Connolly’s Lovecraft-ian/Geiger-style lore and world building is amazing. I have enjoyed all of his novels and novellas, but none have been as anticipated as The Twisted Path.

— Jason Weisberger, BOINGBOING

Most of you reading this know that, a few years back, I said I was setting the Twenty Palaces stories aside due to a lack of sales. Readers were unhappy (although not as unhappy as I was) but I think they understood, for the most part. You understood. I wanted a growing readership that spread across the land and the seas and conquered all, but 20P wasn’t going to be that. Not for me.

I didn’t want to abandon it, but I’m not prolific enough to write a Ray Lilly book and a non-Ray Lilly book every year. Could I grow my readership by self-publishing more 20P, and only 20P? Clearly not. Even with Del Rey behind me, sales dwindled.

That extremely nebulous plan I had for the overall series went onto a back burner.

However, it wasn’t long after that I heard about other authors supplementing their series with novellas. I could do that too, couldn’t I?

The answer turned out to be No. I knew what came next in the series, but I wasn’t sure how to tackle it. After I finished The Great Way trilogy, I took a stab. I tried again after I revamped A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark. Both times, the story felt dead in the water. I was getting nowhere with it.

Then I talked it over with my son. I told him that the pacing was all wrong and the whole thing felt lifeless. He recommended I restructure it in an unusual way, and I’ll be damned if his advice wasn’t so on the nose that I took it verbatim. If you read the story, you’ll see what I mean.

Are you new to Twenty Palaces? This isn’t the place to start.

The Twisted Path picks up shortly after “The Homemade Mask,” (included here) which is set only a few days after the end of Circle of Enemies. This is the true beginning of the next phase of the Twenty Palaces story.

Yeah. Remember a few paragraphs ago when I mentioned that extremely nebulous plan? The first three books were meant to be about Ray working with Annalise against the predators. The next set digs deeper into the society itself and the spell books that pre-date the human race. That’s why the title style has changed from “[Noun] of [Noun]” to “The [Adjective] [Noun]”. When this series of stories wraps up (assuming things go well) Ray and Annalise will move on to the next phase, and the titles will change again.

But while the first four books were written so that readers could jump in with any of them, this one won’t be much fun unless you know what’s come before. I’d recommend starting the series with either Child of Fire, or the prequel Twenty Palaces.

Does that mean there will be more Ray Lilly stories after this one? I hope so. Circle of Enemies came out in 2011, more than six years ago. Is there still interest? That’s the real question. Time (and the Amazon.com Author Dashboard) will tell.

Which just means that, if you read it and like it, please spread the word.

Pick up your copy here:

Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo | Smashwords