This week marks the release of Steelheart as a trade paperback in the US and a mass market paperback in the UK. We received our copies, and they look great! There’s a picture below.

The new paperback cover matches the cover for the sequel, Firefight, and I think it looks great. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but it’s shiny when you move it back in the light.

And what about Firefight? It comes out on January 6th, and you can preorder it here. Editing is all finished, and I just found out that the publisher received advance reading copies (ARCs) of the book today. So it will be going out to reviewers before long. And the lucky winners of the ARC contest back in April will finally get their copies too!

You can read the first three chapters of Firefight in the back of the new trade paperback. And don’t forget the story “Mitosis” that goes between the two books.

The trilogy will conclude in Calamity, which I plan to start writing soon. You can track its progress in the upper-right corner of my website.

If you’re not sure about this whole Steelheart thing, see the introduction below.

Introduction

There are no heroes.

Every single person who manifested powers—we call them Epics—turned out to be evil.

Here, in the city once known as Chicago, an extraordinarily powerful Epic declared himself Emperor. Steelheart has the strength of ten men and can control the elements. It is said no bullet can harm him, no sword can split his skin, no explosion can burn him. He is invincible.

It has been ten years. We live our lives as best we can. Nobody fights back . . . nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans who spend their lives studying powerful Epics, finding their weaknesses, then assassinating them.

My name is David Charleston. I’m not one of the Reckoners, but I intend to join them. I have something they need. Something precious, something incredible. Not an object, but an experience. I know his secret.

I’ve seen Steelheart bleed.

Read sample chapters here.

(And by the way, as of this writing, The Way of Kings ebook is still free in the US on the iBookstore and Kindle.)