I’m busy getting BLADE OF THE MOON ready for your hungry little Kindles and your ravenously empty bookshelves. (Heh, I doubt that, if your shelves are anything like mine, they are somewhere between bowing and overflowing.)

Anyway, I have what feels like millions of edits to go before I can rest, but I also want to share some with you, so you can get as excited as I am for you to read this book! Here’s a quick little snippet.

This is a glimpse into a character’s mind that we haven’t seen before. And perhaps, we didn’t actually want to get this glimpse…

Andius stopped and stood in the doorway of his family home and sighed. It was a shame it had all come to this.

Stupid woman. Even more stupid men. He’d put so much on the line to ensure his ascension to clan leader, and still they’d meddled. Messed things up. Resisted the only possible outcome.

In the back bedrooms, his brother cried out, but the sharp sound was quickly cut off.

Andius pursed his lips. Really. He’d given careful instructions to be sure his brother Fay Tou was taken silently. Clearly, his adversaries weren’t the only ones messing up. Thank the Twins his parents were dead and couldn’t interfere with this little plan of his, but if members of the council heard of these tactics, he doubted they would approve.

But those same hypocrites wanted peace, stability, tradition, and all that went with those comforts. They wanted this nasty little situation with Lara absconding with a fancy shard of metal to be swept under the rug so that things could go back to the way they were before. Simple. Predictable. Uncontroversial.

Before Cerivil had been the clan leader. And that time was over. It was Andius’sturn now. He deserved to be clan leader. Even Cerivil knew the end of his reign had come, or he wouldn’t have released the Dagger of Bone in the first place. The old man had done it too soon, really. Could he have plotted with Lara for this little coup? No, he didn’t think Cerivil was capable of such machinations. He was too honest. Too bad his daughter hadn’t inherited his scrupulousness.

Lara and her nonsense wouldn’t stop him; nobody would. Andius had sacrificed far too much for it to fall apart now.

He narrowed his eyes at the men that carried the squirming, grunting black bag out of the house toward the wagon. Hardly what he’d instructed.

His sacrifices had cost him his dignity at times, as well as a seemingly endless amount of gold. But the most surprising thing had been the people he’d had to sacrifice along the way.

That Obsidian woman had warned him of this. Unira. He hadn’t hesitated to make foreign alliances. Wasn’t that what rulers did all the time? He shook his head as he walked to the wagon and signaled them to move out as he silently closed the gate.

It was purple twilight, so he walked along beside them, hood raised, face hidden.

He hadn’t realized the true cost of his alliance with the Obsidians. Though it wasn’t with the ruling family, but rather another upstart like himself. He’d thought that’d been good, that they’d had that in common.

But at times, he couldn’t decide if Unira truly wanted conquest or destruction. He shuddered. There was something about the look in her eyes, something dark and smoldering, that frightened him even if he’d never admit that to anyone. He’d never admit anyone frightened him, but certainly not some rural, scheming matriarch.

But most rural, scheming matriarchs were out for better marriage prospects for their children or perhaps a better price on grain.

Unira wanted souls.

– From Blade of the Moon, by R.K. Thorne, In edits and subject to change…

That’s right, BLADE OF THE MOON gives us Andius’s point of view on events, and they are Machiavellian as always. We’ll find out how that works out for him real soon. BLADE is out June 30.

In other news, I spoke at the virtual SFWA Nebula Conference last week to other authors of F&SF about tropes and using them in marketing. It was a blast. And I never realized just how many books I had that put the characters in only one bed. 😉 lol.

I hope for those who aren’t experiencing the glory of fall, your spring is filled with lots of May flowers…

Wish me luck coaxing this book into bloom!