I really would like to sell The Black Ring, more for the readers rather than for the money. After all, I sometimes give my other books away. And The Black Ring is a marketing challenge, because it’s not a series like those by Stuart Jaffe or Jim Butcher or Mickey Spillane or L. Frank Baum, which can be read in pretty much any order. 

It’s more like the three books of The Lord of the Rings, which has to be read as if it were one big book — which it is — though The Black Ring is not similar to it in any other way. The Harry Potter books are a numbered series, to be read as they are numbered, though they are actually separate stories. They, too, are completely different from The Black Ring. 

The three volumes of the original publication of Pride and Prejudice were, in effect a numbered series, to be read from first to last, and that was understood by those who bought it. It didn’t have, as is true today, a separate designation as a numbered series at Bowker (ISBNs) or the U.S. Copyright office. Since it was paid for by her father it was, in a way, self-published.

The Disk World series, by Terry Pratchett, is not a numbered series, though I prefer to read the books in the order in which they were published. Like the Mike Hammer books by Spillane, there is a development in the author’s writing ability and story telling, and in his understanding of the setting and the growth of his character. The Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L. Sayers are similar.

The Black Ring became unavailable when Double Dragon folded, and people have asked if it would be published again. I read it through and, discovering how much work it still needed, I decided on doing a complete second edition. I’ve updated my  book page http://allen-wold.com, and I have made the reading samples longer, and the books less expensive to encourage purchase. Check it out. If you like the first sample, maybe you’ll like the others too. Links to all six books of The Black Ring are on my website. Just remember, while you can get away with reading just book One, you can’t read Book Three by itself and have any idea of what’s going on.