The Chains of Fate
When tragedy strikes, the victims ask why. Then they search for someone to blame. For the Kharar of Beasthaven, that someone is Shah’Rohk. Upon giving birth to a child with snow-white skin and blood-red eyes during the deadliest plague in history, Shah’Rohk is deemed cursed and cast out of her village. Hungry and alone, her only hope of salvation lies with the Pale Folk of the White Wood. But the Pale Folk are fickle gods, and there is more to their chimeric paradise than meets the eye… A harrowing exploration of self-fulfilling prophecy and the inescapable cycle of abuse, The Chains of Fate is an epic tale of war, fate, and faith—perfect for fans of thoughtful, dark fantasy such as the works of Steven Erikson and R. Scott Bakker.
My debut novel, The Chains of Fate, was originally published in 2022 under the pseudonym A.A. Night. It was intended as a prologue to a forthcoming trilogy — a sort of grimdark Hobbit paving the way for a more twisted and apocalyptic Lord of The Rings. Since then, however, the themes, characters, and world that I set out to explore via this series have shifted and evolved so much that the setting of my current draft of Chains’s supposed sequel bears little resemblance to that of the first book. This leaves me in a bit of a predicament: I can either reverse all of the creative decisions that I’ve made since 2022, all of which I firmly believe make for a stronger and more impactful tale, or I can painstakingly rewrite my entire 115,000-word debut from the ground up to align with the saga’s ever-evolving narrative and tone. Faced with this daunting choice, I’ve decided to embrace a third option: I am stripping The Chains of Fate from its context within the larger narrative of my ongoing series and re-releasing it as a stand-alone novel. While many of the events described in Chains will continue to shape the narrative of subsequent releases, the text itself should not be viewed as canon. Rather, The Chains of Fate should be seen as an introductory exploration of various themes and motifs that will continue to resurface throughout my growing body of work. I am also abandoning my previous pseudonym. I could cite myriad reasons why I believed it wise to obscure my identity behind a nonsensical alias two years ago, but, in hindsight, those reasons range from silly to slightly deranged. As such, this new edition is now published under my own name, with updated artwork to better reflect the story’s genre and tone. I will be removing both the digital and print versions of the novel’s first edition from all marketplaces in the coming months; consider “A.A. Night” dead and buried. As a final note, prospective readers needn’t be wary of cliffhangers or unresolved plot points left over from Chains’s origin as a prequel; the book tells a complete story, its final passage marking the definitive end of an era in the world of Avonia’s history. The Chains of Fate is available here for free download in both .epub and .pdf formats to anyone interested in reading it. I welcome all criticism with open arms, so please tell me what you think! Cheers – L.K, 11/9/2024
Early Retirement – A Blue-Collar Horror Story
Cap Jenkins figures he’s seen just about every ugly thing that life on a corporate mining colony has to offer. From boiling-hot reactor cells to freezing polar pipelines, Cap’s lifelong union gig has dragged him to hell and back more times than he can count. But when an oddly innocent young operator clocks in for his first night on the job with no warning and no introduction, Cap and his ragged crew quickly learn that things can always get worse. A gory and profane trip through two very bad nights at work, Early Retirement is a space-horror fright fest sure to delight fans of pitch-black satire and hard science fiction alike.
I spent most of my twenties working rotating shifts at a manufacturing plant on the western shore of the Great Salt Lake, deep in Utah’s Skull Valley. The valley’s name is an apt one: sub-zero winters, triple-digit summers, an average rainfall of less than ten inches a year. Air, soil, and water contamination so toxic that the EPA deems it a threat to workers and wildlife alike. The place is a wasteland. Early Retirement is an ode to the countless plants out there just like that one, and to the millions who keep them running day in and day out. If that seems an odd setup for irreverent dystopian space horror, then chances are you’ve never worked in one of those plants. Early Retirement is available here for free download in both .epub and .pdf formats to anyone interested in reading it. I welcome all criticism with open arms, so please tell me what you think! Cheers – LK, 11/9/24