How To Get My Book For FREE
It is July 7. That means I have exactly two months before the launch of the second book in my series. There is much to do and very little time and I feel like the next sixty days are going to be a chaotic whirlwind of promotion. So buckle your seatbelt and prepare to get totally sick of me. (Actually, please don’t get sick of me. I am like Tinkerbell. I’ll only survive if you keep believing in me.)
Step one in the LAUNCH BOOK 2 plan is to remind people about Book 1 and encourage them to read it before the sequel hits the shelves. The great fear of the series writer is that people won’t be willing to invest until they know it’s a sure thing. A one-off is an “easy” sell, a series is a painful begging process of convincing people you have the capability and commitment to follow through. No one wants to get hooked into something that is never finished. Ever started a Netflix show only to learn it was cancelled after the first season and now you’ll never know how Jeff Goldblum handled losing his immortality…? People don’t like that. And if a corporation with pockets as deep as Netflix can ghost its viewers, why wouldn’t an author (who only has those fake kind of pockets that are sewn into womens’ pants) do the same thing? The stakes are lower. The pain is higher. I get it.
But consider this: the idea of not finishing is impossible. And when you have purpose and drive (and the horrific weight of needing to finish this story so you can write the next one) tapping on your shoulder, you soldier up and you do the thing. Does it happen overnight? No. It’s a long, slow process because I am a human lady who refuses to let my entire personality be the book I’m currently writing.
Other things I like to do besides writing that mean you have to wait a year between book releases as if this is 1998 and you can’t actually watch the next season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer until they write it, film it. and edit it:
read books by other people, for fun, just because I want to
scour thrift stores for John Travolta paraphernalia and Duran Duran records
take road trips to weird places
listen to music and cry when Shawn Mendes shows me a piece of his heart
jigsaw puzzles - lots and lots of jigsaw puzzles
So anyway, Book 2 comes out on September 7, 2026 - you can already pre-order it here if you want me to know how much you believe in me (Tinkerbell, remember?) - and as a way to try and drum up new readers, I’m running a Goodreads Giveaway. From now until the end of July, I’m inviting people to enter for the chance to win 1 of 100 Kindle editions of When The Trees All Burned. Sadly, this is only open to American readers, but it’s high time I marketed to them. If anyone needs a reprieve from the ugliness of the world, it’s our neighbours to the south, and I think many of them will agree with the premise of my book: let’s burn it all down so we can set the world right.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
When The Trees All Burned
by Alanna Rusnak
Giveaway ends July 31, 2026.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
If you have an American friend that would love this book, please share this with them. If you’re an American who has already read it, consider entering anyway - it helps boost the algorithm and it will show the giveaway to everyone in your personal Goodreads feed. If you’re a Canadian and you’re mad at me for not offering you a chance at a free book, consider this: When The Trees All Burned took me a decade to write and release. If all I did was give away free copies, I wouldn’t be able to sustain a future as an author. Really, I just want to be able to afford a pair of pants with real pockets; that is to say, I want to be valued for what I’m offering. If you can spare two bucks, I can send you the book right now.
Other things you can do with two bucks:
The best thing you can do with two bucks:
show an author you believe in her
Digital books will be delivered to your inbox immediately following purchase.
EVERY APOCALYPSE NEEDS A PROPHET. EVERY PROPHET NEEDS BELIEVERS.
The truth was always there. The choice was always yours.
Forty years ago, on the night his mother died, Rajiv Montgomery Noah received a vision of fire that would consume the world. While others dismissed the growing signs of climate collapse, he devoted his life to an improbable task: building a sanctuary in the wilderness of northern Ontario—a dome erected over an abandoned mine, designed to shelter two hundred souls within the ancient forest.
Now, as the world teeters on the edge of catastrophe, Rajiv's dome stands as both monument and shelter—a testament to hope, hubris, and the weight of choosing who survives. But neither the dome's reinforced walls nor Rajiv's careful calculations can prepare its inhabitants for the moral complexity of being the chosen few, or shield them from the haunting question: what makes survival worthwhile when everything familiar has burned away?
When The Trees All Burned, the first novel in The Path That Takes Us Home series, is a meditation on grief, purpose, and human resilience in the face of environmental collapse. In the tradition of Station Eleven and The Road, it asks not just how we might survive a dying world, but who we become in the surviving.
