Terragon’s Fate – the Exciting Beginning of a Brand New Series about Demonhunters

The short story Terragon’s Fate is now available in all stores.

Yes, that’s about as sneaky a release as you can have. I’m not good about hyping things up and building up to a release day. Which is why I want to tell you the story about how this entire fun world came into existence.

How did you come up with Terragon’s Fate?

For that, I have to tell you about the entire series. It’s a bit of a tale, because the idea and the world have been around for a few years and there have been some trials and tribulations before I could publish the books.

You see, quite a few years ago, I bought a premade cover from a designer who shall remain nameless. The mock title on the cover read “The Exterminator”, and it showed a guy in a long trenchcoat and army boots, looking fierce, holding a SciFi kind of hand weapon, not quite a gun as we know it, but similar.

Eventually, I sat down to write the story, or rather, I wrote the beginning.

The story takes place in a near future when the veils between worlds have become thin and things… happen. Illusions, hallucinations, alien lifeforms, and the occasional demon are just some of those things, and of course, there are people taking care of that crap, called exterminators. One of them is my main character.

Our exterminator is called out at night, encounters a huge, golden beast and… well. They end up going home together, in a way. Ahem. (No, he doesn’t quite know how that happened.)

Took me a while to finish the rest, as usual. I decided to put in cameos of two very dear friends who have passed on. The story continues to be somewhat hilarious, but I promise, there is a plot and it involves a very nasty demon. (The story will get its own blog post once I release it, and I will reveal who those friends are.)

But what about Terragon’s Fate?

I’m getting there, bear with me for a little longer.

Thanks.

So I wrote the tale called “The Exterminator”. I even have ideas for sequels, but those stalled out. (Yes, that happens more often than I like to admit. My hard drive is littered with stuff like that. But if these two books take off, I can be persuaded to write more.)

Anyway, I asked a few beta-readers, they gave me the green light, I tried to contact the designer of the cover to get it changed to my author name etc. and… crickets. Granted, it had been a few years.

Enter a Discord channel and a cover challenge. One of the covers had a dragon shifter with golden wings on it.

Yes, this is how Terragon’s Fate came about!

You see, that cover didn’t quite fit how I saw Shivai, the dragon shifter our exterminator encounters, but it was close enough to make me want to win it.

So I sat down and wrote an action-paced prequel for The Exterminator, in just a few days. Sometimes that happens. I was quite happy with the story since it explains a lot about Shivai and her mentor Tsivor. It also explains why she hates a particular demon with a passion.

And [slight spoiler], little Grygor is a multi-times ancestor of Greg, the main character in Terragon’s Challenge. (Yeah, that was fun to think up!)

And yes, I did, in fact, win that cover.

But there is no shifter on the cover of Terragon’s Fate!

Right, there isn’t. It only has the dragon silhouette.

The story repeated itself. The designer didn’t have time to adapt the cover to my name and title. Life happened, and happened hard for them, so I’m not blaming them. Eventually, I just gave up on it.

[*insert time ticking away*]

I wrote the Wolves, I wrote the Winds & Pillars, and The Exterminator and the short story were sitting on my hard drive doing nothing. Once in a while, I moaned about covers.

Until the day I was so fed up that I went to Canva (once again) to try to rustle up my own cover. Yes, there was gnashing of teeth, banging of fists and lots of cursing.

After a completely false start, I decided to go with a more symbolic cover. Those are the fashion for Epic Fantasy these days anyway, for a variety of reasons (most of all, they are cheaper, don’t need AI, don’t trigger man-chest warnings).

I ended up being so happy with the cover for Terragon’s Fate that I went and made one for The Exterminator as well.

And while I was at it, I completely rethought the titles.

That’s how Terragon’s Fate happened!

Because, let’s face it, The Exterminator is a terrible title for the story, never mind that it was inspirational. Instead, it became Terragon’s Challenge. And of course, the prequel became Terragon’s Fate.

And because I was all fired up with the covers, I decided to release the two stories I have in the Terragon universe as fast as I could. I mean, they won’t find readers sitting on my hard drive, right?

Which is where we come full circle:

Terragon’s Fate has been released in all stores!

“All stores” in this case means Amazon (of course), but also Google Play Store (yes, you can buy ebooks there), Apple, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Tolino and many more. It has also been released in my own online store where you can buy a real file and not just a license.

(Bet you didn’t know about all of them.)

Here are all the links: Google | Amazon | Apple | everything else | my store

Here’s a final, non-Terragon-related announcement

You may or may not know that I’m leaving Facebook and that the best way to stay in touch is either following me on Mastodon or subscribing to my newsletter.

The newsletter goes out once a month (on the 13th, my lucky number), and it has writing news, a special deal for my own store, book offers and the Ember Tale.

What’s the Ember Tale?

That’s a sweet mini-story about my little dragon familiar (don’t tell her she’s just a plushie) and the adventures we have together.

Want that? Sign up below.