It’s been a busy few weeks here in sunny Yorkshire (and it has genuinely been sunny recently!), but I’ve been writing feverishly at every opportunity. It’s about time, I think, to share my progress with my readers, particularly as I’m going to be releasing some actual original fiction (neither this blog nor my fan-fic for Chronicles of Tyria, which makes a change) into the big wide world very soon!
- First up, we have Sanguine. Way back in January, when I first talked about self-publishing, I referred to this novel as the YA fantasy that ended up 20k words too long. This is going to be my first self-publishing experiment – prepare yourselves for necromancy, blood magic, demons and banished gods. I’ve completed my final edits, my designer has produced the cover art (more on that soon), the ebook is formatted, and I’m really, really close to being ready to go. The only hold-up? Redecorating our living room/office has meant my PC is packed away. More importantly, the PC of my designer (also my partner!) is in storage, which means the final tweaks to the ebook can’t yet be made. Soon, though! So soon!
- Next there’s Star of the Everlasting, the first in a series of secondary world, dark urban fantasy novellas (or that’s what I’m calling them at the moment), about a pair of female ‘middlemen’ who form the hidden link between the criminals of their city and the people who are paying for crimes to be committed. This one has got ancient magical races, clifftop cities, and more shifty people engaged in shifty activities than you can shake a stick at. It’s also going to be my second self-publishing experiment, with at least two more novellas in the series to follow.
- Finally, we have another novella that’s simply code-named Morrow. This one is still in progress, which means we can have something that hasn’t been seen on this blog in ages:
- Yes, it’s a progress bar! And, as you can see, it’s coming along quite nicely. Morrow is a much more traditional Medieval fantasy, with knights, tournaments and lots of people poking swords at each other. All good fun. My plan is, again, to self-publish the Morrow series, which will eventually become four novellas which could just as easily form four parts of a novel; I may release it as both.
So, I’ve been busy! Sadly, that means reading and gaming have rather fallen by the wayside in recent weeks, but it’s been nice to make some significant progress in all my writing endeavours instead (and there are so many more to follow, including multiple novels that could be either YA or adult fantasy, and the two sequels to my novel that’s currently on submission). And having something concrete to show for it, and which I can show off to the world, is going to be even better!
How are things going in your writing world? Share in the comments, if you dare!