At long last, we've released the collection of Cradle books four through six, which we're calling Cradle: Path of Gold!

Along with this release, we also have a new cover for the original Cradle collection, Cradle: Foundation! Both covers were painted by the amazing Ashley Mackenzie, and you would be well advised to feast your eyes on her portfolio.

In celebration of Path of Gold's release, the Path of Gold collection will be available for free this weekend, May 30-June 1. Also, all the posters here on The Will Wight Store are on sale!

Meanwhile, I've been re-reading the Cradle series by listening to the audiobooks all the way through for the first time.

Travis Baldree and Audible Studios have done an incredible job with those books!

Idk about the writer, though.

He seems pretty sketchy.

​-Will

I had drained my batteries completely to finish the Elder Empire, and only this week did I emerge from my Rejuvenation Chrysalis to step, blinking, once more into the sunlight.

The fan response to Killers / Kings has been extremely positive and supportive, which was a huge relief to me. I really wanted a satisfying ending to that story, but it was even harder than I had expected to step back into a series I started so long ago. Especially one with so many moving pieces.

It took me every ounce of effort to finish those books in the way I felt they deserved in such a short amount of time, and while I'm pleased with the result myself, I'm far happier about the longtime fans of the series who felt like I did them justice.

So now the time has come to turn my attention back to the sacred arts.

Now that I'm back in Cradle after so long, I needed a tour of the place again, so I'm letting the rich voice of Travis Baldree be my guide as I re-read the series once again. Today I finished Blackflame, and it's amazing all the little things that I picked up on this time.

Off the top of my head, I don't think I would have remembered the line that suggested Lindon has been asleep this entire time and everything after Sacred Valley was just a dream.

While I've been wasting my time on another book series, the rest of the Hidden Gnome team was working on several Cradle projects, including a new cover for the Cradle: Foundation collection! 

The long-awaited second collection will be coming soon, with another cover in the same style...and featuring three other members of the main crew.

Incidentally, I've been playing an unholy amount of Terraria. The final update is out (Terraria: Journey's End) and it's beautiful. I regret only that I can't experience everything in a single playthrough.

Mysterious eggs with black veins keep appearing on my doorstep every morning at dawn, and even though I have security cameras set up out front, I still haven't caught anyone leaving them. And...yeah, between that and the books and Terraria, you're pretty much caught up on everything new here in Will World.

Even if I should clarify that Will World is definitely NOT a simulation I'm trapped in, and I'm certainly not sending you coded messages through these blog posts to let you know when the time is right to break me out.

​-Will

Well, the sites aren't entirely finished building, Killers​ is listed as Book 2*,  and the descriptions aren't punctuated properly, but the books are now available for purchase on some half-finished Amazon landing pages!

Enjoy!

KINGS

KILLERS

-WILL

​*(fixed!)

We've uploaded both books, and Amazon is now holding them hostage.

At some time today, they will be released from captivity, but we can't guarantee when.

If you find a functioning link, let me know!

And then I will take a nap.

The greatest nap.

The Napocalypse.

​-Will

Of Killers and Kings and Of Kings and Killers are coming out Friday!

Full explanation in this video!

-Will

I am now 100% finished with the final books in the Elder Empire: Of Killers and Kings and Of Kings and Killers.

-Will

In our latest effort to provide you with the finest free quarantine entertainment, we have put the first three books in the Cradle series on sale for free!

Now through Thursday, Unsouled, Soulsmith, and Blackflame ebooks will be available for free! 

If you previously read them on Kindle Unlimited, now's a great time to own them forever!

If not, now is a great time to download free books until your Kindle groans under the weight of all that data.

​-Will

EDIT: You should pay attention to the date on which this was posted.

I saw some people on the subreddit discussing supposed "spoilers" for Cradle 8 that weren't written by me, and I wanted to clear the record today.

None of what I'm discussing here will be severe spoilers that will ruin your time with the book or anything, but if you're severely spoiler-averse, you might want to sit this one out.

I'm just going to clear up some of the rumors that are spreading about the Cradle 8 content.

So rumor #1: This book is going to be all about Yerin.

FALSE!

It's going to be 90% about Yerin, and the remaining 10% will follow my new favorite protagonist, Sopharanatoth the gold dragon.

Rumor #2: We're going to go back to Kelsa's storyline in Sacred Valley.

FALSE!

That was a one-time thing. We got a glimpse into what's happening in Sacred Valley, and then we will never ever go back there again. Everyone in Sacred Valley is already dead by this point in the storyline anyway, so there would be no point.

Rumor #3: Lindon likes pineapple on his pizza.

FALSE!

There are only a few rules about writing a protagonist that can't be broken, and one of them is that the protagonist can't like pineapple on pizza. All audience sympathy is lost immediately, and records show that 98% of readers will throw down the book in disgust. The remaining 2% are perverts.

Rumor #4: Eithan will unleash his full power in this book.

TRUE

​-Will

While I’ve been locked away finishing up King and Killers, the rest of the Hidden Gnome team has been hard at work scrambling to come up with free content for everybody stuck at home.
 
The fastest thing we could do was to put our eligible books up for free, so that’s why we gave away Traveler’s Gate trilogy for free this week. Which brings us to the next thing on our list!
 
Travis Baldree has recorded audio for one of the short stories from the Traveler’s Gate Chronicles collection: The Steel Labyrinth. It’s the short story that follows Valin, Founder of Valinhall, hunting a monster in Tartarus.
 
It’s available now, for free, on Spotify and on this very site! (And will be available on Apple and Google Play as soon as they complete the review process, so watch for that!)
 
We’re calling this the first episode of The Hidden Gnome Podcast, but like I said, we’re scrambling to put together anything we can that’s free and fast. We know everyone’s stressed and stuck at home, so we want to give away anything we can scrape up.
 
Because of the fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants nature of this project, we don’t know when the second episode of the podcast (presumably another Chronicles short story narration) will come out. It could be next week or it could be a lot longer; we’re playing everything by ear right now.
 
But the gnomes are hard at work trying to keep you all entertained so you don’t go insane locked inside your own homes.
 
Enjoy the podcast, stay beautiful, and remember the words written on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC!
 
-Will

We know you need some more quarantine reads, so we're giving away the ebooks for House of Blades, The Crimson Vault, and City of Light from March 17th (today) through the 21st!

I really wish I had something new for you guys to read. If it makes you feel any better, I'm locked inside too.

Not just because of coronavirus. I was locking myself in this week to get word count done, but it was nice of the government to cooperate with my schedule.

​-Will