella isn’t written from the perspective of any of the main cast of characters, but it is about the main cast of characters . . . one of them, in particular.  I won’t say who since I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but the short version is that I got interested in the question “what would this character be like after the events of Risen?”  This novella is the answer.
• The Halloween release date is deliberate, since this story is darker than usual.  Consider yourself warned.
• For Gardens I’m doing an experiment and making it available on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, which means that members of the program can read it for free.  In theory this means a wider readership and a bit of money to the author from a special Amazon fund;  the downside is that Amazon demands exclusive publishing rights in exchange, so I can’t publish it anywhere else.  I don’t really know whether this is worth it or not, so I’m giving it a try to find out.
• This novella’s primarily intended for people who’ve read the Alex Verus series and would like to know a bit more about where some of the main characters end up afterwards.  That said, I do think it’s one of the better things I’ve written, so it’s hopefully fairly accessible to people who haven’t read the entire main sequence.

More information next week!