The gods never left. We got quieter, sure. But that’s because it’s easier to run the world once mortals stop looking for you.

Fair warning before I take the reins of this chariot: I was there for some of this and drunk for most of that. The rest I got secondhand. Which is probably why I don’t come out of it well.

Not that it’s all about me anyway. It’s mainly about a kid who finds out.

His name is Jaden Pierce. A young photographer raised in Davis Court, a housing project in Richmond, Virginia, where a boy like him learns early on which doors open and which ones get kicked in. He spends most of his life getting out. And he makes it as far as Amsterdam—camera in one hand, his mother’s ashes in the other—before my brother mows him down with a bicycle.

Apollo heals him, which is decent of him. Then Apollo keeps him, which is not.

What Jaden finds in that house is an empire coming apart. Twelve seats, one family holding every one of them, and ambrosia thinning out a little more each year. The factions can all smell what that means. Most of them have already decided Jaden is a piece on the board.

The Art of Killing Gods is contemporary mythic fiction about power, class, identity, and what people will sacrifice when the stories that run the world start to crack.

Paperback details: print-on-demand via Bookvault. Ships in a few business days. ISBN 9798996748815.