JIM rough cover 3Lesser Prince is a tale about three youths who discover that they are anything but ordinary, and that the universe is much stranger than they could have ever expected.

In a significant departure from the Privateer Tales series, Lesser Prince is a fantasy work, complete with elves, dwarves and gnomes.  It is also the first story that I worked on and brought to a state of semi-completeness. This fall, I dusted it off and started pounding through it with my editors.  The work started out well over a 130,000 words ( too many for a first in a series fantasy work). With much hacking, trimming and de-cluttering we’ve finally shaped the manuscript into something we can be proud of.

The work isn’t done however, as I just released the manuscript to a cadre of beta readers. Their job is to read through and find the things I’ve become blind to after reading through the story so many times. I’ve become a strong advocate for getting as many eyes on to a new manuscript as are possible. Everyone catches something different and in the end the experience becomes much better for the reader.

The artwork that I’ve included is a rough draft from Patricia Leonardo aka Sicilian Vaklyrie. You’ll recognize her style from the original Fool Me Once cover. I have the final cover that I’ll show off once we get closer to release. The scene depicted shows Sam, Tig and Amber looking over a map of the Gaeland, the world they’ve discovered.

Lesser Prince will be available December of 2014, in plenty of time for Christmas.