The Stone Demon – two months to go!

Two months to go until The Stone Demon* is out in the world!

*Note: You’ll find the back cover copy for The Stone Demon on my blog at that link. BEWARE: It is unavoidably spoilery for Book 2.

It has felt like a long wait, but we are finally almost there… I figured that now was as good a time as any to start posting a few snippets as we lead up to the release. I probably would have waited another week or so, but today my publicist sent me the review of The Stone Demon that will soon appear in Kirkus. It is such a good review! There’s nothing negative in it at all, and Kirkus reviewers are a tough crowd to please. I am honestly more grateful and relieved than I can say. I am so, so happy because I struggled with writing this book. It was the first time I’ve ever had to attempt wrapping up a trilogy, and it was a learning curve that I thought might be too steep for me at one point several points in the process.

I’m not allowed to post the review anywhere until it’s available outside of Kirkus subscribers (which won’t be for a while), but I can pull a line from it to give you an idea of the whole tone:

“This engrossing series conclusion does justice to its kick-ass heroine, her funny sidekick and a vulnerable romantic interest.”

Cool, huh? Thank you, Kirkus, for describing Donna as “kick-ass”. This makes me ridiculously happy.

I wanted to post a short excerpt to celebrate, but wow… it’s hard to find something non-spoilery in the final book of a trilogy! So this is from near the beginning. As usual, we open with a journal entry from Donna, but I’ve skipped that in favor of the next part: emails between her and best buddy Navin, while Donna is away in London.

Today we’ll start with Donna’s email:

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From: Donna Underwood
To: Navin Sharma
Re. Use The Force

Nav,

I was being serious in that last email. Stop trying to cheer me up with Star Wars quotes.

I wish you would come visit. Didn’t you say your dad was into the idea of you spending some time in London? I’d love to see you. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I don’t have any friends here and I just don’t feel like I fit in – I know it’s only been three weeks, but still. And anyway, I thought you’d want an excuse to skip school!

Everybody in the Order of the Crow is so English. (Yeah, I know, I’m stating the obvious.) I feel like I’m living in a real-life version of Mary Poppins. Only without the singing and dancing. You know, the cool stuff.

Miranda’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but she’s very efficient. Since her promotion she’s pretty senior in the ranks – not quite on the same level as Quentin, but she’s quickly approaching that. I thought I’d have gotten to know her better by now, but she’s only really focused on the task of training me to be an alchemist. Honestly? So far, that mostly involves spending way too much time reading dusty old books. Being stuck in this house is starting to drive me crazy, too, though the upside is that it’s pretty cosy for somewhere so big. Winter in London is colder than I thought it would be, and I miss the open fires at the Frost Estate. Never thought I’d hear myself say that…

Robert’s around more, now that he’s recovered from that demon shadow attack in the Ironwood, but he’s not you. And he’s way too serious about training me!

Anyway, I won’t mention the fact that there’s been news of demon activity up in Scotland. That’s not something I should be bothering you with, and if anybody hacks into my emails they’ll probably have me put away somewhere nice and “safe”…

Could you, possibly, if it’s not too much trouble (!!) check on Xan for me? I guess he might be at Maker’s workshop if he’s not at home. I just want to know he’s okay, that’s all. I haven’t heard from him in ages.

I miss you.

Love,
Donna

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I’ll post Nav’s reply tomorrow (for Teaser Tuesday!) on my personal blog. Swing by and check it out! (And thinking about it, I have a giveaway running there at the moment so you could enter while you’re waiting for the next excerpt from The Stone Demon. )

Thanks for reading!