Adam Stemple is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, "One of the best first novels I have ever read." Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."

Like most authors, his life experience is broad and odd. He spent twenty years on the road with a variety of bands playing for crowds of between 2 and 20,000 people. He started, ran, and sold a poker training site. He worked in a warehouse. He picked corn. He traded options and demoed houses. He drove pizzas for nine months in 1986, which for twenty-seven years was the longest he'd ever been employed. He drank too much and has now been sober for over twenty years. He published his first book at the age of sixteen, "The Lullaby Songbook," which he arranged the music for. His mother is a famous children's book author. His children are talented. His wife is a better person than him in nearly all regards.

Duster by Adam Stemple

Adam Stemple is a Locus Award winning author.

Invaders from the north. A missing son. A conspiracy that spans centuries. And ex-soldier, Mika, has only a murderous pimp and a treacherous half-breed to help him.

An uneasy truce between the four races has lasted for twenty years.

Until now.

The Duarsteri, a race of cat people from the north, have invaded and now former soldier Mika must make a grim choice: take up the sword again or watch everything he loves burn.

With his old army friend, Gair, and a mysterious, half-breed Duarsteri, Mika makes his way from his Northern border home to the southern capital, across the frozen wastes of the Duarsteri homelands, and deep underground where the legendary Gallochs dwell, desperate to unravel the mystery of the invasion and how it's connected to his origin. Hunted by his own kind and unable to trust his companions, he finds that to save his family, he may have to defeat not only the Duarsteri army but the very Gods themselves.

 

REVIEWS

  • "I can, without reservation, recommend everything Adam Stemple has ever written, and Duster is no exception."

    – Steven Brust, best-selling author of The Baron of Magister Valley

  • "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."

    – Naomi Kritzer, Hugo Award winning author of Chaos on Catnet

  • "Never enjoyed Tolkein but loved Joe Abercombie. Now I have a new blood, mud and blood author, Adam Stemple and by Haggan's hairy buttocks he is a gem."

    – Amazon 5-Star Review
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

The Book of Three, Vol. 1, "Origins" p. 3 v. 21-32

The last three gods in the world, brothers all, stood in a tall keep by the southern ocean, watching the plain below their walls fill with giant Galloch invaders. They could not hold the keep alone, so they set about creating reinforcements.

Sygnus, the oldest, took a rock from the cliff wall. He carved it into a shape much like himself, yet wingless and with an extra finger on each hand.

"Behold," he said to his brothers. "I have made us an army." And he breathed life into the statue. Then he set about carving many more, naming them Illinthrell after the flowers that bloomed along the cliff's edge.

Brom, the next in line, thinking to improve even more on his brother's idea, captured one of the many cats that wandered through the empty halls of the stronghold. He broke its limbs to make it walk upright and shaped it into something resembling himself, yet with sharper claws and keener eyesight.

"Behold," he said. "I, too, have made us an army." Then he breathed intelligence into the creature, and set off to capture more cats. He named them Duarsteri after the darkness they hunted in.

Haggan, the youngest of the three, watched his brothers' efforts and thought a long time. The Gallochs had already beaten an army of gods; the brothers would need more than cats and statues to defeat them. They needed more than gods.

Haggan drew his sword and gave it to Sygnus. "Brother, cut off my right hand."

Sygnus was confused, but he obeyed, severing his brother's arm at the wrist.

Haggan turned to Brom. "Brother, cut off my left hand."

Brom, too, obeyed, severing his brother's left arm at the wrist.

"Behold," said Haggan. "I have made us an army greater than the Gods themselves." Then he collapsed onto the stone floor and bled his life into the two hands. And Man grew from the right hand, and Woman from the left, and they knew death from the moment of their creation.