About my free book policy: please read this entire section carefully. A courtesy to me, in light of the fact I’m offering so many precious, deeply-personal creations free of charge.
As of January 9, 2023, I offer all my books for free, or as close to it as possible. On Amazon, I offer Sword of the Outsider for the minimum possible price. This just covers the printing cost of the paperback edition, and I receive no royalties from it. I still receive a royalty on the Kindle edition. I offer this option for readers that are dead set on reading SotO via Kindle. I already did the work to convert it and set it up. Might as well leave it there for those that just have to have it, y’know?
Otherwise, I release all my books directly to you, for free, via this blog and other sites. If you want to support my work, Patreon, commissions (when available) and direct donations are the way to go.
I fully endorse redistributing my books, provided that you also hand them out for free, and you credit me as the author. You have my encouragement to print, rearrange, and republish your own editions of my works, provided that you either keep them for your own use or provide them to others free of charge. If you have a .pdf or Word document or any other format, you can send that file to as many others as you like. You are most welcome to convert my stories to whatever file format works best for you, and redistribute those files too. Hell, if you want to add a bunch of footnotes, highlights, and annotations with commentary sharing your own experience of reading my work, go wild! Just be sure to tell other readers where they can find the original versions.
This said, do not under any circumstances charge money for access to original or edited copies of my work. I also require that you leave intact all references to myself, my other work, and my social media/online presence, so that other readers can find me, enjoy my creations, and support me if they like.
If I neglected to add these references to a given book, I would like it very much if you provided them on my behalf, but I don’t require you to do so. “The author’s user name is Ashenvein Gate, this story is set in her/its Twin Spirals Mythos” is more than enough. Throw in “By Caerllyn McCurdy/Kairliina Saelvur” if you’re feeling fancy.
Fanworks Policy: I do not claim, nor believe I should have, authority over anything my fans created based on my work. I’d absolutely love it if you tag me when you share fanart, fanfic, fan-anything on social media. I do have some preferences, though, in the spirit of the free usage policy I maintain for my own works. I would like it if you offer free access to any fan works you create, up to and including things like, say, a lurid hand-animated scene of Analogue Ruins’ Carrie and Moonsilver angrily fucking in a burning building.
It’s fine by me if you accept donations so you can continue writing your epic fanfic about Saethenet’s life post-Sword of the Outsider–we’ve all got bills to pay, right? I’m mostly worried about putting fanworks behind a paywall when the work they’re based upon… isn’t. I won’t take action against you, or think less of you as a being, if you do charge money for access to a fan-work you created. It’ll just make me feel weird and uncomfortable, like we just met for the first time at a bar and I’m not sure if I see red flags or not.
There’s the boiler plate done. Here they are–my books!
Sword of the Outsider: Just under 70k words of adult fantasy. A mystic of woven shadows meets a demon, a godsworn warrior, and the other members of a less-than-friendly adventurers’ band. More info here: https://ashenveingate.com/2021/08/31/out-now-sword-of-the-outsider/
Retailer links:
Amazon Kindle & Paperback (minimum price): https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Outsider-Caerllyn-McCurdy-ebook/dp/B09MV1FM4J
Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id1583786065
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940165007958
Gardners Extended Retail: https://www.gardners.com/Search/KeywordAnonymous/eBook?Keyword=9781005002848
Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/search?query=9781005002848&language=0
Smashwords (free): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1101692
Free copies in .docx and .pdf format:
Demon Queen of the Deep Ways: A long-form, queer, weird fiction novel, the direct sequel to Sword of the Outsider, and the thematic conclusion to the Inheritrix continuity which began with SotO. 133k words about the struggles, traumas, and growth of the demon who would become Lady of Machrae Diir, as well as the stories of myriad demons and other beings who come to her dimension: some just for a day, some to find a forever home. Features a foreword with a few small explanations about this book’s peculiarities.
https://ashenveingate.com/2022/07/13/new-release-demon-queen-of-the-deep-ways/
The Way to Kandge-Brad: just under 60k words of futuristic, alternate-world weird fiction set on Creation’s Fringe. A heartbroken exile of the otter-like Novgori people traverses a blizzard and arrives by accident–or so it seems–at the eldritch fortress of Kandge-Brad, the Mortuary Citadel. There the Cobalt Immortals, psionic soldiers of mythic proportion, will push the outcast’s psyche to strange, forbidden, and life-saving revelations.
Post with Google and Word document links at the end is right here:
https://northbornsword.blog/2021/09/20/several-versions-of-the-way-to-kandge-brad-is-finished/
Urhexen: 42k words of contemporary fantasy. A lonely witch joins her college’s on-campus coven for the first time during a study-abroad trip to Germany’s Westhavelland Nature Park. She hopes to make a good impression and win the acceptance of her new sisters. But as it turns out, the question of just what a witch is supposed to do, and what her magic does or doesn’t give her the right to claim, will open thresholds few of them are prepared to cross…
Post with Google and Word document links at the end is right here:
https://northbornsword.blog/2021/11/09/new-free-novella-urhexen/
The Necromancer’s Vengeance Duology
To date, my two longest prose works: the tale of a necromancer with a kind heart twisted by awful trauma, and the small band of friends and loved ones she gathers around her. I once self-published these through Smashwords and Amazon. All the problems I pulled them for are still there. I modified Reaping Spear’s ending just enough it can serve as an effective end to the duology.
I hope I get the chance to write a refined, fully-matured version of this series. It’s very likely that won’t happen, so flawed and harmful as they are, these books will be the only written legacy of my demonic coming-out and coming-of-age. Attachments and links are at the bottom, but I strongly recommend reading the paragraph with the bolded first sentence. You should know exactly why I can’t recommend these books. You should know the bad, harmful decisions I made.
For any good this duology holds, there’s bad to match. I was scrambling to write a culturally-rich, diverse epic fantasy series on an insanely short, self-inflicted timescale. I wanted to, I still want to, write intimate portraits of authentic, messy trauma and recovery. I was not ready to do that. Codependency, manipulation and controlling behavior, trauma as an excuse for abuse, there’s so much I should’ve called out that I instead actively endorsed. Often because, at the time of writing, I was guilty of these things myself. On top of that, I wrote a lot of outright Orientalism into these books, plus racism disguised as progressivism, plus a lot of white guilt… I made many, many gross choices for bad reasons. I regret that, and I’m sorry.
Here’s the attachment and the Google .docs link for The Necromancer and the Revenant: Resurrected Edition. 232,393 words of adult epic fantasy with a few scenes of overt erotica.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sbaMTS6y69ucx74IpRaxKNBi7AN1IsVJLpTl1E-z1hc/edit?usp=sharing
And here’s the attachment for The Necromancer and the Reaping Spear. 489,154 words. Epic fantasy with a lot more erotica doing all sorts of fun kinky things (also, more girl on girl/boy on boy/non-binary stuff). Reaping Spear is, in fact, too powerful for Google docs (no, really, it keeps giving me errors) so if anybody wants to try splitting it in half to make it fit across two separate Google docs, you have my permission to do so.
As with Urhexen, you have my blessing to redistribute both of these books as much as you want, to whomever you want. That said, do not sell them, nor remove my name, my forewords, or my copyright. These ones are deeply precious. Their utter failure, no matter how inevitable it was, still deeply wounded my soul–wounds I’m only just recovering from as I write this. Probably too late for that to matter.
I hope, flawed as they are, these stories can be a companion to someone. A source, maybe, of just a little hope as the world that gave them birth falls further and further apart.
Ashenvein Gate: Stories & Dreams 