Everybody’s got a story… even the bystanders.
The staff of the Alliance’s foremost restaurant… the forgotten children of the imperial Chatcaavan harem… the story of how an empress hired a D-per, and an entire ship full of Glaseah came to settle on an alien world… here, woven amid the larger stories of the participants in the Chatcaavan war, are the smaller scenes observed by its minor characters, or shifted by its major ones in moments of contemplation. Major Pieces collects 21 stories starting from before the events of Even the Wingless and ending just prior to the first book of the Jubilee Summer duology. Some are as short as a talk with a therapist and his dog over cookies–others are nearly novel-length examinations of important events previously left off-camera, like the wedding of a wingless freak to an Emperor and his consort. All of them were reader-selected, and many, reader-suggested.
You’ve survived the war. Now come back to the unexplored corners of the story and linger.
Now Available! Click to Buy!
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What could I say about this collection to explain the many reasons it breaks my brain? Can we start with a ridiculously awesome Kickstarter that overfunded by over 8000%, charging over the five-figure line? How about the fact that I started out with a handful of ideas for these vignettes and got the chance to brainstorm the remainder with my readers, who requested and then voted on which ones should go into the collection? Let’s top that off with the fact that each of these ‘vignettes,’ which were intended to be short scenes, ended up running long… some to the tune of 40,000-ish words? This is the largest volume in the Princes’ Game series, at 620-ish pages!
I can confidently state that I had no idea what I was getting into when I said, ‘hey, would you all like to see some ancillary material from this series.’ But what I ended up getting into was a really exciting volume of stories that significantly add to the canon of the Peltedverse. Some of it fills in scenes from the series from other viewpoints (like Jahir and Vasiht’h communicating incognito with Lisinthir during Wingless) or that we didn’t get time to see (like Hirianthial meeting Jahir and Lisinthir and Vasiht’h for the first time over Sediryl’s sickbed). Others explore minor characters, like Laniis, the Attendant, or Oviin’s friend Everdawn. And some delve into important events that happened off camera between the conclusion of this series and the beginning of the Summer Jubilee duology, like Vasiht’h’s family moving to Escutcheon, and Lisinthir getting married. And that’s not even half the total. There are 21 “shorts” in this volume, and you’ll have a chance to revisit many of your favorite characters (yes, Uuvek fans, I see you!) and meet new ones.
Writing this book was an adventure, and I loved every moment of it. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it! (And when you’re done, you should absolutely go take my three-question survey and tell me which of the characters you want to see more of. Because if this worked once… well… Reese hasn’t had her collection of interstitial moments written yet…