The full-cast dramatized adaptation of Small Magics will be released by Graphic Audio on July 2nd and the pre-order is live on the GA website here. Audible and all the other usual audio retailers should have the preorder sometime in the beginning of May.

The release will include the full content of Small Magics: extended Curran POV; Jim POV; Questionable Client prequel; the Julie-POV short Magic Tests; the Kate-world story Retribution Clause, featuring Saiman’s cousin Adam; as well as Of Swine and Roses and Grace of Small Magics, set in independent universes.

Nora is hard at work on the Small Magics script and finishing touches on GA Magic Triumphs, and I have an arm-long list of pronunciations clips and questions for Ilona due back to her. But GA Magic Binds came out just Tuesday and I’m still busy replaying the “I won’t allow it” Deimos reveal scene 476 times a day! A girl has to have priorities.

Speaking of audios (but not Graphic ones), the small chapter data issue in the Hoopla version of the Wilmington Years has been identified and fixed by Dreamscape, so it should now synchronize properly. Thank you so much Teresa for signalling.

And finally, I am so sorry to be the bearer of p*tience-requiring news, but to everyone who is emailing in dismay that Maggie the Undying first installment, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, is being released in 5 days and there’s complete radio silence about it on the blog…it’s 369 days, beloved. The date is indeed 31st of March, but the year on the announcement is 2026. Sorrows, sorrows, prayers. We will weather that storm and This Year of W*it Will Not Kill Us!

I won’t allow it! ::Deimos flight::

The post Small Magics and Small Housework first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Final Cover of Magic Gifts audio book.

Images used:

• Model from Neostock
• Background from Adobe
• Viking from Adobe

I put the cover together in Photoshop. It is a composite of the three images above that was tinted and nudged through various filters into a cohesive whole. Actually, it could’ve stood more nudging, but it already took twice as long.

The title and author name were added by Ms. Wheeler, an agent with our agency, to match the existing font treatments on other Graphic Audio audio covers. The other audio covers from Kate Daniels series on GA come from our French publisher, MXM, and the rights to use them were legally licensed. Those covers were also created by a human artist.

One of the reasons why I made this cover myself is because our French publisher did not put out a separate edition of Magic Gifts and nobody realized that the book was coverless until it was too late. So I did my best to match the tone and composition of the other existing covers. It’s not a home run in that regard but it is an attractive cover.

We mostly source our images from Adobe Stock. Adobe Stock does allow AI images in their catalogue, which we exclude from our stock searches by checking the Exclude Generative AI option.

Is it possible that an occasional AI image will not be marked as AI and will be good enough to pass as a human-created image? Yes. In that case, the burden is on Adobe, not on us. We have made every possible effort to exclude AI images.

We hope that clears things up.

The post AI Usage first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

GA Magic Bleeds is out on Audible today (and all other retailers). For those who don’t know what GA does, they turns books into audio plays – each character is voiced by a different actor and there are sound effects. It is my favorite way to listen to audiobooks now. I am addicted. Highly recommend.

GA productions of our work are overseen by Nora.

The Goldmine of Bloopers

These are voice actor outtakes from Magic Bleeds, Michael Glenn as Curran and KenYatta Rogers voicing Jim. Do not drink while listening.

Some are NSFW due to cursing. Headphones recommended.

Jim: Up for Grabs

Curran: Naked Dinner, alternative dialogue.

Jim: A Croc

Curran: Dead Jim

Curran: Fight Cues

Jim: Bearpanther fight

Curran: Reading Kissy Cues

Jim: Workout

Hehehehe.

Next up from GA, Sweep of the Heart in January. I am so excited.

The post Magic Bleeds and Bloopers first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Order links: Amazon | Audible | Kobo | Apple Books | B&N | Libro.fm

Ilona Andrews have partnered with Dreamscape for distribution of the audiobook, meaning it will be pushed to over 60 retailers, it’s worth searching the catalogue of your favorite one if I haven’t mentioned it.

Hillary Huber and Michael Glenn (the narrators of the dual-POVed Wilmington Years audios) have reprised their roles as Kate and Curran and extended their repertoire to the other short stories in the anthology: Of Swine and Roses, Grace of Small Magics, Retribution Clause (Adam is magnificently menacing!), Magic Tests, and Jim’s POV.

The audiobook will, of course, include the extended version of Small Magics, all 319 pages of it, in unabridged glory- almost 11 hours of Ilona Andrews goodness!

Happy listening!

Samples:

Grace of Small Magics

Of Swine and Roses

The post Small Magics Audio is Legit! first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Preorder links: Amazon | Audible | Kobo | Apple Books | B&N | Libro.fm

The release date is Black Friday, November 24th.

Preorders are live (see links above) and House Andrews have partnered with Dreamscape for distribution again, meaning it will be pushed to over 60 retailers. So if your favorite isn’t linked above, give their catalogue a search and it will probably pop up.

Hillary Huber and Michael Glenn (familiar to us from the Wilmington Years audios) have done a fabulous job, reprising their roles as Kate and Curran and extending their repertoire to the other short stories in the anthology. Adam, Saiman’s cousin from Retribution Clause, is a personal favorite: you can feeeeeel the menace!

The audiobook will, of course, include the extended version of Small Magics, including the long version of Curran’s POV (all gloriously growly 132 pages of it), and Jim’s POV on top of Magic Tests, A Questionable Client, Retribution Clause, Of Swine and Roses and Grace of Small Magics.

And that’s not all! ::late night shopping network voice::

Magic Bleeds, Kate Daniels 4, will be released by Graphic Audio tomorrow, November 8th.

How much do you love me? Because I have the first sneak peek sample of it, which is different from the sample that will go live tomorrow on the GA website:

A classic scene. I have a feeling the acetone won’t be a great idea hehehe.

As usual, these dramatized adaptations are first released on the Graphic Audio website and their streaming Access app.

It will go to third party retailers such as Audible and Hoopla etc on November 29th– I don’t know why people keep missing this, but this means that it *will* be available on Audible. On November 29. There, I made it Bold too hehe.

There is, however, an Early Black Friday deal going on at the moment on the Graphic Audio website, so if you want to grab the 4 Kates released so far, or the full set of Innkeeper Chronicles (Sweep of the Heart is coming out in January and the preorder is included in the sale), now is your time!

I have a tutorial here about Graphic Audio and the Access app if you are new to them.

That’s it for now, but there will be more excitement and announcements to come, I will let Ilona tell you about them.

Happy listening!

The post Audio Books Everywhere first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

No posts and now two posts in one day. Woo!

Today is hopefully the last day of the roof construction. I misspoke in my previous post. We are actually on week 3, not week 2. My temper and nerves are frayed to the maximum capacity, so hopefully this will be coherent.

Business Stuff

Magic Clams (hehehe) is proceeding as scheduled. The copy edit comes back to day, and so far we are still on track for the release.

The audio of Magic Tides is being recorded. The past 6 months tells me that no matter who performs it, the Audio BDH will Hate And Have Problems, HAHP – a new BDH acronym, but it should be coming out on June 13th. Magic Claims will follow soon after.

We will be migrating the site some time early next week. We have simplified some things, made free fiction more prominent and easier to find, and given the site a facelift. More on the changes when we go live. But if you see weirdness early next week, you’ll know why. We will be losing some recent blog posts due to the peculiarities of the migration.

Someone asked if we would bundle our Writing Article blog posts into an ebook for convenience. I don’t have an answer for you on that. The problem with this project is that we would need to distribute it, which means we would need to charge money for it. Which means we’d need to come with $2.99 or whatever worth of content. Not sure we have that right now in blog posts alone.

In other professional trials and tribulations, we’ve been doing prep work for other projects, trying to do all the tasks on a variety of stories that are related to writing but are not writing. Making a fantasy language, even with Vulgarlang app, is time consuming and terrible. Someone do it for me but make it sound exactly the way I want it to sound. Oy. I’m this close to just stealing Welsh and altering the spelling.

Fun Stuff

In leisure news, I’ve almost finished the cross-stitch dragon. Doing backstitching now with mixed success. Lots of frogging. Frogging is a craft term meaning ripping out what you have sewn. It comes from “rip it, rip it” which sounds like ribbit, ribbit, the frog sound in English language. Slavic frogs say kwuh, by the way. No idea how that came about. Clearly there is a frog language barrier.

Gordon and are both playing Solasta: Crown of the Magister, a computer game based on the latest rule set of Dungeons and Dragons, where we lead a party of adventures on a variety of quests. I’ll have you know my 4-person so-classic-it’s-cliché party rules supreme. I’m running a 2-handed Oath of Tirmar Arun Dragonborn Paladin, a Sylvan Elf Swift Blade dual-wielding ranger with ambidexterity, an Einar Hill Dwarf battle cleric, and a High Elf Shock Arcanist Wizard. I gave everyone outrageous stats and I have no regrets. Smiting the undead is the most satisfying thing either. And the game asks me every time, so I feel like a powerful overlord. “Yes, you have my permission to smite this enemy. Proceed.” And then the paladin chops them in half. Muhahaha!

Gordon is running a druid instead of the cleric and some kind of sorcerer. I question his choices.

I know that Baldur’s Gate 3 exists, but I have issues. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about: Baldur’s Gate 3 is the triquel? the sequel to award winning D&D game series, Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2. It is on the older side and it featured the same type of play: a party of adventurers doing quests. Baldur’s Gate 3 is being developed by Larian Studios famous for their Divinity series, which I played. Right now it’s in Early Access, which means that you buy the game for the right to preview it and play through part of it before it is released. Basically it’s like paying to read half of an ARC and when the book is published, you get the whole thing free.

So it sounds great, but as I’ve said, I have problems.

First, the price. $60 to beta test the game? Second, it is showing no signs of leaving the Early Access. Third, Larian games tend to take themselves too seriously. What I love most about D&D is the funny interactions between the characters. Give me Minsc and Boo any day.

Larian thinks that “No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses!” is the height of comic genius. Meh. Their character interactions are so stilted, and their plots lean toward tragic and gloomy.

That’s one thing Solasta does right. The interactions between the characters are hilarious. The character models are horrible, however. OMG.

And now I’ve caught you up on some of the things happening with us.

The post Random Book Updates and Too Much D&D. first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.