The vacation was amazing. The air was 80F. The ocean was 80F. The pools were great. The room was spectacular. The food was delicious. The drinks were to die for.
We went on a date to this restaurant that was technically part of the resort but set outside of the grounds, by a busy street. We sat on a terrace, under a canvas, watched the foot traffic and listened to a remarkably good live singer. At some point I had a moment of wondering if this was actually happening. It’s been so long since we had a vacation. Last year, we had a weekend in Daytona. That was it. I needed this in the worst way.
We swam so much. I miss it already.
We are back home, and the dishwasher drainage line is clogged. We’ve taken the dishwasher apart, checked the fan, and have done the boiling water trick, so it looks like we have to get a plumber involved. Reality, coming like a freight train.
Professional News
This Kingdom is a hot potato. We have now sold the rights to 5 foreign countries, most of which we cannot contractually disclose yet, but we are free to say that we will be working with Tor UK. We are very excited.
We have seen the cover sketches. They sent 3 sketches and all three were great. We picked a favorite and can’t wait to see it in color and detail. I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t say more.
Book Recommendation
I usually don’t read while we work. It’s very hard to shift gears from concentrating on the narrative to enjoying it. While on vacation, though, I downloaded a series through Kindle Unlimited and I glomed it. I’ve read 4.5 books at this point. Big thanks to Matt, Alisha, Sauron, and Christy for recommending the Azarinth Healer series.
Ilea likes punching things. And eating.
Unfortunately, there aren’t too many career options for hungry brawlers. Instead, the plan is to quit her crappy fast-food job, go to college, and become a fully functioning member of society. Essentially – a fate worse than death.
So maybe it’s lucky that she wakes up one day in a strange world where a bunch of fantasy monsters are trying to kill her…?
On the bright side, ‘killing those monsters right back’ is now a viable career path! For she soon discovers her new home runs on a set of game-like rules that will allow her to punch things harder than in her wildest dreams. Well, maybe not her wildest dreams, but it’s close.
With no quest to follow, no guide to show her the way, and no real desire to be a Hero – Ilea embarks on a journey to discover a world full of magic. Magic she can use to fight even bigger monsters.
She’s struggling to survive, has no idea what will happen next, and is loving every minute of it. Except, and sometimes also, when she’s poisoned and/or has set herself on fire. It’s complicated.
Read the story that took Royal Road by storm with over 60 million views and counting.
It’s a classic LitRPG, the stats, the battles, the violence. A prefect beach read for me. I really enjoyed the action. The protagonist is endearing and is authentically a 20 year old. The world is imaginative and exciting. The Silver Rose dungeon was chef’s kiss. I’m a horrible harpy who hates everything, and I couldn’t stop reading it. If you like LitRPG, this is a good one.
For the romance readers: there is none. There is some casual sex with the door closed.
There is an audiobook and it is good. I listened to about half of the first one on the plane.
Fair warning for people fresh to the genre: this series concentrates a lot on the battles. You get very detailed blow by blow fights. I like battles and there were times my eyes started glazing over. Like if you think our fight scenes are too long, these are much more detailed.
Here is the link to Amazon: Azarinth Healer. There is always another drake.
Welcome back. Glad you had good weather on your vacation.
Your dishwasher drain reminds me of when the A/C was clogged in my old car. Every time I took a right turn, I had to swivel my right foot a bit on the accelerator. Otherwise, the backed up water would drain down onto my foot. Walking around with one wet foot got old fast.
I LUUUURVE Azarinth Healer too! But yeah, it does have the points system stats sheets, warning to those unfamiliar with the genre.
Borrowed the book, thanks for the suggestion! Glad to hear you had a great trip, you deserved it!
Whoo hoo, another binge read rec from my favourite authorlords. Heading to KU now… So glad you had a good vacation. You deserve all the nice things for all the nice things you give your fluffy Horde.
Where did you go on vacation? It sounds amazing.
I double this! Adulting is hard right now, so husband and I are scouring for a place we can retreat to and recharge our batteries.
We both run our own businesses, so it’s been a few long years since we’ve had the chance. We are out of the loop on nice places, help!
Ditto! Is that Santa Rosa?
So glad you had a good break. You both deserve it. Looking forward to “The Kingdom”/ Maggie in the worst way.
So glad you had a good vacation!
Sorry about the dishwasher misbehaving.
Thank you for the read recommendation. Looking forward to checking it out!
I am so glad you had a great vacation! And sorry for the dishwasher… Not a fun thing to come back to. We had to replace the wiring harness on ours because it uses plastic made from food grade oil and rats think it is DELICIOUS and we live in the country… Blessed be the GE warranty that covered it! I could not believe it but asked ZERO questions and sent them allll the good vibes lol
Honda sells Rodent Deterent Tape which is infused with capsaicin.
Am I the only one that sang the headline?🤔
Welcome home! Doesn’t it at least feel good to sleep in your own bed, though? That’s always been my favorite part of getting back from vacation. Hope things improve quickly and all is well in the Ilona-verse!❤️
Not aloud, but it definitely had a soundtrack going!
I had the chorus of this playing…
(Into the Woods – Moments in the Woods – Original Cast / Joanna Gleason)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SOPXo8PmdYs#bottom-sheet
Soul II Soul sister here 😉
Yay! Very glad you had a real vacation and enjoyed it. You two deserve a chance to unwind in peace.
I’m sorry reality hit so soon (and so smelly. It’s always smelly.) It could have waited a week or so…
Maggie is a really tempting book – I’m glad I don’t have to resist it. Thanks in advance for my next favorite read.
It seems to be only on Amazon… Almost never buy there.
And I wonder if the character envolds just as nicely as the IA characters do? I mostly do not read books for the battles
So happy you had a really good holliday 😀
Most LitRPGs are indie published and if they are on Kindle Unlimited, they cannot be anywhere else- KU has an exclusivity clause.
You can catch some of them on Royal Road, where they are posted first, before they are released on KU https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/16946/azarinth-healer
Followed your link, but it immediately refers to Amazon.. 🙁
Why do we accept this exclusiveness from them?
Because that’s the most effective model for those writers. That’s how they earn their living and we want them to keep publishing more cool stuff. Mod R’s link goes to Royal Road. Start with Chapter 1 titled Boring Introduction. You can read most of it free on that site.
I’ve never related to anything more than “I’m a horrible harpy who hates everything” 🤣 thank you for the recommendation! I’m happy to hear the vacation was a success ☺️
When I was a child, my mom used to say that parents should get away from their children on a regular basis. Then I became a special needs mom and discovered how necessary respite time away from caregiving is.
Maybe vacations from your literary children more than once a year might be a reasonable plan. Refreshing, even. A break can really help give you the energy to get back to what you love.
I highly recommend Magical Girl Gunslinger on Royal Road.
Your vacation looks lovely- so glad you took the time to relax:-) There is something special about swimming and eating on vacation! And the joy of finding a good read – perfection!
Bummer about the dishwasher. It’s always something.
I’m glad you enjoyed your much deserved and earned break!
Any chance you’d share the approximate location (looking for a nice beach getaway to take my boyfriend as a retirement present)?
Thank you for the book recommendation!
We went to Turks and Caicos. It was our first time and Gordon’s birthday present. It is amazing, and we booked through Costco. It is literally a Corona commercial. If you go, try to avoid flying in or out on Saturday. Weekend is the busiest time and the airport is tiny, so it is very busy and loud.
Thank you so much!!
TY! I wondered where in the world… 🙂 It looks gorgeous and relaxing. Glad you had a good holiday.
Welcome back, sometimes you just have to get away to discover you needed a break!
Also highly recommend Azarinth healer.. I stumbled across the first book and have bought them since as soon as they are published, fantastic series🥰
P.s. Love the inheritance!!
Ohhhh, those pictures do look lovely. Glad you had a nice vacation. (Pesky reality, though. So annoying sometimes.)
ModR took good care of us while you were gone. Just ignore all the ships cluttering up the place.
That place looks AMAZING!!!!!!!!!
Seriously!!!!!!!
So pleased you both feel rejuvenated but sad your dishwasher brought you back to the real world with a bump.
Nice to have you back🌹
Welcome back, vacation versus reality. I recently went on a cruise and still can zen on the memories.
congratulations on the book deal always nice when it goes wide spread. Glad you had an enjoyable vacation away from reality for a bit.
My personal reading recommendation is The Assassini by Thomas Gifford. Set in the early 80’s and published in 89, it revolves around the imminent death of a fictional pope and the intrigue involved in the election of a new one. Decades old but oddly timely, it is a fascinating peek into Vatican politics. And murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assassini It’s available on kindle. On a personal note, I firmly believed Dan Brown ripped off huge chunks of it for the DaVinci Code.
Thank you!
(insert National Geographic/BBC animal documentary announcer voice, with a British accent) “The elusive Gordon recommendation. Oftentimes found buried under other recs by the horde, but always a treat when spotted in the wild.”
Thanks! 🤗
Yay for the vacation to get away from everything and everyone (the Horde included). Boo for the misbehaving dishwasher.
Glad to read that “This Kingdom…” is taking off like a rocket.
The vacation sounds wonderful, sorry for the abrupt return to reality! Usually it’s just washing clothes not plumbers 😜. But congrats to you both for how well Maggie is unfolding! Very exciting!
Our dishwasher clogged when my oldest was a toddler and while I was cleaning it out she locked herself into the bathroom. I remember frantically calling my husband to come home from work to dismantle the door and get a very scared toddler out of the bathroom.
A VERY long time ago, I was visiting friends and they warned me the bathroom lock had been disabled after their toddler had locked herself in. I was OK with it until it was my turn to use the shower and I turned to rinse off my back and there she was, in the shower with me. That gave me a new appreciation for parents of toddlers.
Glad you were able to get away for a well deserved vacation! You don’t realize that you need a mental health break until you actually take one 😀
I don’t live for battle scenes, so your recommendation won’t work for me but I found a book that caught me. Details about TEA!
A Coup of Tea by Casey Blair
Escaped princess, tea ceremony, magic and dragons of assorted sizes!
I tried so hard with this series, for the life of me I cannot get past midway through the first book, when she goes to the town meeting on policies 😟
Love this series and love litrpg, but then I have been told that my taste are. . . eclectic to put it mildly.
There are five books in that particular trilogy.
Say that again, slowly 😅
Okay, it’s not just me then. Because I was like, “Is Judy joking or not?”
Question: how can there be 5 books in a trilogy? 🤔
Unless two of the books are novella, and three full books?
Otherwise hmm. 🤔
In this particular case you’re right, there is a 2.5 & 3.5; but just off the top of my head I can think of two trilogies that aren’t trilogies – the Brentford trilogy, I haven’t read in a long time but I think was at five with a sixth due, and I recently read This Trilogy is Broken that’s four books on purpose. Then there are all the series that were planned to be a trilogy at first but got elongated as it were – and I am here for that, let me tell you, more books please 🙂
So glad you had a great vacation!
I’m overjoyed that This Kingdom is doing so well. House Andrews deserves all the best in the world!
Glad you had a great break, yes I have recently finished reading book 5 of the Azarinth Healer series, waiting on book 6. Highly recommended.
I am so confused; is the blog serial (which I am already in love with) actually maggie? Or is that something else?
The Inheritance is not the same as Maggie, no 🙂.
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, which is the very first Maggie the Undying book, will not be released until March of next year https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/maggie-the-undying-title-reveal/
The Inheritance is the new blog serial. I am so glad you’re enjoying it!
They are both set in new worlds and explore new genres, like isekai and LitRPG, but that is where the similarities end 🙂.
So glad you had a great vacation and enjoyed Azarinth Healer! Just finished the newest book this week. 🙂
omg Azarinth Healer is one of my favorite books and have been following it since the beginning 🙂 Glad you could be persuaded to punch some things really hard lol
No romance AND longer fight scenes? Yes, please! Thanks for the recommendation. Thanks, Gordon, as well! I’ve been reading the Aubrey/Maturin and Cotton Malone series between my SF/F and it’ll be good to have more variety.
So glad to hear you enjoyed your well-deserved vacation! Congratulations re: the selling of the rights to five foreign countries, woohoo! Also, I just started reading the Azarinth Healer as well (I’m on book 2) and I’m really enjoying it.
That series was great. I have been reading on Royal Road for a while, and I also highly recommend “The Calamitous Bob” by Alex Gilbert, which is available on Kindle Unlimited. I suggest starting KU since most of it has been stubbed on Royal Road. The authors other book “A Journey Of Black And Red” is also very good; the main female character is a morally gray vampire. She’s great, but it’s clear that she is still a vampire.
The royal road version of Azarinth Healer has colabs between other author’s series on occasion, so each series has a event where all the MC’s are together and each author writes it from their MC’s point of view. I particularly liked the description of Ilea from one of the other author’s.
“Truly, by appearing so normal, I feel like someone placed a tiny hat on a giant tiger”
I’ve been hearing about that one here and there, but always in ways that sound like I should already know what it is “X happened and I loved it” not: “This is good and here’s the premise”. I’ll have to pick it up. After I get done with my current reads though (Just binged Hidden Legacy -Leon needs his own book!- and now back into the Kate Daniels books). Yay for good vacation! Boo for dishwasher!
What a timely rec! My little brother just told me about this series and I added it to my list, but will need to bump it up a few spots to read next! Love reading things my siblings are reading but we don’t overlap that often.
I’m so glad you had a vacation! You so rarely allow yourself time to relax. Just seeing the photos brings a sense of calm. We’re glad you’re back!
I just started reading my first ever litRPG series and I can’t recommend it enough (especially for anyone else also new to the genre) – Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.. Some of the best laughs I’ve ever read, great found family (including a cat turned sentient named Princess Donut) and also some political space intrigue.
I don’t if I already did or not, but I can only recommend the The Unconventional Heroes series by L. G. Estrella – the Audiobooks are really funny.
That looks beautiful – where did you go and stay?
Also, thank you for the book recommendation. I need a new series until your next book is released.
The vacation was at Turks and Caicos 🙂
Just to let Ilona know I LOVE this new serial, The Inheritance!
Glad to know vacation was so good!
Started reading the book rec! Has similar feel to Millennial Mage series by JL Mullins- yes?
Love reading the new series on the blog! Can’t wait for Friday
Is it just me or has your icon changed too, BDH?
“Like if you think our fight scenes are too long, these are much more detailed.”
No, never! I love your fight scenes. The one between Hugh and Kate at the castle is still one of my favorite scenes ever! And second (or equal) to that is when Kate fights her way to Roland’s throne. So many good fight scenes—you are a master of them!
That said, I’m always in search of a new book, so I will check that out. Thanks!
The other day I bought BURN FOR ME graphic audio. OMG! I can’t “go” on any vacation, but this book exceeded all expectations (and provided a mental vacation I desperately needed), I binged listened. I read a few negative reviews but I sure didn’t encounter any reservations, no criticism, no disappointment, no critique. I am passionately waiting for book 2!
I’m so happy you enjoyed it! White Hot is due out in July 🥰