A Little Bit of Magic

What feels like a long, long time ago, I wrote two little stories called "Lastborn" and "Facsimile". They were released on May 31, 2018 within the sci-fi anthologies Holding On By Our Fingertips and Infinite Dysmorphia by Kristell Ink/Grimbold Books. I won't give any specifics on the plots of the stories here since I don't want to be a spoiler, but I will say I'm proud of them and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Photograph by Aline de Nadai on Unsplash

I finally finished a project I began three years ago, and I'm in the last couple steps before publishing it. Rain Falls on Malora is a collection of eighteen short stories set within the world of The Malora Octet. Each story is told by a minor, non-narrator, or entirely new character from the series who hasn't been able to share their own version of events until now. The stories begin with the reveal of what happened to a certain missing character in Mayfly Requiem, cover the Echoes of Oblivion years and their aftermath, introduce you to a couple of Bethel's children who lived between the trilogies, and close with a narration by Sora Thula sixty years after Arrow of Entropy. I'm also including some original character illustrations, maps, family trees (this got way more complicated to draw out than I expected. Thanks, Bethel), a Volle-Common translation dictionary, and some recipes and poetry I created while working on the series.

I'm waiting on my print proof copy now so I can do final edits and fix any formatting errors. Hopefully I won't have too much trouble converting this file to an ebook. I'm excited to give this little treat to my long-time readers, some of whom inspired specific stories within this book. So, here's to the characters who finally get to tell the world their own versions of the truth: Mirren, Delora, Ariana, Summer, Sharo, Rastaban, Mirazen, Rain, Aurelien, Solace, Maple, Zoli, Ulali, Laira, Terali, Eliani, and Sora.

I hope to release Rain Falls on Malora in July. I'm in the process of moving to a different state, so between that and the setback I had with my repaired ulnar nerve earlier this year, I'm a little behind where I wanted to be. I had an ulnar nerve transposition in my right arm in September and I have some permanent damage from the hourglass constriction that lead to it, so I've had to modify how I type, hold a pen, cook, etc. It has been a long and painful process, but I'm getting there.

Photographs via Unsplash: Nathan Dumlao, Christian Holzinger, Christopher Campbell, Steve Halama,
Tess Nebula, Jing Ang, Ricardo Gomez Angel, Nate Reyfield, Aline de Nadai 

Oh, look at that! The weird things I do when on migraine meds... I wanted to make the chronological order of The Malora Octet a little more obvious and tie the entire series to Rain Falls on Malora visually, so I redid all of the ebook covers. I love seeing them all together. I've left the paperback covers alone since it takes more time to change them than I have right now. You can still find all eight books on Amazon.

Last, but very much not least...

I finished Faelost!

I'm also awaiting the arrival of the Faelost print proof. I like to use a print copy to do my final edits, and this one will take a little while. Why? It's long, 145,000 words, so it's by far my biggest book (Mayfly Requiem was *only* 130k). And, I have no idea what to write for the blurb without spoiling something major that happens just a few short chapters in. I'll have to think on that.

Faelost is the sequel to Cavelost, and it continues immediately where Cavelost left off, but it should work as a stand-alone story. It's told by Rin's second son, Tessen, who finds himself on an unwanted adventure following the hatching of his brother Shan's two stolen dragon eggs.

Oh wait, there's just a little bit more. I'm working on The Bacra Chronicles Book 3 now, Spellkeeper. I'm way into it and hoping I can keep up my momentum on it over the summer. Spellkeeper is the first time in over ten years that I've written a novel in third person (the last being the Echoes of Oblivion trilogy). There are four point-of-view characters for this book -- two from the previous books and two who are new. I'm not sure yet how many books The Bacra Chronicles will end up being, but as of now I know where books 4 and 5 need to go.