My New Book Published Today!

I just had my first birthday spent in Canada in quite some time. I feel a bit older, a bit wiser, and a bit closer to being Old old (right now, I'm just hanging out at the edges of Old... but the abyss is waiting, ha).

And today is now the birth of my new novel, The New Empire! It's been a while since one of my own books has been published... I tend to spend a lot of my time helping other people get their books published, and so it's a bit of a strange feeling to have my words going out into the world again. I'm almost as nervous as the first time I had a novel published back in 2018 - isn't that strange? I guess each new book is a new baby for an author. Maybe someday I'll have 50 books under my belt and will be a bit more jaded about the process, but right now... it's still pretty thrilling.

Here's the blurb from the back of the book:

Fire. Blood. His brother's hand smashing his face to the ground. These are Jiangxi's final memories of Beijing from 1751. In the alternate history novel The New Empire, a bloody coup imprisons the emperor's youngest son in the bowels of a cargo ship, headed to a much different America than we've read about in history books. When Jiangxi arrives in the distant city of Wacharon, a trading hub for a powerful tribal confederacy, he is sold upon his arrival. As he begins to learn about the influential man who bought him, he's caught between the two worlds of his past and present, forced to choose between following the law of the land or striking out on his own to find a new and bold path to freedom. But Jiangxi's journey of self-discovery has a steep price. The choices he makes will change not only the course of his own life, but also the future of the two most powerful nations in the world.

I love history, and researching this book was a gargantuan task but a lot of fun. In the story, the world undergoes a drastic change in the 14th century when Chinese ships land in what is currently known as the Bay Area of California. Fast forward four hundred years to a much different America than we know, a land dominated by a tribal confederacy grown out of a strong alliance with Beijing. Told from the main perspective of Jiangxi, who is a Chinese slave, it’s an epic story that highlights the experiences of characters often overlooked in the history books. In doing so, it tells a unique—but still emotionally relevant—tale of slavery and freedom that will resonate with readers in today’s conflicted and diverse globe.

The question I get asked most often about this book is: "Where did you come up with the idea?" If you'd like to know a bit more about my new book and how it came to be, check out this article about how I won a contest and got my new novel published: "How I Jumped the Line & Got a Book Deal."

And here's a recent interview that peeks behind the curtain of my writing process at the website Book Goodies.

Hope you check out my new book and let me know what you think. Happy reading!