Those of you who have been around for a while know about the picture book I wrote a while back.

Some of you might even have heard me read it story-time style. It’s huge fun to read to a crowd, and I do it whenever a venue has sufficient AV setup available, because, y’know, picture book. With pictures.

(It’s not what it looks like.)

Side Note: we just recently managed to get more hardcover copies back in stock at the Tinker’s Packs, if you’re interested in picking one up. They were impossible to find for a while….

As I said. I’m guessing most of you who read the blog already know about this book, since it’s been out since 2010 and I’ve talked about it on the blog several times since then.

What I’m guessing most of you *don’t* know is that about a year ago I wrote up a script for a sequel. Since then, the fabulous Nathan Taylor has been slaving away in the art mines, hewing beautiful graphics from the living rock.

I have to say I really like this arrangement. I spend a couple days writing a script, then get to turn the story over to someone else for, let’s be honest here, most of the heavy lifting. It’s so nice compared to having to do all the work on a story myself….

Anyway, we’ve finally reached the point where we’re announcing the book all official like:

(Click to Embiggen)

Those of you who have read the first book know how amazing Nate’s art is. When I teamed up with him that first time, I knew he was good, but I didn’t realize how good. The quality of his work really amazed me. He turned my amusing little story into something really brilliant and cool.

So imagine my surprise when I started to see the finished art for this second book, and it was even better than before. Like all real artists, Nate is always developing his craft, and as a result he’s even more amazing now.

For example, in my script, I wrote. “I want something imposing. This is no mere door. I want a fucking eldritch portal.”

Nate worked on it for a while, then sent met this:

I said, “Yes. I think that is sufficiently eldritch.”

So what (I hear you ask) is this second book about?

Well… you should know by now that I don’t go in for spoilers. But I’m not opposed to offering up a bit of a teaser that doesn’t give anything away….

For one thing, the Princess gets a younger brother.

(Say it with me: Awwwww….. )

For another, in this book the Princess goes exploring in the Deep Below.

And no, that’s not a spoiler. Why? Because it’s in the title of the book. It’s called “The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Dark of Deep Below.”

There are a few versions of the book available for pre-order over at Subterranean Press.

The first is the lovely hardcover with the nice paper. The same format as the first princess book.

The second is the limited edition. That one’s leather bound, and signed by both me and Nate. Plus it has extra concept sketches from Nate, a color dust jacket, and will include my original script write-up (parts of which are pretty funny, if I do say so myself.)

The third is the lettered edition which has everything included in the limited version, AND its own slipcase AND a piece of unique hand-drawn art by Nate himself.

Fair warning, the Limited Edition of the first book sold out in less than 24 hours. So if you want one of these, you might want to make your order sooner rather than later.

Or you could just wander over there and take a sneak peek at more of the teaser pictures.

It’s your call…

pat