Writing in a Dark Room

Don’t worry, this isn’t an “Amazon blew up my books!” blog post, as entertaining as those can be.

Rather, this is my explanation to you, if you came to my site looking for more information on my books or links for where to buy them. The short answer is they’ve been taken out of publication, temporarily.

Why? Well, that’s a longer story. I’ll try not to bore you.

I’ve always been a little wild with my writing — writing what I wanted, how I wanted, in whatever order I wanted. There was a lot of wildness in how I released stuff, too.

My thinking was always that readers would happily hang on while I decided where the hell I was going with what I was writing. Yep, I heard you groan from here.

I don’t think being a little wild is a bad thing as a writer. You should enjoy what you’re writing, and breaking the rules can be cool, when it’s done right. What I want, however, is not necessarily what READERS want. In fact, I’ve found fantasy readers in particular don’t like chaos.

Chaos for the characters, sure, that’s fine. In the overall delivery of the story and a series at large, no way.

And since getting readers to buy my books is how I pay my bills, it’s helpful to put aside some of what I want in favor of more of what those readers want. So, I’ve taken down both of my series to give them new flooring and a fresh coat of paint.

This is a good thing, even though it’s also a hard thing. I’m starting from scratch, and I feel a little like I swallowed a fish whole. At least I have some great mentors who are helping me forge this new path.

So, where are things going from here?

Book 1 of The Fall of Kingdoms, Corruption of Honor, which was first released as three separate parts, will be re-released again as separate parts, starting with “Pt. I: The Burning” at the end of September (hopefully anyhow). It’ll have a new opening and additional content that wasn’t in the first edition, including all-new front matter.

All three parts will be published as a single volume in October or November. So, if you’re not into reading the story one piece at a time, the single book is for you. There will even be a hardback edition that I’m really looking forward to.

When these books are up, I’ll post to my mailing list and to my blog. So, stay tuned.

As for the Cathell series, that’s a much longer project overall, because the first book itself is longer than all the parts of Corruption of Honor combined. I’m hoping for a late December/early January re-release. There is also some series re-branding that will be going on. But again, stay tuned for more details.