April 2024 Newsletter

Coming in June of 2024 (hopefully…)

Hopefully, because this is a self-imposed deadline with a lot of work between then and now. March was incredibly busy and there’s no end in sight in April. In addition to the cover art that we have from the skilled hands of Dale Cordes, we have also managed to acquire the cartography services of the talented Luke Bauer who is redrawing my maps in a much more professional hand. Most of the maps he has redone for me are on the website or the facebook pages (links are all at the bottom).

But, here’s one that’s not on the website yet. This is a draft map of the Battle of Borly, on Sortingday (6th day of the week), 1st week of Youri(4th month of the year), 794, which ended the siege of Borly:

Something else that I’m working on is lore appendices. A while back, I had to let go of the dream of having a small version in the back of the book what we would call in tabletop gaming a ‘sourcebook.’ A sourcebook is basically a bunch of lore to help stimulate the imagination to craft new stories and adventures. I had to let go of this dream because it would increase the size of the book beyond what publishers typically are willing to include, especially for debut authors.

With the decision to go with self-publishing, I am delighted to say that not only is a June timeline is feasible, but I am able to include these lore appendices. As it is currently, I am planning on the following:

1) Character index (you’re going to need it), along with lists of orc, goblin, and hobgoblin tribes

2) Calendar, Measurement, and Currency Systems

3) Magic

4) Humans

5) Elves

6) Orcs

7) Hobgoblins

8) Goblins

The appendices on the races are especially near and dear to me. So much so that I plan to try my own amateur hand at illustrating each of them a little to give the reader and idea of what each of these creatures look like, what they eat, how they might dress or what’s important in their culture. Below is a draft (again, I am a learning artist here, but I hope it gets the point across) of the illustration for the goblin appendix. In a later draft, I will try to add shadowing, but that will bring me to the limit of my capability. Here is a comparison in stature between a human and four adult goblins.

The last bit of possibly fun news is the reorganization of the this book into these books. The Witches of Serna, upon completion of the first draft, was a 404,000 word, without the appendices. For context, Game of Thrones is 292,000 words and Eye of the World (book 1 of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time) is 300,000 words. Most publishers aren’t willing to go to that length these days, especially for a debut novel. Yes, I said that I have a lot more creative control with self-publishing. Yes, I do, but it also has been suggested to me by a few people that they prefer shorter books that they can read on a road trip, a short vacation, or a business trip. So, the 400k words are being reorganized into these titles:

1) The Witches of Serna (estimated June 2024)

2) Unseen Wrath (estimated December 2024/January 2025)

3) Winter Fever

4) The All-Consuming Flame

These first four (yes, there will be many more) will comprise the War of the Mountains series. The story will then continue on with book 5, whose title I haven’t picked yet (and, by the way, the titles for books 2 and 3 are tenuous). Book 5 is on hold in favor of preparing book 1 for publication.

Now for more of the administrative side. A lot of this month has been consumed with learning the business and social media side. So, we have a website now, an official facebook page, fledgling twitter and instagram pages, and a tiktok (which is actually doing the best for a following at 971 followers (about half of whom are scammers)). We had a youtube channel before, which has seen a 75% increase in subscribers since the beginning of March (that is to say, 9 more for a total of 21, now - ha!), and I have been coaching a writer’s workshop on Monday nights. This newsletter, believe it or not, was one of the many items that I have been meaning to get off the ground along these lines. Previous ‘newsletters’ were sent from my personal mailbox with attachments, rather than this HTML-enabled service (I’m using mailchimp), and a blog post on the website.

So, goals for April are figuring out advance copy ordering through the two publishing services I plan to use, finishing the last two lore appendices, illustrating, finalizing the maps, and beginning a short series on the youtube channel of explaining basic tactics for authors and game creators.

Thanks for your time, folks. I really appreciate your support and hope to hold your interest. See you next month.

Morgan