City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  First of all I want to thank you so much for reading Seckry’s adventures – by downloading this book, you have contributed to the continuation of the series, and I am ever grateful to be able to carry on writing about these characters that I’ve grown so attached to, and in this world that has now become my world.

  Some of you may already know the road I took to make The Seckry Sequence available, and some of you may not, but I have been sending it to agents and publishers, with only rejections in return so far, meaning that it is still self-published, with only social media to help me spread the word.

  However, I have not lost all hope, and if you enjoyed this book, there are ways you can help me – by letting everybody that will listen to you hear about it, and by posting a review on Amazon, or the site of the company you bought the book from.

  Like I said, social media is currently my main source of exposure, so please do like the Facebook fan page and follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already done so, using the following tags:

  #TSS

  #TheSeckrySequence

  #CityoftheFallingSky

  #TheTrinityAwakening

  I also asked you fans a while ago to come up with a name for yourselves, and the one we decided on was Seckramaniacs! So if you love The Seckry Sequence enough to call yourself a #Seckramaniac, please use that hashtag too!

  Acknowledgements

  First of all I’d like to thank all of my family for everything; my mamgu and dadcu, my aunties, cousins, my sisters, dad, my uncle, Dr David T. Evans, for being such an inspiration, and especially my mum, Debra Carr, who gave me my love of books and who has done so much for me and my sisters over the years.

  I’d also like to thank all of my friends for their enthusiasm and interest in this book, especially David Goddard. My colleagues at Waterstones have also been amazingly supportive. I’d like to give extra thanks to Victoria Hutchings and Myfanwy Hipkiss, who are eagerly awaiting the second in the series, and are a great help in spurring me on to continue writing.

  Thank you to all of my English teachers over the years, who each inspired me differently: Helen Senior, the late Jo Bryant, Anthony Bennett, Ms Jones, Mr Shirley, and especially Emma Coombs, who cared about us not just as pupils, but as individuals, and whose enthusiasm for English was unlike anything I’d seen before.

  There are also teachers and lecturers that I’d like to thank that didn’t have a direct role in helping me write, but had an impact in shaping me as a person: Keith Allen, my head of year at high school, and Allan Kaye, my form teacher, who both always listened and cared, and fuelled our thirst for knowledge, Andre Ktori for the wildest parties in my first year of university, and Jack Beaumont for being such a great mentor in my second and third.

  Thank you to my first teenage reader, Jacob Foley, and thanks to his mum, Cath, who loves to hear about my progress whilst she’s cutting my hair, and who was my first paying customer. Thanks also to the wonderful bloggers who initially read the ebook version of this story and got the word out there about Seckry, and thanks to everyone that has reviewed this book on Amazon.

  Most importantly, thank you to Charlotte, my soulmate and the girl of my dreams.

  About the Author

  Joseph Evans grew up in Cardiff, South Wales, UK, where he spent a lot of his childhood playing video games and watching anime. His love of books originated from his love of the fantastic stories and narratives he found in both of these.

  He is still a big video games fan (can you tell?) and his favourite game of all time is Final Fantasy VII.

  He has a 1st class degree in Interactive Media, and alongside writing he is a freelance motion graphics designer as well as a bookseller in the Cardiff branch of Waterstones. If you’re ever in the area, pop in and say hello!