That’s right! You can bring home the final installment to the Black Parade series right now for only $2.99!
Please share this post with others, and feel free to visit the other blogs listed here that are celebrating its release. Thanks for all your support and happy reading!
Kyoko
Quick! Say that five times fast!
The Holy Dark is rolling out on bookshelves in style on April 24, 2015, with interviews, spotlights, excerpts, and reviews from various blogs listed below. Please tune in and visit each one on our magical release day. Prizes will be given out, so don’t miss your chance to win!
Stay tuned for more soon!
Ah, yes, that magical time is finally here. You can now pre-order The Holy Dark on Amazon for just $2.99. This price is only going on for a month. On May 9, 2015, it will increase to $3.99, so please go ahead and order yourself a copy by that date.
However, if your pockets are light, remember that you can enter the Goodreads giveaway by April 24, 2015 to win a free signed paperback copy or attend the Facebook party on April 24th and win a free eBook copy via contest questions.
Please spread the word. It’s the biggest thing you can possibly do to show your appreciation.
Kyoko M
We are but a few short weeks away from the final installment to The Black Parade series! If you aren’t caught up, here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 and half of Chapter 2. Below is the conclusion to Chapter 2. Enjoy!
Enter to win a free signed paperback copy of The Holy Dark. Deadline is April 24, 2015. Don’t miss your chance!
April 24, 2015. Mark your calendars, my darlings. The Holy Dark is comin’ atcha.
Join the Facebook launch party for a chance to win a free copy and other prizes, or enter to win a paperback copy on Goodreads. Pre-order will be available soon, so stay tuned!
Additionally, Advanced Reader Copies are available by emailing me at theblackparadeseries@gmail.com. Keep in mind: do not ask for a copy unless you fully intend to leave a review. If you do not review it after receiving a copy, you will not receive ARCs from my other books in the future.
See you soon, adventurous readers!
You’ve been patient and now it’s finally here.
Cover design by Gunjan Kumar and Chris Cold.
Sarcastic demon-slayer extraordinaire Jordan Amador has been locked in a year-long struggle to hunt down the thirty silver coins paid to Judas Iscariot. The mere touch of these coins is enough to kill any angel.
Jordan’s demonic opposition grows more desperate with each coin found, so they call on the ultimate reinforcement: Moloch, the Archdemon of War. Moloch puts out a contract on Jordan as well as her estranged husband, the Archangel Michael. Now Jordan and Michael will have to find a way to work together to survive against impossible odds and stop Moloch’s plan, or else he’ll wage a war that will wipe out the human race.
The Holy Dark will hit shelves April 24, 2015. You can get in paperback right now, pre-order it on the Kindle, add it to your Goodreads To Be Read shelf, like my Facebook page, or sign up with the mailing list to find out more about the series. While you wait, there are two excerpts available to read. Please spread the word!
Kyoko
For the record, I almost never make New Year’s Resolutions. I think it’s a bit of a tired practice and pretty much are only done by people who don’t intend to see them through in the first place. However, I was delighted to see that I actually managed to reach the goals I set for myself last year, which were the following:
Pictured: the demon of famine and pestilence.
So I feel kind of confident about making some new goals for 2015 (and praying to God or Satan or Cthulhu that I catch a frickin’ break in the employment department finally) so here they are:
See? Sounds kind of doable. Nothing unreasonable up there. Fingers crossed for me, my darlings!
Happy New Year to you all! I hope things are going well for you so far and I look forward to spending even more time with you in 2015. Stay tuned for upcoming release dates for The Holy Dark. Don’t forget you can still read excerpts for the book at the end of She Who Fights Monsters or on my blog.
Are you excited for the final installment to the Black Parade series? You should be! If not, here’s another sneak peek of what’s to come.
Read The Holy Dark Chapter 1.
CHAPTER TWO
JORDAN
Hospitals gave me the creeps. All of them, no exceptions. Part of the reason was an inherent childhood fear thanks to the psychiatric hospital that had abducted my mother when I was five years old. The other part was thanks to two archdemons who kidnapped me and tried to kill me two years ago inside a hospital. Still, I ignored the tiny voice inside me that screamed for me to get the hell out and continued my way through the hallway of the Outpatient medical center. Every time a doctor passed by, I flinched and tried not to look at their bright white lab coats. It was ridiculous. I had killed bloodthirsty monsters from another plane of existence and saved the world twice yet a stupid piece of clothing made me want to run and hide.
I reached the room in less than a minute; mostly because I had been walking so fast to the average person it looked like running. My hand froze on the doorknob. I stood there, breathing heavily, remembering the last thing Lauren said to me a year ago. She’d hung up on me, her voice icy as she told me goodbye. Was she still angry? How badly was she hurt? What could I even do about it? What was I doing here, truly?
I took a deep breath. You’re just checking on her, Amador. Man up and do it.
I opened the door. The room was freezing cold. I had to resist the urge to button up my duster to shut out the chill. There were a couple of other patients dozing in their beds. I walked past them, searching for her. She was in the last bed to my right. My chest constricted as I saw her for the first time in almost a year.
Lauren was a couple inches taller than me with straight black hair that used to make me envious. Mine had to be treated to get that perfect glossy look that fell around the shoulders, but hers was natural. She was Korean, buxom, obnoxious, and hilarious. Her nails were painted blue this time instead of pink or purple. She’d been in the hospital for several hours so they’d cleaned her up a bit, meaning she had no makeup on. She looked years younger than her age of twenty-seven.
Her right arm was in a cast and a sling, resting against her stomach. There was a bruise on her cheek as well. They said she got mugged. I hoped they caught the bastard. Hell, I hoped I caught the bastard so I could teach him some manners.
Lauren opened her eyes, sending a sharp jolt of fear and surprise through my gut. I’d hoped she wouldn’t wake up just yet. Her gaze wandered around for a few seconds, probably a result of the painkillers, before settling on me.
I offered her a weak smile. “Hey, Lauren.”
Her voice came out hoarse. “Jordan?”
“Yeah. I, uh, hopped on the first thing smoking to get here. It was shitty, by the way. The carry on alone put me back eighty bucks. Don’t ever fly with—”
“Get out.”
I managed to cap my nervous verbal diarrhea, staring at her. “What did you say?”
She raised her voice, glaring a hole through my head. “Get. Out.”
I stepped forward, imploring her. “Lauren, I know you’re mad, but please, just let me explain—”
“I’m not going to tell you again. Get out!” she shouted, scaring the guy in the bed across from us awake. I had never heard her sound like that, not to me, only to her scumbag ex-husband. Guilt gnawed through my insides. I had been right. She was still angry, and understandably so.
“Okay. I’ll go. I just…wanted to check on you,” I mumbled, turning away from the fury in those brown eyes. I shuffled out of the room and collapsed in a chair in the hallway. I squeezed my eyes shut and buried the pain inside me as deep as I could. I felt ashamed of myself. I wanted to go back home and crawl under the covers and hide. But that wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t matter if she had disowned me. I still had to make it up to her, somehow. Too bad if it ripped a new scar in my hide. I had plenty as it was.
Time dripped off the clock. I stayed where I was, mentally constructing a speech that would hopefully get me back into her good graces. Sometime during this process, a nurse tapped me on the shoulder.
I glanced up to see a pretty black woman, mid-thirties. “She’s asking for you.”
“Huh?”
“Ms. Yi. She wants to see you.”
I checked my watch. Holy hell. I’d been here four hours and didn’t realize it. I nodded too many times and stood up, wobbling on account of my legs falling asleep. I opened the door and made my way back to her bed, expecting the worst.
“Um, you called for me?”
Lauren stared me down for at least a minute. I tried my hardest not to fidget. At last, she spoke and her tone was still disapproving.
“Why are you here?”
“I had to make sure you were alright.”
“Oh, so now you care?”
I shut my eyes for a second. “Yes. I do.”
“What do you want me to say? Are you expecting me to forgive you?”
“No, not really. You’re pretty stubborn. Besides, if I were in your ridiculously high Prada heels, I’d be mad too.”
The ghost of a smirk touched her lips. I almost felt better. I wasn’t much of a friend, but I could make jokes until the end of the world. Which, come to think of it, might one day be my fault.
“Well, I didn’t call you in here to forgive you,” she said, sitting up a bit against her pillows. “I called you in here to ask you a question.”
“What?”
“Why did a man claiming to be a demon follow me home and break my arm?”
TO BE CONTINUED…
Want to be the first to see the rest of Chapter 2? Sign up for the mailing list and get the next chapter right in your Inbox. You can also add it to your Goodreads To Be Read shelf.
Stay tuned for more announcements coming soon! In case you missed it, the official plot reveal is here.
So I finished the final installment to The Black Parade series a few days ago.
Hoo boy.
Prior to the third book, whose working title is The Holy Dark if you must know, I’ve written and finished three books–two novels and a novella. However, I’ve never written a series before and the first thing I have to say is, God bless the crazy sons of bitches who write long running series. I mean, seriously, The Black Parade series is just a trilogy, and I had the HARDEST time keeping everything in line. I think as authors we tend to take certain things for granted when we write. For instance, I didn’t realize just how long The Holy Dark was until I went through and began formatting it and doing the superficial edit.
The Holy Dark’s first draft is 168,197 words. Let’s do a comparison, shall we?
The Hobbit: 95,022 words
The Fellowship of the Ring: 177,227 words
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 190,637 words
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 198,227 words
Are you beginning to see my plight here? I’m nowhere near as good as the above authors, but my word count is approaching their glorious numbers and it’s slightly terrifying. However, when I researched word counts of famous novel series, I did notice a trend. They do increase in word count the longer on they continue, and I think it has a lot to do with the process of writing towards the end of a series.
As I wrote The Holy Dark, there were all kinds of things that I had to keep in mind to tie up by the conclusion of the novel. Jordan and Michael’s stories span three books, and several storylines intersect with each other. We also meet new characters in the second and third novels who also have their own lives and stories and backstories. It’s like balancing spinning plates after a certain point. The reason why The Holy Dark took me so long to write (I started it in May 2013 and finished it just after New Years) is because I didn’t fully understand what it takes to end a series. There’s so much material to cover. There are your individual character arcs, the romantic character growth between Jordan/Michael and Jordan/Belial, the series long arc of the battle between the Seers and the demons, the ramifications of what happened in the previous novels, and then the actual plot of the current novel. Does your head hurt yet? Mine certainly does.
Endings, to me, are usually a little easier than beginnings. The original beginning to The Black Parade was Jordan reliving the night she killed Mr. N, but two separate critique groups talked me out of it because action-heavy beginnings with no context tend to work better in movies than in novels. Thus, we had our quiet but tense opening with Jordan waking up and starting her day as a Seer. However, the ending to The Black Parade was pretty much set in my head in general terms. I knew where her character would end up. Same deal for She Who Fights Monsters. The Holy Dark’s ending was a vague concept in my head, but how I got there was nothing short of a doozy. This is the first novel I’ve ever written where the beginning was a lot easier than the ending.
For instance, the first draft of THD is actually the second draft. The first time I wrote it, I got to 50,000 words in about two months. Then I stopped, read it, and panicked because the pacing was dreadful. The plot stopped and started and coughed and wheezed and begged to be put out of its misery. Thus, I had a long chat with my writing sensei and he helped figure out why the novel had such horrendous pacing issues. I had so many scenes that I wanted to write before the series ended that the flow of the novel felt unnatural and stilted. I took everything back to the drawing board, deleted big chunks, altered the narrative, and started up again. I did well for several months and then the end of the year hit. I had so many hours at my retail day job that I missed my 2013 deadline because so much of the story had piled up that I didn’t have time to type it all out. My fingers just weren’t fast enough.
What I’ve learned over the course of writing this first draft is that endings can be difficult because one worries about satisfaction. Is the end of the series satisfying? Where does everyone end up after their three book long journey? What have they learned? What have they gone through? How has it changed them? Is the conflict real and personal? Is it something readers will relate to and cherish? There are so many expectations that consciously and unconsciously crop up when you read the final novel in a series.
For example, I’m not a fan of Mockingjay because it felt overstuffed and convoluted. I liked The Hunger Games the best out of the novels because it was succinct and profound. It also had much less of the Peeta/Katniss/Gale love triangle, which I personally find to be pointless. Katniss is not the kind of girl who needs to be torn over two boys. It’s quite clear that she has romantic feelings for Peeta, not Gale, and I worry that Suzanne Collins dragged the love triangle out for the sake of drama, and not because it needed to be there. Now, granted, I’m sure I will get the same criticism in the future because I’ve got my own love triangle going in my series, but I’m just being honest. Either way, The Hunger Games is still one of the best contemporary novel series of all time. I bring it up because my expectations for where the story would end up was way different from how it actually did. I don’t think that authors should pander to their audiences and fret over what they would enjoy reading, but I do think it’s part of the writing experience anyway. It’s what I struggled with during the epilogue of THD because I had scenes that I wanted to write that I felt the readers would enjoy, but since they weren’t plot relevant, I felt the urge to leave them out. After all, nothing gets people crankier than a too-sweet happy ending. I tend to lean towards bittersweet endings because they are more realistic. It’s the same reason why Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ epilogue is so controversial–a lot of it reads like lousy fanfiction. Being too saccharine in your ending can color the whole series. Hell, my mother and I discussed this last night with the movie Sweet November. We actually liked the movie itself…until the ending. The ending blew it. It just blew. It was a dumb, unsatisfying cop out. That ending ruined the entire experience and cost the people who made it a sale (I found the movie for cheap at a game store and thought about buying it, but then I remember that FUBAR ending and chose not to instead). It’s the same with novels. You can write something beautiful and emotionally crippling, but if you screw up the ending, it can poison your entire series.
Now compact everything I’ve said and shove it inside your ear. That’s how my brain feels right now. Endings are a pain in the ass. This is a shout out to every single author who has ended a novel series: you are incredible and I hope you know that with all your heart. My stories aren’t nearly as complex as something like George R. R. Martin or J.K. Rowling, and they somehow have endings. I will absorb these authors’ wisdom into my own body like an amoeba before I start the first round of editing.
The nice thing about being an author is that you can always change. You can move chapters around. You can delete them. You can expand. You can chase down new plot threads and character arcs and nail them into place. As a wise Autobot once said, freedom is the right of all sentient beings, and I think that is most true with writing. The Holy Dark kicked my skinny ass up and down the year 2013, but it taught me more than I think the first two novels combined. It’s scary to think I won’t be writing about Jordan, Michael, Gabriel, and Belial in the future, but these characters have been beyond fun to write over the past five years. I think that’s also why the ending was so difficult. I wanted to put them to rest with all the respect that I could because they’ve been keeping me company for so long. I suppose that’s sentimental (and borderline clinically insane), but hey, that’s how I roll.
Welcome to 2014, people. Big things are in our future. Stay tuned for more.
-Kyoko