James A. Hunter

Vigil's Valor - Updated Cover Art

Hey everyone! Decided to get the cover art for book 2 updated and wanted to share! Please, let me know what you think in the comments.

Wasteland Warlords Episode 2 - 3 A Pig’s Tale

As the strobing orbs descended on the shadowmen, the full swarm of locusts took to the air, their wings buzzing like a ten-thousand watt bulb, and turned on the shadowmen. Every other attack they’d tried on these little creeps had failed. But not this one. The locusts’ massive jaws tore into the flute-playing creatures, chewing through inky flesh like ancient Egypt’s wheatfields. Splashes...

Shadowcroft Year 3 - Chapter Twenty-Two

Logan didn’t exactly smell in the human sense of the word, but all of his senses reeled after being on Sucrosia for five minutes. They walked through a candy forest where birds like Easter peeps chirped from chocolate trees covered with green frosting leaves.

A colorful candy path led through the trees to the cliffs made of red rock candy. Strawberry. Or cherry maybe. The steps leading ...

Wasteland Warlords Episode 2 - 2 Squealing Skirmish

Clay and Alex found an old stack of broken-down cardboard boxes in the GameStop back room. Those would make excellent kindling, but they wouldn’t keep a fire going long or hot enough to cook anything. Joe suggested the particleboard shelving around the store, but Clay shot that down out of the gate—they were already going to eat the Mac’n’Spam, they didn’t need to cook it over a fire ...

Wasteland Warlords Episode 2 - 1 Gamestop and Chill

“Will you watch your lightning lances?” Alex snapped. “That’s the second time in two rooms.”

“Two rooms and a corridor,” Joe corrected. “And it’s not my fault Chonk wanted to play with the controller. He’s a curious guy. He’s got to know what we’re doing.”

Clay glanced up from his book and checked the big front windows of the abandoned GameStop. The peeling...

Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons - Free Book 1

As I promised, here is a free copy, courtesy of Shadow Alley Press, of Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons - Book 1. Just click the link below to start reading on your preferred device!

GET IT HERE 

Wounded Army vet Logan Murray thought mimics were the stuff of board games and dungeon man...

James Hunter - Project Updates!

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t been on to reply to comments for a while. Things have been crazy around here. We had DragonCon, which is always a great event, but it sure is a lot of work and hardly anything else gets done! Then, once we got back, my wife (and our nanny) ended up getting Covid, so I’ve been busy, busy, busy taking the kiddos to school and soccer games and choir practices and ...

Vigil's Valor: 51 – Aftermath

Telent’s trial went exactly how I expected.

Which is to say he was guilty as hell and everyone knew it. Aside from the pile of corpses down in the Simulator room and an explicit confession from the disgraced Vigil of Truth, the newly crowned King of Wildespell had indeed turned up in the middle of the night at the Citadel gates. He’d come with an army at his back. Riding at the army�...

Vigil's Valor: 50 – Ravenous

The grizzly charged on all fours and knocked Kol face first into the stone wall. In his altered form, Kol had to weigh in at a thousand pounds, but the Elder Bear didn’t even seem to notice.

The nightmare grizzly’s jaws chomped down on the shapeshifter’s ankle then, with a violent shake of his head, the bear began to jerk him around like an overgrown dog with a chew toy. It almost w...

Vigil's Valor: 49 – Get Wrecked

Then there was a mechanical roar and an otherworldly squeal of agony.

It was the thunder of suppressive fire followed by the pain of something learning about what a machine gun was for the first time. It was also sweet, sweet music to my ears.

I skidded into the cover of the forest and wheeled around in time to see a flurry of magically conjured .50 Cal rounds slam into the Aberrati...

Vigil's Valor: 48 – Sales Pitch

At midnight, I stood in the in the center of the Nexus Simulator, buried deep beneath the bowels of the Citadel. The air felt thick and muggy with raw essence. Above me was the vaulted patchwork dome, built from interlocking opal tiles. The spidery golden arms with their huge crystalline lenses sat still and lifeless, just like the rest of the chamber. I glanced left and right. The room was emp...

Vigil's Valor: 47 – Preparations

I left Pascow to his work, knowing I would only slow him down.

He was a Sage-Class builder with more experience crafting weapons then I could amass in a lifetime. Besides, he didn’t want my help. When I turned over the machine gun blueprints it was like I’d given a prophetic glimpse of the Sistine Chapel to a young Michelangelo. It was a revelation. A work of art that only a master ar...

Vigil's Valor: 46 – Band of Unreliable Misfits, Assemble!

The work went quickly, but for the plan I had in mind, there were a lot of moving parts. If any one of them hit a snag, chances were good we would end up dead. But that was a problem for future Boyd. Present Boyd only had to worry about executing each task. About putting one foot in front of another.

Convincing Barmin and Stefana to help us take down a group of rogue Vigils, backed by wha...

Vigil's Valor: 45 – The Revelation

Kerra looked at me with confusion painted across her face but nodded as I escorted her from the ballroom while everyone continued to cheer over the death and dismemberment of the Chaos Aberration. It was easy to understand why everyone was so overjoyed—from the outside, it looked like the nightmare was over. Ding dog the witch is dead. Time to bust out the champagne.

Except I knew bette...

Vigil's Valor: 44 – Party Favors

Lady Hargreeves was at least two inches taller than me and had to be close to two-hundred and fifty pounds. It wasn’t fat, either. She was jacked. Her muscles had muscles. She was also pushing eighty and had white hair, one eye, and an assortment of faint scars crisscrossing her face, arms, and chest. She wore an embroidered gray silken dress just like the rest of the ladies, but there was no...

Vigil's Valor: 43 - Practiced Indifference

“I look like a goddamned clown,” I growled at Kerra.

It was true. I knew because Cal couldn’t stop laughing whenever he thought I wasn’t looking. He also openly laughed in my face whenever I was looking, just to be a dick.

“On a scale of Bozo to Ronald McDonald,” Cal said, “I’d probably rate you as Krusty the Clown—depressed, possibly alcoholic, overflowin...

Vigil's Valor: 42 - His Majesty, the King

As if my night hadn’t already been long and weird enough, when Cal and I finally made it back to the Citadel there was another unexpected surprise waiting for me.

My sleeping quarters had been overrun by a group of drunken fairies. Even in my own head that sounded like a terrible euphemism, but in this case, it was one hundred percent accurate.

Butterfly winged pixies flitted grac...

Vigil's Valor: 41 - Good News, Bad News

“Cal,” I hollered, “we need to shatter the Soul Jar. If we can break that, I think the Remnant should dissipate.”

“Don’t sweat it, Boyd. This is my territory and I’m about to make this freak my bitch.” With a deafening roar, Cal launched himself toward the Wil-O-Wisp, his body transforming once more as he ran. His shoulders and chest swelled outward. His arms and legs leng...

Vigil's Valor: 40 - Lost Souls

NOTE FROM JAMES: Hey everyone, just a reminder that Vigil's Justice (Book 1) is live on Amazon and on Audible (narrated by the awesome Luke Daniels). If you get a chance, please leave a short, honest review on the book. Makes a world of diff...

Vigil's Justice - Book Release!

Hey everyone! This is James and I'm excited to announce that Vigil Bound book 1 (Vigil's Justice) goes live on Amazon tomorrow. I'll be honest, book launches always make me super nervous and this one doubly so, since it's a brand new series that very few people have ever read before. That's why I'm asking for a little extra help.  

If you've enjoyed this series so far, please conside...

Vigil's Valor: 39 - The Baker’s Boy

“Excuse me?” I said, as the matronly madame excused herself.

The woman on the bed sniffled and swiped at tear-filled eyes with the back of one hand. She was a slight woman, maybe a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, with a Mediterranean complexion and short, wavy black hair. She was wearing a silken shift, wrinkled and dirty. Her eyes were bright green, but lined with red. It looked ...

Vigil's Valor: 38 – Tiers of Delight

The game plan was to wake up early.

To spend the whole day breaking down doors.

Finding answers.

Kicking ass and taking names.

Instead, I slept for sixteen hours. Sixteen. Hours.

By the time I got up and hosed the dried blood off, it was sunset. The whole day was gone, there was a pulsating lump of black flesh on my bed, my room looked like a set piece for Texas Ch...

Vigil's Valor: 37 – Cosmic Horror Study Hall

“What the fuck,” Cal and I both said at the same instant.

Had I accidentally just killed Renholm?

“Holy shit, look at that,” Cal said, hunching forward.

Pieces of exploded pixie were crawling and snaking their way back across my bed, forming into a ball of pulsing flesh. It was one of the most disgusting things I’d ever seen. And there were still pixie guts strewn al...

Vigil's Valor: 36 - An Appropriate Level of Vengeance

After we got done, I used Pascow’s private altar to pay a quick visit to my Soul Vault. I dropped off my new weapon skin and spent a handful of minutes re-specing once again. I’d given Kerra her week of concentrated training and now that I was done paying off my debt to Pascow, it was time to get back on the job and figure out how to stop the Chaos Aberration that was tearing up Wildespell....

Vigil's Valor: 33 - Sweat Equity

The door to the Steel Griffin let out a subtle groan as I pushed my way into the shop. This time around there were a couple of young Vigil’s I hadn’t met yet, perusing the barrels of Soul Weapon Skins while talking in muted tones as they compared various swords and axes. I ignored them both and weaved my way toward a rather glum looking Pascow. His face brightened the second he saw me comin...

Vigil's Valor: 34 - Relics and Rarities

Relics and Rarities was a stuffy store that smelled like sandalwood and old leather. The walls were dark mahogany, the floors hard wood covered in sprawling, drab gray rugs. A crystal chandelier dangled in the center of the room, suspended from a rectangular coffered ceiling, while bronze wall sconces held Essence fueled lamps. Towering bookcases held a wide array of gilt-edged books and narrow...

Vigil's Valor: 33 – Ascended

Like Kerra, I also intended to get some answers, but before I went kicking the hornet’s nest, I figured it was best to put some boots on. No point in getting stung worse than I had too. That meant I needed to pay a trip to the Soul Vault and swing by a couple of stores before I got busy. I was the weapon, I reminded myself, and I needed to hone my edge. Just because I had shit to do,...

Vigil's Valor: 32 – Homecoming

We rode into Wildespell around noon like conquering heroes, our spirits high, everyone excited to get back to the Citadel and hit up an altar. Berk, Colin, and Marina had all ascended to the Disciple Ranks and I’d managed to jump from Acolyte Bronze to Acolyte Silver. I had extra Ward Points to spend and Essence to burn, but best of all, I figured I finally had enough hard-earned cash to pick...

Wasteland Warlords: Chapter 14 - Brute Force

There was a sudden jerk as the pressure around Clay loosened just a hair. He cracked his eyes and saw, much to his surprise, Chonk clinging to Katotes’ arm, gnawing at his gargantuan wrist with jagged teeth.

From elsewhere, a chainsaw screamed and lightning crackled.

A spray of gore blasted Clay in the face, the smell of fetid blood making him gag. Just what in the hell is hap...