The Children of the Sun (63 page)

It’s been three years, and The Blood That Bonds is
still
being downloaded thousands of times every week. I don’t even know what the final tally is. 400,000 for sure. 450,000? 500,000? Very possible. Have half a million people really downloaded my book? Is that possible?

Then we have the sequel. Blood Hunt came out on September 1, 2011 and again, I had no idea what to expect. This wasn’t a freebie. People were going to have to pony up real money for this, something which always drops the numbers by orders of magnitude. I set my goal at five thousand sales – that was the amount the book would need to sell in order for my cut of the proceeds to cover what I’d paid Lauren and Karla. Five thousand was a number that seemed plausible but not too crazy. Not too pie-in-the-sky.

Blood Hunt broke five thousand sales in six weeks. It briefly sat at or near the top of the fantasy and urban fantasy lists on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It continued to sell for the entire next year (it’s still selling now), and it continues to be highly rated and reviewed.

Both books are true independent success stories; I never had an agent or publisher, and I never had any marketing or PR other than my own efforts. There are many authors
with
publishers, agents, marketing people and PR people who don’t sell the amount of copies that Blood Hunt has sold. This is a real thing I have built, with a real fan base of people who love the characters and want to know what happens to them.

All of this still sometimes seems impossible to me.

Here we are with the third book. I’ve delivered it, and by the time you’re reading this, you know how it all ends. Hopefully you’ve celebrated with the people who survived and grieved for many of those who didn’t. Maybe you’re wondering about that epilogue, and what it might mean for the future. Most of all, I hope, you’re happy for Two.

She’s come a long way from the nineteen year-old girl who was trapped selling herself for drugs, and from the – let’s be honest, here – headstrong, brash, and selfish person that she was. Her experiences with Theroen and Naomi and her other friends have helped her make the transition from semi-child to adult, one that we all go through in our early twenties. She has for the most part done right by the people she cares about, and who care about her. I’m proud of her.

I think she’s earned something of a rest. There are people out there clamoring for this trilogy to become something larger, and I appreciate their enthusiasm, but Two’s story has come to its end. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever revisit her – though it doesn’t mean I
will
, either – it just means I don’t have anything more to do with her character right now. Maybe once she’s got ten years as a vampire under her belt, we’ll take another look.

I’m not done writing, though. Included at the end of this book is a sample from my upcoming science fiction novel The Broken God Machine, which I think readers of my work will enjoy even though it’s a large departure from the II AM Trilogy. After that? I’m already working on a noir-styled revenge thriller set in the partially-flooded borough of Brooklyn in 2058.

Oh, and there’s one other thing – You might remember a mention or two in The Children of the Sun of a Tyler from LA? He’s not a throwaway name. Tyler’s part of a small group of vampires with very distinct talents, and someday soon he’s going to make the acquaintance of one Malcolm Brooks, a grifter and a womanizer whose most recent conquest has gone decidedly wrong.

Malcolm is going to wake up in a hotel room with a naked, dead woman lying on the floor next to him and no memory of how he or she got there. Fortunately for Malcolm, there will be a Post-It note stuck to the woman’s belly with a phone number and the name of the only person in the world who can help him now.

Unfortunately for him, she’s dead too.

See you soon!

-Christopher Buecheler

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About the Author

Christopher Buecheler is a professional web designer / developer, a published author, an award-winning amateur mixologist, a brewer of beer, a player of the guitar and drums, and an NBA enthusiast.

He lives a semi-nomadic existence with his wonderful French wife and their two cats, Carbomb and Baron Salvatore H. Lynx II. Currently they reside in Providence, R
hode
I
sland
.

You can visit him at
http://cwbuecheler.com

Sneak Preview

             
Somewhere, past even the thick jungle that spread wide across the eastern border of Pehr’s land, the metal thing stood keeping its sad and lonely watch.

             
Long since exposed by the ravages of time, its skeleton-like understructure – once sheathed in material cunningly designed to mimic the smoothness and elasticity of human skin – was now covered with a grey-green coating of moss and lichen. This substance had built up in microscopic layers over eons to form what seemed at first glance almost a furry, organic musculature, though in truth it was still the underlying handiwork of the original designers that gave weight and shape to the metal thing’s appearance. The overall impression it gave, now, was of a thin and wasted corpse left leaning against a canyon wall, long abandoned. Forgotten.

             
At its feet, and in a ring some fifty yards around it, lay countless bones, some so ancient that they had become nothing more than dust that mixed with the rich jungle soil to form a kind of chalky grey paste. No plants grew within this circle, and no living thing made its home there; no beetle crawled, no earthworm slid, no rodent scurried or ant clambered, no creature moved within the ring of bone. The earth there had been poisoned by some long-forgotten people, in some long-forgotten past, for some long-forgotten reason. The methods and materials they had used in this toxic exercise lived on, like the metal thing, even ages after the land it had been set to guard had become home to little more than the wind that screeched through its ruins like the wailing of ghosts.

             
Still, the metal thing was not completely forgotten, not completely abandoned. There were those who knew of its existence, and the majority of those typically gave it a wide berth. When the blessings of the gods were required, however, the metal thing would entertain visitors, and it would extract its payment in the blood of their chosen sacrifice. These offerings were not made lightly, and the metal thing had never yet failed to take what was given to it. The bones that formed the blasted, shattered perimeter of its arc of influence lay in testament to this fact.

             
Others, too, sometimes stumbled into the place the metal thing had made its home, and this was one such occurrence. One of the wild boars that Pehr’s people so prized had wandered deeper and further than its brethren usually ventured. Driven by a mad desire for the delicious fungus which grew sometimes below the roots of the jungle trees, the boar had moved ever inward and upward, its keen senses guiding it toward its prize. Now, at last, had come its moment of triumph.

             
There was nothing within this poison garden for the boar, of course. Nothing edible could grow within the metal thing’s circle, but on the far side from where it now stood, the creature could discern that most subtle of aromas, the delicious prize that it sought. It had only to cross, and while this land smelled foul to the boar, it was not so toxic as to be worth circumventing. The boar trotted into the field of bones at a brisk pace, intent on the delicacy that awaited it less than thirty yards away.

             
The metal thing’s response was instantaneous. Moss-covered and derelict though it might have been, its internal workings still functioned, and it jerked alive with the screech of metal on metal, moving from its leaning position to full standing, its arms thrown back. Tiny motors located below what had once been its cheeks whirred and spun, attempting to contract simulated skin and muscle that was no longer there.

             
“W-LC-M-  FR--ND!” it howled at the boar, its voice a grinding, buzzing warble that might once have sounded human.

             
The boar stopped dead in its tracks, hunkering low to the ground in fear, preparing to flee. It could not have known, even had it been gifted with any such capability of thought, that it was for all intents and purposes already dead. It could not understand that the metal thing’s sensors and motors and inner workings allowed it to react – even now, after a millennia of disrepair – at speeds far beyond those of which the boar was capable.

             
“PL--S-  PR-S-NT  Y--R  P-SS,” the metal thing screeched, and the boar turned to begin its lumbering attempt at escape, unleashing a terrified squeal in the process.

             
The metal thing lurched, knee-joints howling in protest as it dropped into a crouching posture, its arms swung low toward the ground for added stability. Its eyes were covered with a series of moss-coated, interlocking plates, and they opened now to reveal centers that burned red like the embers thrown forth by a volcano. Death poured from those eyes, even as it screeched its last words to the creature so desperately attempting to escape.

             
“P-SS  N-T  PR-S-NT-D.  -C-SS  D-N--D.  PL--S-  L-C-T-  TH-  V-S-T-R  C-NT-R  T-  -BT--N  PR-P-R  CR-D-NT--LS.”

             
The boar was a sizzling lump of meat, its bristly hair smoldering, twin smoking craters bored through its side, long before this sentence was finished. The metal thing cocked its head as if studying this scene and then, after a moment, returned to a standing position. It leaned against the canyon wall, eye-covers sliding shut, and its skeletal shoulders slumped.

             
“TH-NK  Y--  F-R  V-S-T-NG,” it said, and then it was silent, as it sometimes went for months or years between encounters of this type.

             
At a safe distance, yellow-green eyes took all of this in. The sacred circle remained unspoiled. The boar had passed into the arc of death and had paid the price which all that trod upon the ground there must pay. Everything was as it had ever been, since first the watch had begun.

             
Above the metal thing, past the canyon, the wind wailed its banshee’s dirge. A tiny bug came to the edge of the metal thing’s domain and stopped, sensing the polluted soil in front of it. Turning around, it trundled off the way it had come, and so was spared the boar’s fate, and the fate of all those whose bones littered that tainted ground.

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