Secret Giveaway Winner and Hughday

From Mod R:

If it’s Friday, it’s winner time!

The much-coveted prize of last week’s Secret Giveaway was a galley of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (Maggie the Undying 1), the new fantasy isekai series by Ilona Andrews. A galley is a plain-bound (no illustrated cover, sprayed edges, very likely pre copy-edits version of the Advanced Reader Copy). We do not have an exact ETA on when the galleys will arrive, but one lucky person today will have one heading for them as soon as they are ready!

Without further ado, the winner is:

Amanda says

March 25, 2025 at 4:00 pm

I absolutely love your books but don’t think I’m hardcore enough to be transported into most of them. Certainly not the Kate Daniel’s or Edge worlds, although I think I’d like living at Gertrude Hunt. One of my first sci fi reads was Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and I think as long as I had my towel, I could travel around that universe for a bit.

Congratulations!

I will contact Amanda privately with details and arrangements about the prize, from the modr@ilona-andrews.com address on the email provided with the comment. If we do not hear back from you by Wednesday, April 2nd at 12:00 pm Central, we will chose a different winner in your place, so please keep an eye on the blog and your inbox.

Happy weekend!

Harvest Day

“You have got to be kidding me.”

 Hugh stood on the side passage on the first floor of Bailey. Elara was next to him.  Three of the centurions, Stoyan, Lamar, and Sharif, waited a few feet away. Bale and his century were on duty today.

This spot gave him an excellent view of the great hall.  The last time they’d used it, they’d hosted Rufus Fortner, the head of Lexington’s Red Guard.   

 The tables were gone.  Most of the chairs were gone too, except for the single row against the two side walls for those who had trouble standing. Fall garlands draped the walls, with wreaths of wheat and oak branches encircling the decorative weapons he’d ordered hung on the walls for the Fortner’s visit.  Young maples grew from big barrels, spreading red and orange leaves.

A long red carpet stretched from the doors all the way to the back of the room, where two long banners streamed from the high ceiling, one the black and silver banner depicting a dog bearing his fangs and the other the green and white banner with a cauldron filled with herbs, the symbol of the Departed. Beneath the banners, on a raised platform, stood two thrones carved from wood in painstaking detail.  Apples, pumpkins, gourds, bunches of wheat and herbs, and baskets of fall flowers decorated the platform around the thrones, spilling to the main floor.

On the side, just below the right throne, a huge wooden barrel waited with a stack of paper cups by it.  He remembered the barrel.  They had filled it with beer for Fortner’s visit. He didn’t recall a white table on the side, bristling with skewers.  Hugh squinted at it.  Fruit dipped in chocolate.

Elara’s people flittered through it all, making last minute adjustments.

He had no problem with the maples, the pumpkins, or the wreaths.  Even the barrel.  That was fine. Nobody said anything about the thrones. Or the cornucopia that threw up around them.

“Walk me through this again,” he said.

“We are going to go and sit on the thrones,” Elara said. “The doors will open. People will enter, mostly families with small children. They will greet us with a small gift.  Something the children picked themselves. We will wish them a happy Harvest Day and then they will get a cup of spiced Harvest cider.  They will think of a wish, drink their cider, and then Nadia and Rue will give them a skewer with chocolate dipped fruit.”

“You want me to play Harvest Fest Santa Claus?”

She nodded.

He stared at her.

“You agreed to it,” Elara reminded him.

He had agreed to it. The night after he came back from Aberdine, she’d spent an hour trying to deal with Amelia’s curse. Finally, she touched her fingers to the young woman’s forehead, and he felt a pulse of magic from her.  It washed over him, soothing and cool, and Amelia’s rigid body relaxed. The curse was still there, Elara told him.  She had only slowed it to a crawl, but it was alive and growing, and if they didn’t find a cure soon, it would consume Amelia. His wife had just bought them time.

He was already grateful, and then she invited him back to her suite. They sat at a table on a secluded balcony off her bedroom and she’d served him the chicken she made.

Elara’s chicken tasted like childhood.

Hugh couldn’t recall eating it frequently when he was a child, but something about the combination of flavors and savory herbs threw him right back to that blissfully happy decade before he turned seventeen and began killing in Roland’s name. It tasted like summers in Occitanie, where winds had names, and the long sandy beaches flirted with the turquoise sea. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine sitting at the scarred table on the veranda of the old bastide that used to be his home. He would’ve spent the morning in sword practice, studied after that, then ridden a horse to the beach and swam until his body could no longer move. The house with its stone façade and pale blue shutters would be to his left, the pool and the view of the sea nestled between green hills to his right, and when he finished eating, his father would come to quiz him on things he’d learned that day.

It was bittersweet, and he savored every bite, while she promised that she would get her witches to look into the curse and talked about the Harvest Day preparations. If she had asked him to jump over the balcony rail at that moment, he might have done it.  She’d asked him to be the Harvest King instead. The fool that he was, he said yes.

Now he was standing in the middle of the main hall, wearing an embroidered white tunic, brown pants, and a red Celtic cape cloak. And Elara was standing next to him. She wore a light green gown with ridiculous trumpet sleeves.  It clung to her chest, flowing over her waist to her hips, where it flared into a wide skirt.  Her hair was down and streamed down her back like a white waterfall. A flower crown made with purple asters, bright yellow goldenrod, and red maple leaves rode on her hair. She looked like she had walked out of Edmund Leighton’s Accolade.  All she needed was a sword and some fool to kneel before her.

Nadia, one of the women close to Elara, approached, carrying a wooden box.

“I’m afraid to ask,” he said.

Elara opened the box and took out a flower crown twisted together from golden oak branches, red maple leaves, and clusters of small purple berries.

“No.”

“You promised.”

She was looking at him with her beautiful brown eyes.  He looked at her face for a moment too long and surrendered to his fate.  How bad could becoming a king for one day be?

He bowed his head, and she put the crown on his hair.

“You look lovely, Preceptor,” Lamar offered.

Hugh looked at him for a minute.

Lamar grinned back. Stoyan’s face was perfectly neutral.  Sharif cracked a razor-thin smile.

“Hugh?” Elara asked.

He sighed.

She smiled at him.  The magic was thick today and that smile was regal and witchy.  His eldritch queen, the Ice Harpy, asking him for a favor.

Oh what the hell, why not? “Let’s get this over with.”

#

A three-year-old boy with round cheeks and dark hair clutched a yellow astra flower to his chest.

“Go ahead, Bao,” his mother murmured.

Bao looked at Hugh, looked at the sword by the throne, and made a beeline for Elara.  She gave him a smile, and Bao offered her his flower.

“What a pretty astra!” Elara cooed.

They had seen at least two hundred people in the last couple of hours. Most of the ones under 5 went to her. He got older kids and a surprising number of adults. The Departed believed in Elara with all their heart.  They brought flowers, fruit, and walnuts, deposited their gifts on the cornucopia pile, made their wishes, and drank their cider. And then they lingered, watching others do the same.  The grand hall was full. People talked and mulled about, and he’d spotted more than a couple of his Iron Dogs in the crowd.

The pile of gifts by his side of the throne was growing unwieldy. Fruit, mushrooms, weird rocks from the children.  One kid brought a grasshopper.  A little girl brought a “pretty worm” which turned out to be a scarlet snake and caused a bit of commotion until Sharif grabbed it.  The snake was safely released outside, and the culprit was rewarded with a chocolate strawberry.

He didn’t mind. He understood now why Elara wanted this. The smiling faces, the content conversation, the abundance of food, it swirled together into communal happiness, and it wrapped around them all like a warm blanket.  They were together, secure, and happy. The Departed needed it, but Elara herself needed it more. He could see it on her face.  In this moment, his wife was truly happy. 

A hush fell onto the hall.  He raised his head.

Vanessa stood on the red carpet.

She looked exactly the same: arrogant face framed by dark hair, a body that was almost too ripe, with big boobs, long legs, and tight ass wrapped in a red sweater dress. Back before the wedding, he’d used her as a distraction.  He’d made the terms clear from the start, but it had gone to her head anyway, and eventually she tried to use it against Elara. They had words, as Bale would put it. To call it a fight would be giving Vanessa too much credit. Elara sliced her to pieces with ten sentences. Going back to her job as a paralegal after she imagined wielding power as his mistress proved too much for Vanessa.  She fled in the morning.

She stood on the carpet now, and there was something not quite right about her face.

The two families behind her turned and walked off the carpet to the walls.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bao’s mother pick him up and scurry to the side. The hall was silent now.

An ice-cold power flared to his left.

He glanced at Elara.

Her face was rigid with rage.  Her magic burned around her, a glacial invisible flame, a seed of a hurricane threatening to burst. The edge of it seared him, and only his willpower kept him from recoiling. She was Death.

The Departed stood frozen.

“Take it off,” Elara ground out.

Vanessa grinned.

“Off!”

Vanessa’s scalp split. The skin sloughed off her, like a biohazard suit, curving to the sides.

A slender middle-aged woman bared her teeth at them.  Thin, her features sharp, her light skin coated in a grease streaked with blood, she stared at Elara with triumphant disgust. Magic wrapped around her, a dark, violent miasma.

The last of Vanessa’s skin peeled off, falling to the ground in shreds.  How the fuck…

Elara’s magic convulsed like a furious colossal viper.

In the hall, the faces that were happy just a moment ago turned into cold, grim masks.  The Departed stared as one, and he felt it again, that collective power binding them. The cheer, the happiness, and warmth were gone, snatched away by the Departed. Everything Elara treasured, everything she looked forward to, ruined. It was the wedding all over again.

He felt something stir inside him and realized it was rage.

“Brooklyn.” Elara spat the name like it was poison.

The woman raised a bony hand and stabbed her finger at Elara. “The reckoning is here, niece—”

“Aarh sapawur eseran.”

The blinding flash of agony tore through him. He’d sank so much power into the words, the grand hall quaked.

Brooklyn froze like a statue.  Unable to move, unable to speak.

The entire hall stared at him, shocked.

“Elara,” he said into the silence, keeping his voice casual. “Why don’t you ever bake me anything from those shows you like to watch.”

Elara’s eyes were big as saucers.

He gave her a pointed look.

She cleared her throat. “What would you like me to bake you?”

“I think I would like some rough puff pastry.” That was the only thing he could remember from his trip to the ledge.

“What?”

“I’m a rough man.  I should have some rough puff pastry.” What the hell was coming out of his mouth…

The spell’s hold shattered. Brooklyn stumbled forward.

“Aarh sapawur eseran.”

The pain slashed through his gut like a sword. It took everything in his power not to wince.

“I’m having a conversation with my wife.” He hammered each word out like he was carving it into stone.  “Will nobody rid me of this annoying thing?”

A dozen Iron Dogs congealed from the crowd.  They swarmed the petrified woman. In seconds she was gagged and tied. They tipped her like a tree and carried her out of the hall.

Hugh turned to Elara. “When am I getting my desert?”

“I will make it tomorrow,” she said softly.

“Thank you, love.” He turned to the hall.  “Now, who is next?”

For a moment nothing happened.  And then a family with two children shouldered their way out of the crowd and approached, carrying some pears and a bundle of wheat.

Hugh smiled at them and waved for Irina to start pouring the cider.

The Last Hughday

From Ilona:

Hugh d’Ambray, living his best Henry II life, heh.

This week brought a lot of This Kingdom work. We pulled together a ton of material for the maps, drew the sketch of the world map, noted the major landmarks, then wrote everything out in text, moving from north to south on both sides of the map. Then we redid that same map with the political landmarks. We pulled together the city map, edited it to match the new manuscript and sent that in. Hopefully that is enough for the artist to get started. Then we worked on the cover copy for the publisher insider galleys.

I had forgotten how much work it takes to release a book through the traditional publisher. The fault is entirely mine. I’ve gotten used to self-dictated release schedule, where we determine the deadlines, the number of edits, and the cover copy. When the cover copy goes back and forth 7 times, with several people concentrating on making it the best it can be, it puts things in perspective.

Not that we cut corners when we self-publish, but usually it’s our agent and us and we are mostly on the same page. We don’t have the marketing department to guide us or the expertise of an editor who is very good at what she does.

This week, we have also gotten out first foreign rights offer. I can’t say anything about it except that it is a really good offer. We will need to review the documents today. We always read the contracts.

This is now two separate publishers who have chosen to place a big bet on Maggie.

It’s both exciting and nerve-wrecking. I really hope the book is strong enough to meet the expectations, but that’s not the biggest stress factor. We’ve written this book. It’s done. It’s too late to worry about it. It will do or it won’t.

The second book is due in November.

We’ve sent the “where are we going” summary to our editor yesterday. If it’s green lit, great. If not, we will need to adjust. The first book is almost 200K. This one will likely be of significant length as well. It’s a lot of story and there is still a lot of work left on Maggie #1. Copyedits, galley proofread, etc, etc.

All of this means that we cannot give Hugh 2 the attention it deserves. Especially not while serializing it. If this was a novella, it would be one thing, but this is a novel and it is complex. We will have to bump it back until Maggie #2 is done.

I thought we could knock it out, but apparently we can’t. This is humbling. In a way, it is a testament to the strength of the book – it requires undivided attention. But still, I really, really wanted to get it done before starting on the sequel. Not only we need to finish the story, but we need that extra release, because Maggie 1 won’t be published until March 31 of next year.

The problem is also the hands. A few months ago I developed this fun new nightmare where my hands and feet, and sometimes arms and legs, go numb. There was a lot of nerve pain with a dash of allodynia. I learned to sleep on my back with both hands in braces. There was a variety of possible diagnoses, none of them good, but right now the consensus is that this is a medication-induced side effect. I’m off the meds and getting better so we will see if this improves over the next few months.

It slowed me down quite a bit. At some point I couldn’t even sit in the chair for longer than an hour or everything went numb. You never plan for crap like to happen, but sometimes it does.

Anyway, for these reasons, we are pushing Hugh 2 to the backburner, so we can meet our contractual obligations. We may have a shorter project for you as a serial. We are not sure yet. Mod R has read it and she feels it would be a good serial.

No worries, we will figure out something fun in the meanwhile. Happy Friday!