Splinters

Dwarven courier Odwi Lighthand promised her dying husband she'd partake in adventure, which is the only reason she accepted a job offer from a giant centipede.  It’s a simple proposition: deliver the map. The not-so-simple part? Her new employers are a known thief syndicate. Determined to honor her husband’s final request, Odwi steps into an unfamiliar cloak-and-dagger world, dodging assassination attempts and primeval monsters along her path. Odwi's brother Drift just wants to leave the past behind and let it rot. He's perfectly fine hiding from it behind stacks of books and lectures. But when an old foe awakens in the depths of the earth, Drift is forced to face his past and resurrect a part of him he'd just as well leave forgotten. One with a map, the other with a mace, Odwi and Drift search for answers before the dwarven lands are consumed by evil bubbling to the surface. Artwork by Michael FirmanAuthor's Note:Hi, y'all. My name's Aaron and Splinters was my first novel, the product of six years of on-and-off worldbuilding, then six months of dedicated writing and revision. I was convinced—as I am of pretty much everything I haven't looked at with an editor's eye—that it was going to re-energize the fantasy genre. Fifty-plus rejections from agents and publishers brought me crashing back down to earth. I started to completely revise it, but as I dug into it, I realized my time would be better spent taking those lessons and starting a new book. Which I did. That one contains the sum of everything I learned, and it's much more cohesive as a result of the hard, critical, sometimes heartbreaking work I did on Splinters. So fair warning, Splinters might have a few plot holes, a few threads that don't go anywhere, but that's part of learning how to make a complete novel. Stephen King said you can learn more from a bad book than a good one. I'm putting my first book up so you can learn from it, and you can decide if it's really as bad as I say. And if I'm being honest, I just feel bad for it sitting in the trunk all by its lonesome. Splinters was my attempt at being Brandon Sanderson and I learned a lot about my own writing style in the process. Three years after I wrapped the first draft of Splinters at 2 in the morning, my patient wife sitting next to me, engrossed in the history of the moment—or dozing, she might have been dozing—I can tell you I've found my own voice.  So listen. Or, uh, read: There is no such thing as wasted writing. The stuff you don't share isn't lost, it's just EXP in the ol' character status screen. Make bad art. Make so much of it that you can make good art. Don't worry about being super original at first. You'll find your voice. I hope Splinters helps you do that.