Novellas & covers & more!

Check it out! We have covers for our two novellas now! Beyond Temptation is currently available in the MARKED anthology, and will be releasing on its own in June. Beyond Solitude’s “official” release date is May 1st, though you’ll be able to get the ebook early (and cheaper!) as part of an exclusive deal. More details on that coming next week, wheee!

Click to see them larger! And also take note–the novella covers will have this specific design, with the logo in the middle & the text on the bottom. We wanted them to stand out from the novels to make it easier to tell whether you’re looking at a full length book or a novella.

Since novellas are still a very new addition to the Beyond world, I thought I’d pop over here and say a few words about why we’ve decided to try a few, what sorts of stories we’ll be telling with them, and how they’ll be different from the books.

First off, this spring is a bit of an experiment.  We considered doing a novella prequel to the BEYOND world in the beginning, but we weren’t sure we could introduce the world the way we wanted to in a short format.  So we wrote three full books before we started Beyond Temptation, which was meant to be a small side-trip that explored a few things our main cast might not have reason to discuss or see.

And that was kind of fun!

Sector Four is awesome, and writing about the O’Kanes lets us explore the higher level politics happening in the world. But it doesn’t always give us a chance to show how life is for people who don’t travel in Dallas and Lex’s inner circles.  So in Beyond Solitude, we decided to take it a step further into the shadows. Ford is an O’Kane who lives on the fringes of the group, spending most of his time negotiating with the farms and communes to ensure Dallas has the supplies he needs to make liquor.  Mia is a refugee from Sector Two, someone who looked to Lex for the courage to walk away from her patron and reach for a life of independence.

It’s our hope that the novellas will add to the world, but neither Beyond Temptation nor Beyond Solitude are integral to the overall series plot. You’ll definitely see some of your favorite O’Kanes in the background, but the focus is tighter on the two characters and on the little bits of the world that the full length novels don’t always get to visit.

If you like them, let us know! Like I said, these first two are a bit of an experiment, so how many more we write depends on whether you guys buy them and whether you love them. 🙂

Format note: because some people have already asked this, it’s our intention to try to make each of these novellas available (on its own) in print. Print on Demand technology & pricing being what it is, we can’t promise that they’ll be cheap–but for those of you who just love having everything match, we see no reason not to give you the option!