“Spellmonkey” is a disparaging term for any type of magician, who have a (well-earned) reputation for being the most difficult to work with of the standard adventuring roles. The joke is that a monkey trained to cast Dome of Burning would be ideal, but until such a creature could be found, some other magic-wielder will have to suffice.

This is the story of four of them.

Frinzil is a student sorcerer, and the last thing she ever wanted to be was an adventurer. Alas, there’s the pesky matter of tuition, and she’ll be thrown out of school forever if she doesn’t earn enough gold to cover it fast.

Brukk is an orc who taught himself summoning looking over his boss’s shoulder while working as a hired lackey. He’s also a devoted friend, a big goofball, and magnificently bad at magic. But he’s learning.

Mae gets her magic from the demon lord Lrksuul, for whom she collects the souls of the vanquished. She suffers no fools, and may be the world’s most terrifying elf.

Sprig is… a druid? Maybe? I mean, he’s wearing druid robes. But druidic magic pulls the user steadily into the wilds, where Sprig has been lost for years.

When Frinzil hits the local tavern with a once-in-a-lifetime quest that will set her up at the Sorcery Institute for life, the highly-trained adventurers she tries to hire immediately waltz off to claim the treasure for themselves, and she’s left with… what’s left. Can her ragtag crew beat them to the punch? Can they even survive the journey?

“A huge amount of fun.” —Tor Books 

“An irreverent, tongue-in-cheek love story to a D&D campaign.”—Tor Books 

“Hit our nostalgia buttons in all the right places.”—Tor Books 

“A great story with a sure-thing audience.” —Tor Books 

“…Ultimately not the right fit for us.” —Also Tor Books, in what might be the nicest rejection letter in literary history

Kindle Vella is Amazon’s new platform for serialized content, and the first six chapters are available today! New episodes drop every Wednesday.

The first three chapters are always free, and the extra free tokens Amazon gives you to start are more than enough to read the three after that.

Vella is brand new, and so far only available on the iOS Kindle app. So if you read on an iPad or iPhone, you can start reading Spellmonkeys right now.

If not, don’t worry —the Spellmonkeys books will be available in regular print and ebook formats eventually, probably right after the last chapter goes live on Vella. But if you have an Apple device (and the desire to show me any love) please go check it out! Give it thumbs up and faves and reviews and all that, but more importantly, just read and enjoy. I’ve been working on Spellmonkeys a long time, it’s my very favorite thing I’ve ever written, and I am beyond thrilled to finally share it with the world.

Yeeheeheeeeeee, here we go!

—Matt