Here it is! Gape at it! Gawk at it! Get bleary-eyed and teary-eyed with amazement and awe at it! It’s the gloriously mysterious cover of NO ONE LEAVE THE CASTLE!
And if you haven’t check out TheThirteenKingdoms.com yet, what are you waiting for?
The Hero’s Guide books — and their upcoming spinoff novel, No One Leaves the Castle, have a new home on the Internet: TheThirteenKingdoms.com. Check it out to explore the various kingdoms of the Hero’s Guide world, meet the characters, and more!
The upcoming Hero’s Guide spinoff has an official title! Now, this is not the actual book cover or logo design, just a sneak preview that I shopped for this announcement, BUT every element of it—font, colors, shapes, background, etc.—are clues to the plot of the new book. So have fun with that. And get excited for the coming mystery!
Happy New Year and welcome to 2022! Why is 2022 such a big deal? Because this year is the 10th Anniversary of The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom! To celebrate, I’ll be hosting a bunch of fun Hero’s Guide events and activities on this site over the course of the year. And it begins right now with the Big Announcement I’ve been teasing for the past few months. (drum roll, please…)
IT’S A RETURN TO THE THIRTEEN KINGDOMS!
Yes, it’s finally happening! In a sense. While not a full sequel to the original trilogy, the book I am currently writing is a Hero’s Guide spin-off, centering around the further adventures of a certain fan-favorite character. The book represents my first journey back into the Thirteen Kingdoms since my Bandit King story, “The Villain’s Guide to Being a Hero“—and, wow, am I happy to be back! Even more exciting for me, this new novel is a full-fledged mystery story. I’ve always been a huge mystery fan, and this new book holds mysteries a-plenty—the first of which begins right now, as you wonder which familiar character will be the starring detective! And while these pages will hold plenty to excite long-time Hero’s Guide fans, the book will also stand on its own as an individual novel—so tell your mystery-loving friends who may not yet have visited the HG Universe that this will be a great jumping on point!
I’d love to tell you more about the book right now, but that would kinda ruin the mystery. Plus, I’ve got to actually finish writing this thing so they can actually publish it and get it into your hands. Until then, puzzle away!
—Christopher Healy, Jan. 2022
Do all of my books take place in the same interconnected multiverse? In a word: YES! While the alternate-history version of Earth that appears in A Perilous Journey of Danger & Mayhem is clearly not the same place as the Thirteen Kingdoms of the Hero’s Guide series, there is definitely a connection between those two worlds. The evidence: A certain glowing orange stone with magical powers.
Kudos to reader, Naomi, who was the first to discover the link between the Jeopardous Jade Djinn Gem from Perilous Journey and the Ambrosium from Hero’s Guide, which I will confirm here both originated from the same source! Of course, this opens up a whole slew of other questions…
Since the Ambrosium is believed to have come to Earth on a meteorite, does that mean that Hero’s Guide takes place on a different planet? Or perhaps that meteorite didn’t come from outer space after all? Or since the mystical Djinn brought the JJDG to the Thirteen Kingdoms from their own magical dimension of Baribunda, did they somehow also bring it to Earth from Baribunda? Is Baribunda a portal between worlds? Or an entire universe unto itself? Or is there some other explanation? I’d love to hear your theories!