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| A slightly revised cover |
Are you weary of long, dark, and grim fantasy epics? Tired of evil priests, ruthless kings, sinister queens, knaves, and scoundrels—intricate palace intrigues and endless wars? Are you jaded by blood-soaked tomes of battle after battle, death after death? Need a break from accounts of disembowelment, torture, rape, and murder? In short, are you looking for a different sort of fantasy? Look no further.
Chateau Clare is a leisurely paced, mundane slice-of-life fantasy novel set in a post-magic, Edwardian-era sort of world. The stakes are low, and the company pleasant. In it, Lan Teya discovers he’s the heir of a once slightly sinister and powerful Great House—a scion of a family he never knew he belonged to. With his inheritance comes the long abandoned estate of his sorcerer ancestors—Chateau Clare. As the new master of Chateau Clare, Lan Teya reluctantly sets out to renovate it. In the process, he discovers not only its secrets, but also uncovers a great injustice suffered by his immediate predecessor at the hands of the other Great Houses—a wrong he reluctantly feels he must right. But at what cost?
Chateau Clare is a slow paced novel of everyday life in an imaginary, but semi-familiar world, filled with colorful friends, little mysteries, and a hint of romance. If you’re looking for heart-thumping excitement, move along, nothing to see here. But, if you’re looking for a nice, pleasant read, Chateau Clare may be just your cup of tea.
C. Litka is the author of sixteen tales of adventure, mystery, and travel set in richly imagined worlds. In Chateau Clare, he has written a novel of everyday life and little mysteries with his usual cast of colorful, fully realized characters. If you seek to escape your everyday life, you will not find better company, nor more wonderful worlds to explore, than in the stories of C. Litka.
That, in short, is my 2025 Novel, Chateau Clare.
The paperback version of Chateau Clare is already available on Amazon for $12.99. I saw that it is, for some reason listed under the "Supernatural mysteries" category as well as the two categories I selected. This suggests that Amazon scans the blurb of each book, since it included the word "sorcery" in the description. Interesting.
The Amazon ebook will be released on 24 October 2024 You can preorder your ebook copy on Amazon for $3.99. The audiobook version on Amazon will follow within a day or so, also for $3.99
All the other ebook versions of Chateau Clare will be available for my usual price of FREE. Find them on Google, Apple, B & N, Smashwords, Kobo, and a host of other European ebook stores on or shortly after 24 October 2024.
The FREE audiobook version on Google will drop shortly after 24 October 2024. The FREE Apple audiobook version will, maybe, follow, sometime. There is no telling when, or even if, Apple will release it after I submit it. I'm still waiting on three books I submitted nine months ago to appear.
Some Author Notes:
I've come to realize that Chateau Clare represents a return to my original story concept of Some Day Days and A Summer in Amber, which is to say it's a light, romantic novel, period. I set those stories in the future simply to free myself of the constrains of a known time and place and the past and future that surrounds a historical time and place. Also, it frees me of all the research setting a story in the past with any realism involves. In this case, Chateau Clare is set on a different planet in the far future, but it is just a light, slightly romantic novel with a little mystery to drive the leisurely plot along. For marketing purposes I've slotted it in as general fantasy and cozy mystery, since I'm done with science fiction. The reality is that there is a minor science fiction base, but it owes next to nothing to science fiction, and can pass as mundane, or low fantasy. More or less.
I had fun dreaming up this story last summer, and writing it this spring. I did not consider what my readers might want when I wrote it, so that if it disappoints my readers, it's on me. I also did not go back and trim 30,000+ words off of the first draft, like I should, so readers might well find it way too wordy and boring. That's also on me. So if sales and rating suffer for all that, it's also on me. But that's a price I'm more than willing to pay to write just what I want, just the way I want it written. And well, unless Amazon makes me, I don't ask any reader to pay me money for my work because I do it for fun. On the flip side, I'm not going to work for nothing. I'm only willing to have fun for nothing, and thus, I write the books I, personally, want to write. I'm more than willing to trust that they will find a few readers who also appreciate them. I hope that this doesn't sound arrogant or condescending. All I'm saying is that I approach writing as a work of art, and expression of the artist's creativity, without commercial considerations. And because of that I understand that if you don't produce an appealing product, you can't kick if it doesn't sell. I won't.
So, with Chateau Clare I've gone back to my roots as a writer. I think I'll be staying there.
Thanks Audrey. I really think this one is the poster child of how you shouldn't write these days, at least as genre fiction. It is far too wordy. But, as you know, story ideas that can get you motivated to write are scarce these days. I've nothing to lose by writing what I want, as long as I'm willing to accept the consequences in terms of sales and reviews. I must admit that I'm rather looking forward to finding out just what people think of it, good or bad. I think it will be fun either way.
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