Allen Houston's Blog

You can buy paperbacks of The Sorcerers' Castle or read it on Kindle at https: https://amzn.to/3hUanqR

The book is the first in my new adult fantasy series.

The Sorcerers’ Castle, the first book in my new epic fantasy series, is available for pre-order for Amazon Kindle, with paperbacks to come soon. Although a few elements are similar to the Nightfall Garden series, this book was specifically written for adults with mature content. Please read the disclaimer, and if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, buckle up for the ride.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B...

I’m excited to announce the launch of Wren's Creature Codex on Kindle Vella, with the first seven installments up and posted for your reading enjoyment. I'll be adding new episodes every Thursday going forward.

Wren’s is a weekly dystopian/fantasy serial that I have been laboring over for the last three years and Kindle Vella brings it directly to your phone so you can read in bite-sized installments.

You can currently read the first three chapters for free, giving them a thumbs-up as you go along if you like them and leaving comments. Amazon is offering free tokens to unlock the other episodes (see the top right on the page). To continue reading you can purchase more tokens (for about the price of a cup of coffee).

Here is a brief summary of the story:

Over a century ago, hordes of predatory animal-human hybrids conquered the earth, upending millions of years of evolution. Now, Wren's village fights for survival as the world descends into another dark age. Setting off on an epic adventure, Wren and her friends journey through an uncharted land of fantastical and terrifying monsters to try and halt the dangerous breeds' ascendence and save humankind from extinction.

Read it here: https://amzn.to/3hVytPu

Thank you for your continued support and have a great summer!

I’m excited to announce the launch of Wren's Creature Codex on Kindle Vella, with the first seven installments up and posted for your reading enjoyment. I'll be adding new episodes every Thursday going forward.

Wren’s is a weekly dystopian/fantasy serial that I have been laboring over for the last three years and Kindle Vella brings it directly to your phone so you can read in bite-sized installments.

You can currently read the first three chapters for free, giving them a thumbs-up as you go along if you like them and leaving comments. Amazon is offering free tokens to unlock the other episodes (see the top right on the page). To continue reading you can purchase more tokens (for about the price of a cup of coffee).

Here is a brief summary of the story:

Over a century ago, hordes of predatory animal-human hybrids conquered the earth, upending millions of years of evolution. Now, Wren's village fights for survival as the world descends into another dark age. Setting off on an epic adventure, Wren and her friends journey through an uncharted land of fantastical and terrifying monsters to try and halt the dangerous breeds' ascendence and save humankind from extinction.

Thank you for your continued support and have a great summer!

I am excited to announce the launch of “Wren’s Creature Codex,” a new weekly series that I am writing for Kindle Vella. Wren’s is a labor of love that I have been working on for the past three years. The first five episodes of the series will drop next week.

I look forward to sharing Wren’s world and hope you will come along for the ride. More details to come soon.

I was a Goth in High School, replete with red hair and a black trench coat. In the late 1980’s such minor acts of rebellion provided an easy bullseye for bullies (of which there were many in my small town), and that was kind of the point. The bullies were going to get you one way or another. You might as well as be yourself, and if you were going to be pummeled, be pummeled in style. Besides, the farm boys and jocks could only torment you during the week – the weekend was a different matter.

One of my best friends lived in an apartment complex in Tulsa, 45 minutes, and a world apart from where I was. Every weekend, I would drive my parent’s Plymouth Sundance up and enter a vibrant universe of limitless-seeming possibilities and a feast of music outside the big hair bands that ruled the airwaves in that era.

The anchor of all this was IKON, an industrial/goth club on Peoria, not far from where my father worked his day job. Thanks to an archaic law, dance venues in Tulsa could stay open all night as long as they didn’t serve alcohol. The city would close this loophole in a few years and put the kibosh on our (and future generation of teenagers) good time, but that didn’t happen until later.

My friend, myself, and the revolving cast of characters crashing at his place teased our hair, applied make-up, switched into black garb, and arrived at IKON around midnight. We entered a world of flashing lights, dark corners, distinctive personalities and flowed with the tide of adventure. There was always someone to meet or an unforgettable story to bank into memory. Mainly, it was just fun. At some point, we migrated to the club’s back and home base – a sagging couch, where we caught our second wind after dancing ourselves silly. Every weekend was a chance for reinvention outside the confines of our rural towns and suburbs. Before long, the sun rose, and we emptied onto the Tulsa streets, like vampires taking in the approaching dawn.

IKON was a refuge for the bullied, maligned, artistic, and folks who were different. It was our magic portal in a sea of conformity dominating everything around us. My mind and ears were opened to music outside saccharin Top 40 hits there (and through the crackly reception of KTOW on my boombox). I also took in many touring shows that played there (The Dead Milkmen, PigFace, Ethyl Meatplow, and The Legendary Pink Dots, to name a few). I dutifully memorized music recommendations given to me and ordered them at Mohawk Music and Starship Records. I may go back to the beatings and harassment at my school, but I could take that music with me and the expanded possibilities that it offered. Like IKON, it taught me that there was a more exciting world out there.

To see a playlist I created from those days, visit http://www.allendhouston.com/allens-blog

Recent years have been a time of pressing questions for humanity. We stand at a historical junction where we can embrace an uncertain future or cling to a rose-colored past that is neither glamorous nor fair as some people desire to remember. Democracy is on a razor’s edge, autocrats are on the march, social unrest has reached a boil, and the earth cries out as climate change sends us warning after warning if only we would listen. And the pandemic, of course, has decimated lives, upended economies, and kicked disinformation into overdrive. None of the issues we face are tidy or will be resolved soon. For a world raised on neat and clear-cut stories, the thought that we may be in this for the foreseeable future is exhausting. It can leave you demoralized, beaten down, and paralyzed with indecision. Like many, I have also hit the pandemic wall. At times it feels like groundhog day with the same routine over and over.
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Each of us processes these challenges in our own way. For myself, this has led me to reevaluate what my priorities are. My writing, for example, has continued sporadically, but all the issues stated above have taken precedence.

Last March, my partner and I contracted a severe case of COVID that went on for two months. There was roughly a week-long period where I wondered daily if we would make it through. The lingering effects of that sickness led me to be more grateful than before. It made me more aware of savoring each moment, whether playing with my children, taking a bike ride, or doing something as mundane as washing the dishes. I have by no means mastered this and probably never will, but I find myself trying more, and that is a start.

I come out of this time of contemplation with a stronger understanding of why I write and a greater responsibility to what I put into the world. I have finished a novel and hope to release it in the fall. I am recommitted to the work that I do, but also understand that I am only human and that it is okay to let go with no feeling of guilt. I don’t need to compare myself to others. The highest success is focusing on my own happiness and being committed to my family, friends, and striving to make the world better than it was before. As I mentioned, there are no easy answers, only the beginnings of understanding and what I hope will lead to wisdom.

What big questions have you struggled with over the last year? What answers have you found?



Allen Houston

http://www.allendhouston.com/

Take an aural plunge into the atmosphere of Nightfall Gardens with a new companion album based on the dark fantasy trilogy.

I'm excited to announce ten stellar musicians from the United States, Mexico, and the United Kingdom joined forces to create a companion piece to the haunt-scape and characters of the books.

Listen to the whole brooding album on Bandcamp and be sure and read/review the books on Goodreads if you haven’t done that yet.

https://nightfallgardens.bandcamp.com...

October is the season of Halloween, sugary treats, things that go bump in the night, and — the release of “Childhood Rites” my new creeptacular tale that will raise the hackles on your flesh and have you double checking the locks on your doors.

Proud to announce that it’s on sale for a mere 99 cents. The seed of this tale rattled around in my skull for a while. What if a childhood friend you hadn’t seen/spoken to in several years showed up at your door and asked you to help find another friend who had gone missing? (In our Facebook-connected life would that be so strange?) From that nugget, the story grew into the twisted tale available today. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

Here’s the plot:

"When Eric Deal answers a knock on his front door, the last person he expects to find is Justin Findley, a childhood friend whom he hasn’t seen in years.

But Justin isn’t there to swap pleasantries. He’s searching for Stan Whitman, the hard-partying final member of their old trifecta, who recently disappeared from their hometown after meeting a mysterious woman.

Soon, Eric and Justin are navigating the East Texas piney woods in pursuit of their friend, where they will discover that the truth of what happened to Stan is more terrifying than anything they could conjure in their darkest imaginations."

https://www.amazon.com/Childhood-Rite...

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Nightfall Gardens is free on Amazon today and tomorrow. Here's your chance to read or share with others if you haven't dove into the series yet!

https://www.amazon.com/Nightfall-Gard...