And it’s finally here! The newest Alex Verus novella, Gardens, is available on Amazon as of today!
While my last novella, Favours, was a “fill-in-the-gaps” piece that acted as character backstory, Gardens is more of a mini-sequel or extra epilogue to the main storyline. It’s recommended for anyone who’s curious about how things turned out for some of the main characters in the Alex Verus series. It’s also quite a bit longer than Favours, coming in at more than one and a half times the word count.
Now, the bad news: since some people have asked, no, this story isn’t currently available in audio or paper format. My novellas are all self-published and I have to do all of the admin myself, which limits how many formats I can make it available in. Admin is also the main reason that I’m only releasing it on Amazon this time – I made Favours available on this site, but my total personal sales were dwarfed by my Amazon ones, so this time I’m releasing it only on Amazon in order to take advantage of their Kindle Unlimited promotions. I know this does limit the options available to my readers, which I’m sorry about, but I only have so many hours in a day, and setting up and maintaining a full set of distribution channels actually takes a fair amount of time away from my writing. Publishers can do this sort of thing much more easily, but that’s because they have staff who do it as a full-time job. So for the moment, I’m publishing these novellas in such a way that it takes as little attention away from my novel-writing as possible.
That said, this might change in the future! The last novella was fairly successful, so if I keep on writing these and they keep on proving reasonably popular, I might eventually collect them into a book, at which point it’d probably be worth it to do an audio and paper edition. My Alex Verus novels usually come in at 90,000 to 100,000 words, and Favours and Gardens together come to a bit over 50,000, so probably 2-3 more short stories/novellas would add up to a big enough wordcount to justify calling it a book. That’s still far off in the future, though, and very speculative.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy Gardens! I think it’s one of the better-written things I’ve put out so far, and for those of you who are fans of the Alex Verus series, it’ll probably answer some of the lingering questions that you might have had about the state of play at the end of Risen.
I finished “Gardens” just a few minutes ago, and I loved it!
SPOILER ALERT
It is indeed dark (though I would not put it in the horror-genre), but I think Equinox is a really cool mixture of charming and creepy and her character and personality a logic developement, all things considered.
I’m sorry Verus and Equinox left the Hollow, but after all, it belongs to Karyos, and you can’t stop life’s developements.
So, I’m definitely going to enjoy the novella again (probably later today) and I just wanted to thank you for writing it and sharing it with us!
I loved Gardens!!! Also thrilled at the prospect of more short stories, and especially an audiobook collection of them! (Because the police tend to frown upon reading a book while driving, and I have a long commute.) Would dearly love a story about Cinder and Kyle. Or Kyle and Selene. Or Richard or Morden. Or, honestly, anything you felt like writing. 🙂 Thanks for writing this!
A perfect Halloween release. So good to see some familiar characters again!
I’m in Ireland and for some reason I cannot get it from amazon.co.uk
Received the book on Monday and finished it the same day. It was an intense emotional ride and a scary reminder of how deadly Anne can be. Read the Novella on Halloween and all Anne needed was a pointy hat and a broomstick to ride!
I read ‘Gardens’, and like it very much. It was perfect for Halloween reading. I really hope you do publish a book of short stories in audio format. I’d buy it!
I devoured it immediately, and I enjoyed it immensely.
SPOILER ALERT
I’m not sure depiction of Equinox is entirely consistent with the depiction of Anne in Risen’s epilogue, where she asks Luna / Vesta how she “deals with” what she’s done.
Still, Daniel totally had it coming.
Finished it the day of release. Excellent. I do have a question, after the spoiler alert.
SPOILER ALERT
I agree with a previous poster that Daniel had it coming. But last? I think his fate was the worst, given the psychological stress. So, yes, he had it coming, but he seemed to me the least bad of the lot. What was Equinox’s logic for saving him for last?
Seth: One interpretation is that she was going with the flow and just reacting to what Daniel’s group did. The other possibility is that she was toying with the idea of sparing him and kept her options open right up to the end. The story doesn’t answer it definitely either way.
I enjoyed the book quite a bit, thanks you.
SPOILER
I have to admit that Equinox seemed out character. Viciously defending herself I can see, even taking vengeance. But was actively sadistic, to the point I was wondering if it really was Anne.
@Seth One of the main messages of the whole Verus franchise is collaboration with murderers is actually worse than BEING a murderer. It’s actually so much of a local recurring trope, that when I see a support mage in the group, my first thought is “okay, that’s another one for the meat grinder”
I would like to read an Alex Verus novella about a support mage who survives in the end. Now that would be a twist
Can’t say I am a fan of the new Equinox. I didn’t see anything of Light Ann to the character or how it was a blend. It came off as just a more psychotic Dark Ann and that is saying something.
@Taldren:
IMO, we mostly saw “Dark” Anne in Gardens because that’s what the situation called for: she let her Light side fall away and gave her Dark side free reign. She did that not only for her own sick amusement (and it was pretty sick!), but also to protect her home & to discourage any similar home invasions in the future.
But, her lighter, yet more assertive self came out at the end of the story, I think. This new version of Anne was so assertive with Alex that she almost literally jumped his bones. The old version of Anne, who rarely told anyone what she wanted or how she felt, wouldn’t have acted that way: she would have waited for Alex to take the initiative.
I think Anne’s desire to settle down with Alex and have kids with him comes from Light Anne but, for the most part, the Anne we knew from the main series is probably gone forever. She’s more self-confident & assertive now in ways the old Anne would never be.
Alex is clearly OK with that and seems to have adjusted to, and accepted, Anne’s new “normal.” Based on what happened in the Epilogue of Risen, I think Luna still needs time to adjust and to figure out how to become more comfortable around Anne. But maybe Luna will never be able to completely relax around her, and I can’t say I blame her: Anne’s super scary to everyone except Alex.