There is a lot to cover this week, so let me start with the part somebody has been waiting on.

The signed hardback of The Hollow City goes to Debb

When The Hollow City released, I said that anyone who posted a review on Amazon or Goodreads would go into a draw for a signed hardback copy. That draw has been made, and the winner is Debb.

Debb, thank you. Your copy will be signed and in the post next week, and it will be winging its way to you from there.

To everyone else who reviewed the book, you did not walk away with nothing. Every one of those reviews is doing work for the saga right now, quietly, in the places where readers decide whether a book is worth their evening. I read all of them. Some of them I read more than once.

The BookBub deal week, and everyone who bought The Hollow Clock

The other thing I want to do this week is say thank you properly.

The Hollow Clock was a BookBub Featured Deal from August 21st to the 28th, at ninety-nine cents. For anyone who does not follow the machinery of this: a BookBub Featured Deal is the one promotion every independent author is chasing. Most submissions are turned down. Getting one puts your book in front of a very large number of readers who have already told BookBub exactly what they like, and it is the closest thing this business has to a front table in a bookshop.

We stacked it. Robin Reads went out the same day the BookBub email landed, then Fussy Librarian on the 23rd and Bargain Booksy on the 25th, to keep the book moving all week instead of spiking on day one and sliding.

The sale has now ended and Book One is back at its usual price, so this is a thank-you rather than a last call.

And it worked. At its high point during deal week, The Hollow Clock was sitting at number 12 on the Amazon bestseller list for Gaslamp Fantasy. That is the highest the book has ever ranked, and it happened because enough of you bought it in a short enough window to move the needle. You did that. I just wrote the thing.

The Hollow Clock has had the busiest week of its life. It was on sale, it was in front of thousands of readers who had never heard of Hollowmere before, and a great many of them took a chance on a book by an author they did not know, in a series they had no reason to trust yet.

That is not a small thing. Buying a first book from an unknown name is an act of faith, and I do not take it lightly.

So thank you. Genuinely. If you picked up The Hollow Clock in the last week or so, you are the reason Book One is now sitting in front of more readers than it was a month ago, and you are the reason I can keep doing this.

A number of you went straight on to The Hollow Cathedral and The Hollow City in the same week, which is either a compliment or a cry for help. I choose to read it as a compliment. The trilogy is complete, all three books are there, and nobody has to wait for an ending.

The one favor I will ask

If you have finished The Hollow Clock, or any of my books, please leave a review.

I know. Everybody asks. Here is why I keep asking anyway.

Reviews are the only currency an independent author has. I have no publisher's sales team and no bookstore front table. What I have is a handful of readers telling other readers that this thing was worth their time. Ten reviews changes what the algorithms do with a book. Twenty changes what a browsing reader decides in the four seconds they spend looking at it.

It does not have to be long. Two honest sentences are worth more than a thousand-word essay. Say what you liked, say what you didn't, and you have done more for the book than any ad I could buy.

• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?&asin=B0GWW7C1YQ
• Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250932008-the-hollow-clock

Either one helps. Both is showing off, and I would be delighted.

What is coming next in my world

A fair amount, as it turns out.

Sudden Death, October 6th. Book Three of the Windward Cup Dynasty, and the biggest book I have written. Julian and Mason return, the season opens badly and gets worse, and there is a question at the heart of it that Mason cannot leave alone no matter how much everyone around him would prefer he did. It is on preorder now. I will say no more than that, because half the pleasure of this one is not knowing what is coming.

Stick & Ball is free, right now. If you have ever wondered how a broke Texas ranch hand became good enough at polo to be recruited off a fence, this is that story. It is the newest of the four free books at the bottom of this post.

A Bear's Winter, late November. Book Four of the Bear Hunt stories. Augie and Wes have built something steady, and then an eleven-year-old boy arrives on their doorstep in a parka three sizes too big for him. This one goes to some hard places and comes out the far side the way these books always do. There is a wedding to plan by the end of it.

A new series, February 2027. I have started something I have wanted to write for years. It is called Under the Tracks, it is set in Chicago, and it is about mixed martial arts. Book One is Short Notice. A fighter taking a bout he has no business taking, a rival from another camp who becomes something else entirely, and a sport that has very firm opinions about who a man is allowed to love. Chicago itself is a character in it, the way Hollowmere is in the saga. I am deep in the drafting and I am enjoying it more than I have any right to.

And Hollowmere. No, I am not done. If you read the last pages of The Hollow City, you know a boy walked out of that city with two people beside him and a road in front of him. I have not forgotten him. That is all I am saying for now.

And if you are new here: four free books, take your pick

If you found me through the deal this month, welcome. There is no reason for you to spend anything to find out whether we are a good fit. I have four free books sitting on my website, one for each of my series, and which one you want depends entirely on what mood you are in.

In the mood for something dark and strange? The Hollow Asylum. The prequel to the Hollow Clock Saga. Gaslamp gothic, a city that runs on stolen lives, and the place they send people who hear things they should not be able to hear. Start here if you want the strangest thing I have written. https://eliaskeane.com/landers/the-hollow-asylum

In the mood for something that makes you distrust everyone? In the Serpent's Shadow. Book One of the Rourke Correlation, and a full novel rather than a novella. Political thriller, six books, all of them finished and waiting. Start here if you want to be kept up past your bedtime by paperwork that turns out to be a body count. https://eliaskeane.com/landers/free-in-the-serpent-s-shadow

In the mood for something warm that still hurts a little? The Timber Wolf. The prequel to the Bear Hunt stories. A logger who spent fifteen years loving his best friend without ever saying so, telling that story years later to the man who finally courted him properly. Start here if you want two men in their forties and a happy ending that costs something. https://eliaskeane.com/landers/free-the-timber-wolf

In the mood for horses, heat, and a kid with nowhere to go? Stick & Ball. The brand new prequel to the Windward Cup Dynasty. Young Mason at Diamond Back, an old horseman with one deal he is willing to make, and a stallion nobody else could ride. Start here if you are thinking about picking up Sudden Death in October and want to know who Mason was before any of it. https://eliaskeane.com/landers/free-stick-ball

All four are exclusive to my website and all four are genuinely free. Take one, take all of them, take none and just have a look around. Whichever series you land in, the promise is the same one it always is. Queer love, every genre, always a happy ending.

Congratulations again, Debb. Thank you again, everyone.

Yours, Elias