As you know, my birthday was this past Monday, December 31, which also just happens to be New Year’s Eve. Jennifer and I threw a nice party, with about a dozen and a half people, most of them friends from my writers’ groups. It was during this party that Jennifer gave me the best gift I’ve ever received, and quite likely the best gift that anyone has ever gotten (not including new babies, kittens, or other mundane things like that, I suppose). That gift was the book you see pictured above, Return of the Kings.

It’s difficult to explain exactly what this book is. It’s a short novel, about 100 pages long, collaboratively written by thirteen people, and edited by Jennifer. The novel is about… Well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. However, I will say that it includes settings, characters, and themes that I’ve written about in my own stories and novels. San Augustin. Hastur. The National Weather Service Black Ops Agency. They’re all in there. Each author wrote a chapter, adding to the chapters that had gone before. Each chapter has a distinct voice (because each author has a distinct style of their own), but somehow the novel manages to remain coherent. And the cover art, featuring Cthulhu with a pair of rubber duckies, is brilliant. I read the novel on Tuesday, and it is seriously the most awesome thing I’ve ever read. Here’s Jennifer’s account of how the novel came to be.

I was very moved when I got this gift at the party; and I’m not too manly to admit that when I saw that my late friend Leonard Pung was one of the contributors, I got something in my eye. Not every author who contributed was at the party, but I had everyone who was there sign my copy.

You can’t buy Return of the Kings yet, but once Jennifer makes a few last edits, she’ll put it up for sale on Amazon and other places. Proceeds from the sales will go to the Leonard Pung Memorial Scholarship Fund, which helps pay for students over 40 who attend the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. I’ll post here, as well as to the Twitters and elsewhere, when it becomes available for purchase.

Update: The people involved in the project were:

Bull Fuller

Amy Holt

A. K. Cotham

Leonard Pung

Jerimiah Honer

And the cover was designed by Leigh Dragoon.

I am indeed truly blessed to have such wonderful friends.