In polo, sudden death is how the final ends. This season, it's how it started.

That line has been sitting on my desk for months, and on October 6 I finally get to hand you the book that goes with it. Sudden Death, the third Windward Cup Dynasty novel, is seventeen days away.

I'm going to be careful here, because this is a book I'd hate to spoil. What I can tell you is that Julian and Mason are building something of their own at last, a club with their names on the gate and everything they have sunk into the ground beneath it. Then the season opens with a loss nobody saw coming, and the questions that follow reach into places the old families of Harrow's Point would much rather stayed closed. There's a detective who writes everything down. There's a journalist who keeps every tape. There's a secret about Julian's family that has been waiting since the nineties for the worst possible moment to surface.

And there is, I promise, the heat you came for. Julian and Mason have earned every page of it.

One more thing: no, this is not the end. When I started the series I thought three books would do it. Julian and Mason disagreed, and they have a way of winning arguments. Sudden Death closes its own story properly, and it leaves the gate open.

If you haven't started the series yet

This is the good news. You have time, and you have options.

The lucky way. I'm giving away 100 Kindle copies of Line of the Ball, Book 1, on Goodreads. More than 400 of you have entered already. It's open to U.S. readers until October 12 and entering takes one click: Enter the Goodreads giveaway

Line of the Ball is where it begins. Mason Caldwell has ninety days before the bank takes the only home he's ever had, so when a stranger in an expensive suit offers him a fortune to play a sport he's never touched, he doesn't ask questions. He should have. The job comes with an assignment: get close to Julian Rosemont, the unbeaten golden son of a polo dynasty, and get inside his head. Nobody tells Mason why it has to be Julian. Nobody tells Julian anything at all. You know how that goes.

The free way. Stick & Ball is the prequel novella, and it's yours for nothing. It's Mason at fifteen, a wild stallion called Zeus, and a rancher named Gus who makes exactly one deal and means it. If you've ever wondered how a cowboy learns to ride like that, this is the answer: Get Stick & Ball free

The certain way. Preorder Sudden Death now and it lands on your Kindle the morning of October 6: Preorder Sudden Death

If you're already caught up

Thank you. Truly. The readers who found this series early are the reason there's a Book 3 at all, and the reason there will be a Book 4.

If you'd like to help, the most useful thing you can do costs nothing: send the Goodreads giveaway to one friend who loves a slow burn, a good horse, and a family with too much money and too many secrets. That's how these books travel.

Seventeen days. I can't wait for you to read it.

Yours,

 Elias

Queer love, every genre, always a happy ending.