Hello! It has been about half a year now since I split the blog and started reviewing regularly! This is also the month I have another book coming out, so I figured this deserves a slightly special post. Not sure what I’m going to do to make it special yet. By the way, if there’s something you want to see, or a certain order you would like to see the updates and expectations in, leave a comment and let me know!

So. Kindred of the Sea is coming out on the 24th of this month, June, and I just got my author’s copies of the Illustrated and Compact Paperback Editions in. I am so excited, but I did not get around to taking pictures yet, so there won’t be any pictures here. I’m not good at taking pictures or remembering to do so. But I can let you know that the Compact Edition is for anyone who can’t spend a lot, prefers paper over ebook, and doesn’t mind smaller type than what is common these days (the type is a lot like that in the mass market paperbacks from the 80s-90s). The Illustrated Edition came out to be everything I hoped it would be, with black and white headers of scenes for every chapter and a few other black and white pictures, and beautiful formatting! I’m very happy with how it came out, but as I said, I haven’t taken pictures yet. I will take pictures though, and I may try to show them on my release announcement post!

I also did another digital art scene, which you can see right here. This one is of a mercreature from Alaer who features in Kindred of the Sea. I don’t remember which of the emblems that appear on this page I did in May and which I did in April, but you can see them here and read so far three pages that provide a bit of an introduction to the cultures and states of Ellenesia. So far, all of these make some appearance in Kindred of the Sea, but that will someday change. In case anyone finds this post after it does, I will tell you which ones feature in Kindred of the Sea: Elethri, The Valor Alliance, and, obviously, The Kindred of the Sea.

I seem to be unable to write consistently in one Work-In-Progress, and I’ve even started two or so more recently, so here’s a quick run-down of my current Works-In-Progress:

Lìrulin-and-Eldor WIP:

This is my first time writing a story that has a romance in a primary place, so it’s very interesting. This is the story of Tara-lin’s parents, and how they fell in love and survived together, and it’s told in short in her thoughts in Children of the Dryads. I think this is going to be the longest Areaer novel so far. I’m guessing 110k-120k? It’s at nearly 70k right now, but I don’t remember the exact numbers.

Slave-becomes-Dragonrider WIP:

This story is going to be a trilogy or even a quartet (I’m not sure yet). Book One is named and is called Heart of Fire, and is the next Areaer novel I intend to publish (after the short story, Gryphon’s Escape that I wrote in April). I am currently a good half-way through the second book of the series. This one is about a slave who determines to be a Dragonrider and, when she bonds to a dragon, her weak magic blossoms into fire magic like nothing ever seen before, and about a young girl who has no obvious talents who is chosen by the Obsidian Guardian of the age. It probably has one of the most epic plots yet.

Dawn-song WIP:

I haven’t worked on this one in some time. Book One is finished and titled: Song of Darkness and Fire. I’m only a couple of chapters into Book Two. A lot of the premise and background for this one is spoilers for others, so I’m not going to share that much until publication is coming up, but it’s about an aromantic, asexual half-elf who is a bit of a bookworm. At least, there’s this one story that Arilann (that translates to Dawn-song) keeps re-reading over and over again. It’s a very personal journey.

New World WIP:

This is the first thing longer than a short I’m trying to write in first person, but that’s not why it’s coming along so slowly. It’s coming along so slowly because it’s a wholly new world, magic, and characters, and I have so much I’m writing, so it’s taking a while for it to develop. I did write a little more in it, though. A sibling relationship and a quest for self-discover and magic take center-stage.

Gryphon People WIP:

I don’t know when this one will get a lot of attention, but I’m really loving my gryphons, and I had some ideas about the Southern Nations. This one has two female main characters, one of whom is from a people who revere the gryphons and is able to speak to all gryphons like Alis from the Legend of the Singer Duology can, and the other is from an ethnicity that her people hate, as well as having been a servant in the Valor Hall, which her people hate more than anything else.

Lightning WIP:

I’ve been wanting to write this one for ages and trying not to, since I really want to get down to two or three WIPs, but for some reason I started it for good. Actually, I’d written the prologue a while ago (this is my first time using a prologue, by the way). This is set entirely in the third continent, Galen, and I expect the plot to be a bit like that of the Return of the Dragonriders Trilogy, though the characters won’t be alike, and the writing is going to be quite a bit different from what I did there. But I expect it to have the same development from a Slice of Life character-survival story to an attempt to keep those elements while more epic stakes get involved.

The Broken Sword WIP:

This is the story of the lover of the Bearer of the Dragon-sword in whose hand it broke, another prequel to the Return of the Dragonriders Trilogy. I haven’t written much in it yet, but it’s definitely there, taking form. I want to be done with the Lìrulin-and-Eldor WIP first, since this is another romance story, and I don’t think I can handle two of those at a time very well. Really, I just want to finish more projects than I start! I expect the name of this one to change a bit once I actually get started on it.

That’s the writing update. I have too many WIPs, but I am making progress! Feel free to tell me which one interests you most, but be ware: that might not have any impact on what I actually write!

And the publishing update:

I wrote a short story called Gryphon’s Escape that is not epic at all about a gryphon of the Valor Hall who is asked to acquire information from the mind of an uncooperative prisoner and decides that the humans are really insane. I’m going to start working on the cover for that, hopefully, and then decide when to publish it. Also, once Kindred of the Sea comes out, I will probably get working on editing and readying The Wings of Healing, a Kaarathlon Novel, for publication. That one is a very Slice of Life non-epic plot with a variety of characters who have to work through different things. As the name suggests, it’s about a lot of healing, and about the healing moon dragons. I’ll share more about it soon!

And, of course, Kindred of the Sea is coming on June 24th! (You can preorder here if you like; it won’t be available as a Kindle until the release date).

And for the book-review blog side of things.

It’s been about half a year. I started doing this consistently in December. (This is the first one if you want to take a look). Since then, I’ve posted a review every Friday, except for a few times I’ve done Saturday or Thursday for one reason or another. That seems to be pretty sustainable, but I might end up taking a couple of weeks off around the release of Kindred of the Sea perhaps. I’m happy with my method, but I may need to reconsider some other aspects of my approach. We’ll see how I feel when I get done with an ARC review and a couple others I need to get out. Summer is pretty busy for me also, so I definitely won’t be taking review requests from anyone except friends. Come Fall/Winter, I may put together requirements and open those for a few months.

And I ought to mention, I almost forgot until now, but I entered Children of the Dryads in SPFBO 8. You can see the official SPFBO blog here. We SPFBO authors are going to be running a sale from June 24th-26th (if I remember the dates correctly) and both DragonBirth (my entree for last year) and Children of the Dryads will be available for 99cents as ebooks. If you want to pay the full price and support me (which I understand if you don’t; I have a lot less money to spend on books than books I could buy if I didn’t have to think about that, too), you can get them right now here and here respectively. If you buy during and the sale and if it’s no trouble to you, I wouldn’t mind if you buy from Kobo or some place like that other than Amazon, since Kindle takes a huge cut out of my 99cent sales. But, if it is an issue, I’m definitely not asking anyone not to buy the Kindle! And there will be lots of other books also available, including the entire Coming of Áed Trilogy (read my review of book one here), and lots of other wonderful books, some of which I’ve read, some of which I hadn’t, some of which aren’t for me but may be for someone else!

I think that’s it. If you have any comments or anything you want to share, comment below! Or if you just want to contact me, you can use the Contact form on my home page.