Hey, folks. Today sees the release of a new ebook by me from the amped-up war rig crew at Tor.com Publishing. It’s called Sin du Jour: The First Course and it’s an omnibus edition of my first three Sin du Jour novellas. As we approach the midway point in the series, Tor.com Pub wanted to make it as easy and as cost effective as possible to get new readers into Sin du Jour, and this is a fantastic way to do it.

Now, many of you are totally 100% hip to and onboard with what Tor.com Pub and I are doing here and that’s fabulous, thank you, but to a lot of other folks “omnibus edition of my first three Sin du Jour novellas” may sound like I’m quoting Chaucer while gargling grain alcohol. You see, novella series are an old thing we’re trying to make new again in mainstream publishing, and as with any new thing, or anything that deviates from that with which folks have grown comfortable, they get confused and frightened.

I’ve been seeing it a LOT in reviews of the series and the individual books this year. Folks writing about them may assume they’re reading/writing about a novel, not a novella, so I get dinged for the length and the brevity. They don’t understand they’re reading one book in a series, or they don’t understand it’s also a serialized series in which the story is meant to continue and unfold over several volumes, so I get dinged for the structure. They don’t know how many books there are supposed to be in the series, because Amazon only lists the number of books in a series based on how many books have actually been released or made available for pre-order thus far.

It’s a surprisingly broad landscape in which to get lost, despite being a fairly simple concept, and I’ve seen the series suffer this past year for it. I’m really hoping in 2017 we can get a lot more people hip to the concept of novella series as their own thing, and to what I’m doing with Sin du Jour, specifically.

So, to kick us off right, here are the top 15 things you absolutely positively need to know about Sin du Jour that will allow you to dive right in to the world and the series with total consciousness (so you’ll have that goin’ for you).

1. Sin du Jour is a series of novellas, beginning with the first book Envy of Angels, which was released in October of 2015.
2. Each book in the series is between 30k-40k words.
3. The title of the series is taken from Sin du Jour Catering & Events, a fictional Long Island City-based catering company that plans events for the world of the supernatural co-existing with our own. The series follows best friends and aspiring chefs Lena and Darren, who unknowingly go to work for Sin du Jour, unaware they’re stepping into a world of rival demon clans, celebrity Goblins, and ancient magical creatures of all shapes and variety.
4. These books are funny. They’re my attempt to combine comedy, dark humor, and lots and lots of satire with action-packed urban fantasy and the world of professional kitchens and food. All my favorite things, basically.
5. These books are funny, but not absurd (well, mostly). It’s a real world with real perils and real consequences for the people living and loving and dying in it.
6. There are seven books planned in the series, total.
7. So far, three of those books have been released. We’ve got four more to go.
8. Each book is released in its own paperback edition, and ebook edition for both Kindle and Nook. The first three books are also available as beautifully produced audio editions.
9. Currently, Sin du Jour is being distributed on-line only, through websites like Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com, though you can order it through your favorite local bookstore. Just ask ’em. They’ll love the business. The books also pop-up in libraries, and you should ask yours to hook that up, as well.
10. We try to release each volume in the series 3-4 months apart for a faster-paced, more serialized reading experience as opposed to waiting six years for the next epic fantasy tome. One might take a little longer while another is released a little quicker. It’s not an exact science.
11. Each book features its own standalone story told around an event Sin du Jour is planning and catering.
12. Although each book is a standalone story, there is a bigger arc that plays out over all seven volumes, and each one contributes to that arc. This is what makes it a serial, or serialized series.
13. The next novella in the series, Idle Ingredients, is scheduled to be released on February 7th, and is currently available for pre-order.
14. Sin du Jour: The First Course collects the first three novellas in the series into one omnibus edition at a great discount price.
15. Several of the Sin du Jour novellas are currently awards eligible, particularly for the Hugos, and I’d love to see more comedy literature recognized with major awards. I wrote about that just yesterday here.

There you have it, folks. If you’re new to the party, I hope you feel appropriately armed now and are ready to take off your shirt and airplane that shit over your head with the rest of us wonderful freaks. Please feel free to click any of those links to The First Course, purchase and download the mini-omnibus, and binge my first three Sin du Jour novellas like Netflix for your imagination.

Now, if you’re already hip to Sin du Jour and lovin’ the books, that’s tremendous. Thank you so much for your continued support and enthusiasm for the series. It’s everything. What you folks can do for me, and this is the absolute best way to support me and Sin du Jour and help us both reach the heights I known we can…I will repeat this part with emphasis, because it’s that important…the ABSOLUTE BEST WAY TO SUPPORT ME AND THE SERIES IS…get people you know to purchase and read The First Course. That’s it. Tell friends, family, co-workers. Hell, buy it as a gift for folks you know will love it as much as you. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever you do your social networking. LET NEW PEOPLE KNOW. That is the key, folks. The only reason a million people aren’t reading this series is because that million people don’t yet know it exists. That is the absolute truth. So help ’em find their new fiction crush. Please.