Samurai Panic! Volume 1

It's finally out.

From the Amazon blurb:

"Nearly a century years ago, a host of demons brought the empire of the Isles to the brink of destruction. With the sacrifice of the Onmyoji Exorcist priests the demons were banished and the Demon Gates sealed. Until now. The demons make a bid to return to the world and it falls on Hikaru of the Genji, a talented but haunted swordsman, to discover the truth behind the first demon wars before it is too late.

When the Great Gate falls, Hikaru finds himself at the centre of an attack nearly one hundred years in the planning. Hikaru joins the other survivors against the spirits of the restless dead to discover who, or what, is behind the attack and survive."

I'm happy with the way the cover came out. All in all it probably took about four days. This was the first time I've produced an image completely digitally so I expected it to take longer. There was an excellent tutorial series by Jetty Jet on youtube. If you're interested you should definitely check it out.

As for the story itself, the idea has been kicking around for nearly five years. In that time I got married, became a teacher in Japan and had two kids and bought a house. So its been a long road... in the end this story took a week to write (once I persuaded myself to stop fussing). More to come soon.

A little about the series, the stories are shorter but I plan to release them as frequently as possible. The last five years weren't completely wasted (family aside), I did spend a lot of time learning 'how' to write so I'm up to about one thousand words in forty minutes. My goal is to hit six thousand a day.

If you're interested in the illustration then take a look at my deviantart page. Otherwise Samurai Panic! is available on Kindle or on almost all other platforms through Smashwords. I'll print the first four volumes as a quartet in paperback some time further down the road.

If you have any queries, comments or feedback please feel free to email me on 4acestudios@gmail.com. I hope you like the story and please recommend me to your friends.