Third century Rome. Emperor Valerian is hunting down church leaders. In the middle of it, a Damascus street thief named Amal discovers he can reshape reality itself — and the discovery makes him a target.
That’s where The Halls of the Shadow King: The Apprentice begins. It’s the first book in a series I’ve spent over ten years researching and writing: historical fiction grounded in the third-century Roman Empire, with a supernatural, magical realism thread running through it—the notion that there’s an undercurrent to reality we’d call magic if we could sense it, and that the old myths might have been pointing at something real all along. I think I picked this up in my early years from C.S. Lewis, J.R.R Tolkien, and even Stephen Lawhead.
Amal’s story is about gifts of power and what it costs. About what it means to prepare yourself and to serve something greater than yourself when the world is asking you to be small, careful, and safe instead. I feel this is a message we need to hear now more than ever.
I write these books hoping they land in the hands of the right reader—someone who needs a story about courage, risk, and cost. That’s a harder thing to aim for on a platform built for volume rather than connection. So Desdichado Books is making a change.
Starting now, The Apprentice is no longer available through Amazon. Over time, the rest of the series — Into Deeper Waters, The Hidden Order, Britannia Calls, and possibly even the connected novelettes—will move the same direction. Going forward, you’ll find these books in two places online: todnewman.com/shop and desdichadobooks.com/bookstore. And also in any bookstores willing to take the plunge.
Why leave a platform with that much reach? Because reach isn’t the same as connection. On Amazon, a sale is a sale—I never know who bought the book, whether it found them at the right moment, or whether it did what I hoped it would do. A direct shop is smaller, but it’s mine. I can know who’s reading. I can put the book directly in the hands of someone who’s looking for it, rather than hoping an algorithm decides to show it to them. And a purchase made there supports the work in a more direct, more personal way than it ever could buried in a marketplace of millions of other titles.
This isn’t a stunt, and it isn’t about volume. As I write in all of my books, my measure of success has never been sales numbers—it’s the right book reaching the right person, and that person passing it on. If Amal’s story is one you’ve already read, or one you’ve been meaning to start, I’d be grateful if you found it through the new shop. It’s a small thing, but it’s one more way to know this work is reaching someone who wanted it.
The voyage is just beginning. Thank you for coming along.
