Writer's Grove
Readalongs Ahoy
Prior to the release of A CURSE OF KRAKENS in November, I’ll be doing readalongs for A PLAGUE OF GIANTS and A BLIGHT OF BLACKWINGS in September and October, so whether you’re new to the Seven Kennings or want to reread and refresh and spot all the spiffiness, we’ll have a good time! You can participate live on Wednesday nights at 7 pm Eastern with me on Instagram Live, and if you happen to miss them I’ll save them to my feed so you can watch them later. We’ll divide each book up into quarters, so here’s the schedule:
September 6: A Plague of Giants Part 1, Days 1-5 (pages 1-214)
September 13: A Plague of Giants Part 2, Days 6-10 (pages 215-386)
September 20: A Plague of Giants Part 3, Days 11-14 (pages 387-534)
September 27: A Plague of Giants Part 4, Days 15-19 (pages 535-724)
October 4: A Blight of Blackwings Part 1, Days 20-23 (pages 1-176)
October 11: A Blight of Blackwings Part 2, Days 24-27 (pages 177-311)
October 18: A Blight of Blackwings Part 3, Days 28-33 (pages 312-499)
October 25: A Blight of Blackwings Part 4, Days 34-39 (pages 500-674)
So what’s a readalong? Methinks it varies! But mine will go thusly:
1) I’ll address some general goodies to look for or keep in mind—that might be thematic or something regarding the story structure or a character or dang near anything, really.
2) I’ll read a passage here and there and discuss what the heck I was thinking when I wrote it, talk about character journeys
3) I’ll address questions y’all submit via the fun little question-mark thingie at the bottom of the Live screen.
4) At the end of each book, I’ll give away my annotated copy to someone who’s participating live!
Happily, these books are in mass market paperback format, so they’re cheap! (Ebook and audio versions exist too.) You can pick them up wherever you like to buy books, but this handy landing page for A Plague of Giants will give you a bunch of places online to grab one in any format, and you can also grab A Blight of Blackwings when you’re ready. If you preorder A Curse of Krakens in any format from any vendor, you will get five bajillion good vibes, plus a free short story to download called “A Whisper of Snakes” when you submit your confirmation screen or receipt.
In case you’d like one, there are signed first edition hardcovers of A Plague of Giants available from Worldbuilders Market. Proceeds from your purchase goes to a number of humanitarian charities.
And what, pray tell, is the Seven Kennings all about? Quite a bit. How we endure and rebuild when the world crashes around us. How a nation’s priorities are reflected in who prospers and who doesn’t, whose stories are told and whose aren’t. How we can coexist with nature and each other. But the kennings themselves are deep magical ties to elemental forces that anyone can tap into if they’re willing to risk their life for it. The first kenning is fire; the second is air; the third is earth; the fourth is water; and the fifth is plant life. When A Plague of Giants opens, the world knows of five kennings and assumes there is a sixth, an affinity with animals, that hasn’t been discovered yet. A seventh isn’t even dreamed of.
I hope you and your friends will join in. There are twenty-two different narrators to love in this trilogy and they’re all kinds of people—young and old from different backgrounds, different orientations, and possessing very different goals. So let’s sink your reading teeth into a juicy epic, yeah?
