I turn sixty today. That still sounds slightly improbable, as if sixty is something that happens to other people and not to the person sitting here wondering whether the kettle has boiled yet. But apparently it does happen. Even to me.
I am not sure I have any great wisdom to offer about reaching sixty. I am certainly not going to pretend I have become serene, organised, or free of the habit of starting projects that grow extra limbs when I am not looking.
If anything, the evidence points the other way.
In the last year or so I have managed to publish Silent Winter, finish Beyond Winter’s Silence, build Russell Street Press into something more than an idea, start taking The Cellar Dweller seriously as a proper author blog, and begin the process of letting Panimálay out of the folders, maps, notes and drafts where it lived for far too long.
That feels worth marking.
So, for my birthday, I have made Silent Winter available at 99p / 99c for the day (still on Kindle Unlimited if you don't want to spend 99p/99c).
Not as a grand marketing event. Not with trumpets. Just a small birthday offer, and an invitation into Edrass for anyone who has been curious but has not yet stepped through the door.
Silent Winter is the first Foundations of Edrass book, and the first proper doorway into Panimálay.
It is a hard winter story: cold, scarcity, watchfulness, judgement, consequence, and a small upland community under pressure. It introduces Isenwynn before the name Wolvward means what it will one day mean, and it begins the longer road through Edrass.
That is enough, really. The book can speak for itself.
It also marks something more personal for me.
For years, Panimálay was private. It sat in notes, maps, sketches, timelines, languages, histories and half-built systems. I could see the world in my head, but that is not the same as letting someone else walk through it. At some point a private world either remains private forever, or it is offered outward.
The books are the offering.
That may sound grander than I mean it. I am not claiming some great cultural mission here. I am simply saying that I have spent a long time building this world, and it seems better to share it than to leave it sitting quietly on my Mac until the files outlive the man who made them.
Sixty does make a person think about that sort of thing.
Not gloomily, or not entirely gloomily. More as a matter of practicality. Time is not infinite. Energy is not infinite. If there are things to be made, they need making. If there are stories to be told, they need telling. If there is a world that has been waiting in private for long enough, perhaps it is time to open the gate.
That is what this birthday feels like.
Not an ending. Not a dramatic reinvention. More like a marker stone on the road.
Behind me, there are many years of thinking, reading, working, carrying responsibility, making mistakes, learning things the hard way, and quietly building worlds when perhaps I should have been doing something more sensible.
Ahead of me, there is Russell Street Press. There is The Cellar Dweller. There is Beyond Winter’s Silence. There is Ridge War. There is the Worldbuilding with AI series. There is Panimálay, still much larger than the part of it currently visible in print.
And today, there is a small offer on Silent Winter.
That seems enough.
So if you have been curious about Edrass, this is a good moment to step in. The first book is briefly 99p / 99c, and the road beyond it has already begun.
Sixty, then. Apparently.
A new decade, a small press, two books in the world, and a hard winter waiting for anyone who wants to enter Edrass.
That will do.
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