Olvang's Huntsman

In the frigid Northlands, the untamed wilds test all with a ruthless cunning and ferocity, forging a rugged and sharp people. It is in the shelter of that wilderness that Olvang's Huntsman will take what appears to be his secretive lover caught in one of his traps to a night alone before the fire of a secluded hunting lodge. 

Before the night is out, the simple tranquility and bliss of a love shared will be broken by revelation of just how wicked and cunning those wilds have made some of its people, and what plans they have set in motion. 

Something ancient and primal calls from those wilds, drawing the young woman and down a dangerous path to discover a truth long lost. Only her Huntsman will be able to follow her trail and join her in answering the howling on the wind.

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Huntsman has been an interesting journey for me, that I'm glad I've been able to shore up into a novel format with Olvang's Huntsman. It's taken longer than I'd have liked due to life circumstances going downhill hard and fast, but that sort of thing isn't for a release post that will exist long after the issue of time.

What is for a release post is how interesting a journey it's been. Huntsman began back in 2013 as part of a sweet little nothing I had to build on. A scene, a premise and idea. I had no definitive end, not much of a grand goal in mind, but I wanted to go forward with it, make it something real.

How it's ended up is a testament to my own journey through writing. It may not be a perfect path, it may not be by all the right numbers, it may be full of risks and dangers, but its characters took life as it came, realizing and accepting their flaws as they pushed on to accept what they were and what they could do. No one could show them the path to the end nor tell them what they would find, the journey to find the truth was one as much to create it by their own hands.

In addition to this it's been really interesting to look back on my writing from as far back as that - where I really started spreading and committing to too many projects at once - and just kind of balancing the urge to tear up everything I wrote in favour of how my style reads now and keeping its integrity in place. It's nice to think I've developed more of a voice and presence in what I write over the years, the second and third volumes being less of an issue to finalize.

The end result is a solid cornerstone of an era in my fantasy world filled with a people larger than life with women as wicked and dominant as their men in the right moment that in time, shifts into a more feral and wild capacity than any could have known.

It's been a great journey to get here, and I always really appreciate the support that's made it possible. In terms of excerpts, the first volume that fills its early chapters; Huntsman I is free on all market channels!

Announcing Free Reads!

With the festive season winding down and the dust starting to settle -- it's certainly starting to settle on my desk, I need to find time to move all the stuff off and clean up again -- it's time for an announcement to keep that festive spirit perked up and running into the new year.

It's something I've had in mind for some time, and with the coming of Christmas and the spirit of giving, this felt like the ideal time to go forward with it. With this being the first big initiation, there have been some kinks in the process, primarily surrounding Amazon, as the only way to have something marked as Free is for it to be price-matched through more accommodating storefronts, which seems to take an entirely indeterminate amount of time to maybe get fixed. Go figure.

That aside, yes, free! As of this festive holiday period and moving forward, the following titles will be listed as free to discover and enjoy for all readers.

Daemonique I: The Darkest Desire

Darkfallen: Taking Jacob

Umbral Coil Chronicles I: Dusk

Deity of the Desert I: Arrival

Huntsman I: Princess

Soulflame I: The Spark

In addition, those that already have novel formats in Daemonique - Darkfall and Goddess of Sands have had their prices reduced accordingly to facilitate the relative first volumes now being listed as free. The main exception to this is that price-matching Free publications with Amazon does not seem to follow through to other regional storefronts such as the .co.uk front, which is really weird and inconsistent but it wouldn't be the first thing. The novel format prices have been reduced across all Amazon storefronts regardless.

With that said, there are alternatives, as this has been made live on all available storefronts, as follows;

Amazon (US - Tentative) | Smashwords | Barnes & Nobles | iTunes | AllRomance ebooks | Kobo

There will absolutely be more added in the future after this initial run, where the method in the madness is largely based around serial series that have multiple volumes out and in the case of Daemonique, Deity of the Desert and soon to be Huntsman, their novel binding versions released. The best way to stay abridged of future plans and publications will be through my newsletter and to join me on social media such as Twitter where I love to hear from and interact with people who enjoy what I do.

This first wave represents a broad range and span in time for my published works thus far, so if this is your first exposure or a chance to try out a new series' roots, I'm glad to have your interest and support with me.

Thank you for reading!

Huntsman III: King

All is quiet in Olvang Keep, yet the future of a kingdom may rest at the mercy of a vicious wilderness. The cards have long since been dealt, the actors all upon the stage, leaving the royal Huntsman with but a simple message. His beloved Princess has manipulated events from the very beginning to slip away into the wilds, and she fully expects him to hunt her down.

To discover what his Princess has heard whispered on the wind for so long and to finally understand his own bestial affinity to the wild, the Huntsman must leave Castle and Keep to chase a fading trail through the eternal night of the frigid Northlands, but he does not hunt alone. With companions that have seen him through thick and thin, the Huntsman rides to bear witness to the truths of Katalyne Olvang's path. What he makes of his Princess' cunning deception and the mysteries she has come to divine from the dark woods with her own hands in this final volume will be remembered as legends in time.

Let the hunt begin.

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That must be the longest synopsis I've done for some time, but it's necessary. This is the third and final chapter of the Huntsman series, and I'm not going to be as emotional now as I was in its author note section where I share some personal thoughts and feelings. I've had time to come down, but suffice to say it's been an emotional thing to work through, more than I'd expected it to be. 

So often I looked at things and thought "okay, just a couple scenes left, done in no time" and the power everything was building to just weighed down on me and really made those seemingly short distances a lot harder to get through. It also made them longer than I thought they'd be, so I think the moral is my estimates should never be believed.

And that's fine. While I would have liked to get it out faster - something you'll never not want, like a sort of recurring sum wish - there's a lot of feeling in it and it's really one of the first big points in the history of my world I've been able to really close up and mold into its own sort of legend. It may not seem all that much right now but its existence is already played on in other works and I have a big long timeline of how and where everything matches up. 

Not to come across as daunting, you don't need to see that world to enjoy Huntsman, or the Lusty Maid to come soon. It's always about creating a story here and now, and Huntsman is no exception. With that said it's funny how I'm finding it a little hard to actually talk about the content of the book for want of not spoiling the big shift in things, but practically speaking you can get hints of that from "also browsed/bought" and tags on the various storefronts.

So without going too much into it, shift is the operative word. The wolves out there are not quite just the wolves out there, and stuff will happen! Shifting, shapeshifting, werewolf, beast, monster or just paranormal, it's gotten a lot of names over time, but you know what it means, and it's good.

Excerpt follows the pagebreak.

Huntsman II: Queen

What began as a night of rest between secret lovers is quickly turning to chaos. While the great hounds of the wild are restless and out for blood, fighting them off will prove to be the least of the Huntsman’s worries.

The widowed Queen Olvang has received word of the affair with her daughter, and offers but one chance for freedom for the Huntsman. Come to her chambers instead, and learn of a true woman’s prowess and dominance over her subjects. Yet unbeknownst to all, this turn of events has all been to Princess Katalyne’s design. As her plan unfolds within the castle walls, very little will remain as it seems.

What lays beyond is a gamble of faith with the future of the Olvang kingdom on the line.

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I tell you what, looking at it now, this synopsis is a little longer than usual. I don't think that's really a bad thing, maybe I'll trim a bit off later, but this has certainly been one of those stories that just wasn't so easy to lay out. Sections of it have been in my mind since the original inception of the Huntsman series, and I know where it's going, but it's how you get there that really matters.

It's a bit difficult to talk about without really spoiling much but suffice to say it brings together a bunch of plots and characters that may not even be immediately obvious. Some of them are seemingly innocent occlusions from between series, even. The hows and wheres of some supporting cast machinations are handled in the sister series, The Lusty Dark Elven Maid, while the "plots above a maid's station to worry about" are squarely the scene set in Huntsman. 

It's not to say you'll miss out if you don't read both series, I'm just perhaps excessively happy and proud of the dual-lined story I have going on. It also lets me run different gears of sexual intensity while still in the same developing story scene.

So, with that said, the second volume of Huntsman rolls in. With this volume, we get a little look into Princess Katalyne's past, the odd circumstances they met under and more notes of things such as how the Northlands society is run and just how harsh and dark a land it is. From there it moves back into Castle Olvang and introducing the Princesses Mother and Queen, who has her own thoughts and restrictions on matters with a whole Kingdom on her shoulders.

The one out for freedom she gives the Huntsman on learning just what he's been doing is the real central point of the story's erotic edge, and one I had a bit of trouble with. While you may say orders are orders, I wasn't really 100% on having the Huntsman sleep with them both. I mean "Like Mother like Daughter" would have been a funny line to slip in, but it left too much a feel of cheating. 

So, if nothing else I can assure you that doesn't happen. I had a number of options on hand to redirect it away from that, and while strange, I like the way it's unfolded the best. It's always something that's easy to forget about fiction that so long as you can make it a believable concept, you can absolutely write magical and fictitious things.

And that's one reason I write fantasy, you can write things on such a grand and mythical scale that would never be possible otherwise. If that's not some of the magic and charm of writing fiction, then I don't know what is.

Excerpt follows the pagebreak.

Huntsman Volume I: Lodge (High Fantasy Erotic Romance)

In the rugged Northlands, the hunt is both sacred and necessary to survival. Retiring to his lodge after a hunt, the Huntsman finds something ensnared in one of his traps that no other man would ever dare to imagine taking. His prey is one the rugged man more than expects, however. The night will not be nearly so cold for the couple, now.

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I like to think she's dubious about the title, it was one of those that the more I tried to find a good font for it, the less I liked the damn thing as a whole. Then I just cut it back to 'Huntsman'. Like Batman, only... not at all. 

That said, it published in the sort of speed to imply the Bats was behind it. It passed review in under an hour was up on Amazon quicker than B&N, and that never happens. Between that and Deity of the Desert vol.3 and Darkfall publishing before vol.1 on iTunes, I'm wondering if someone in the review stage likes my work and has seen it enough to just move it along. I don't know, it sounds silly but I really wonder what sort of process books go through in the 'review' stage, especially erotica. Is there a bunch of private cubicles where people with their own "massage" toys "scrutinize" every submission?

Anyway. This tale goes back to some good, old fashioned high fantasy setting, in a frozen north. One thing I wanted to do with this story, but only lightly so it's not off-putting, was link it back to other books I've written. From the start, there's reference to creatures previously only touched on in Daemonique in a foreboding but off-handed sense. The Blackguard Hounds weren't present on the Isle, but they are in the Northlands.

It doesn't impede on story, the Northlands are leagues away from the island over tall mountains and kingdom borders. At the same hand, the Zo'qeth desert from Deity of the Desert is an indeterminate distance off to the east. Perhaps on another continent even, I haven't decided, but the point is I get to weave and knit these worlds together into one cohesive fantasy realm that people can enjoy expansion of lore, life and consequence within it. I think that's pretty cool.

As for the story itself, it's a bit of a two-part thing and pretty vanilla or sweet compared to some of what I do. The initial part has some Dark Elf maid action in the background that I'm already working on building in The Lusty Dark Elf Maid, Argonians need not apply. The latter half is a private affair between a very special couple, with the young lady getting caught in one of the Huntsman's binding traps, a humiliating start to an otherwise heated night of love.

Excerpt follows the pagebreak: