A Tale of Gods and Glory Cover Reveal

I'm posting today instead of Monday because have a cover to share with you all. A really, really gorgeous cover that's definitely one of my faves (I say as if I don't love all of my covers).

I'm sure that you have all waited awhile for this so...

It's time to start scrolling...

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Halfway there...

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I know I'm making you scroll a ton, but I promise it's totally worth the suspense
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Surprise!!! A Tale of Gods and Glory is releasing tomorrow. Make sure to pick up your copy then.

Isn't it just gorgeous??? I'm so excited, this is my first cover done in the rain. It also happens to be my first cover where my MC is actually smiling (what does that say for me as an author?) but trying to get Taliz not to smile would be a downright impossible endeavor. Besides, he is showing off his extremely wet and cold home that he is very proud of—how could he not be happy?

The cover was done by Hannah Rogers who also did the cover for Between Gods and Demigods and she certainly outdid herself. This book is a standalone, however it is set in the same world as my Rage Like the Gods series as well as a few other series.

The interior is going to include illustrations by Paige Coffer, Maddy Moore, as well as a map that was drawn by Chaim Holtjer.

“Very well. I will tell you the story of Lord Taliz, but I need to warn you, it isn’t what you are expecting. And it isn’t the tale you have been told.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I believed the tale I had been told.”

The name of Lord Taliz the Champion of Coldhaven is one that almost everyone has heard... but the story? Well, the story is less well known. Now I don’t mean the tale that is sung in every tavern across Ruskhazar. I'm talking about what really happened.

Taliz and his sister Sofarynn are exiles seeking a new home in the mountainous peninsula of Ruskhazar. What they find instead is a world where monsters and magic exist outside of bard’s songs. While looking for work, Taliz instead is recruited by a reclusive group of individuals only to realize too late that they are werewolves. Now a member of the pack with powerful abilities he doesn’t understand, Taliz must learn to balance between who he once was and who—or what—he has become.

To many people Taliz is a hero, a legend, perhaps a figure made up by the bards. Some believe that he never existed at all. Oh, his home Coldhaven was certainly real enough, but how could someone like Taliz have lived and still be considered a mortal?

As the years pass, Taliz works to prove himself to his pack and perhaps in the process woo a beautiful but aloof werewolf named Ylfa. Sofarynn turns her attention to unlocking the mysteries of magic, a force that exists only in Ruskhazar. Except where Taliz goes trouble always follows. The siblings soon find themselves defending their new home from werewolf killers, a cult that worships a tiny statue, and bounty hunters sent to bring them back to their desert homeland to face charges. However, there is something buried under Coldhaven far more dangerous than anything they have ever faced, and it just came back from the dead.

But I’m here to tell you, Taliz is real, he existed, and he is not the hero you believe him to be. Yes, he did the things the bards claim. He charmed monsters, rose in status, saved Coldhaven, and then burned it all to the ground. But there was nothing exceptional about him. So, you may ask how did an ordinary man—a foreigner no less—come to be revered as the champion of the very city he destroyed? Well, I suppose if you trust the bard's accounts it’s because there was a worse fate than the fire, but if you ask me... the bards got it all wrong.

Available 1.31.22

Aka

Tomorrow

An Update on A Tale of Gods and Glory

Art by Maddy Moore

 

I'm not going to lie, I was hoping to be able to do a cover reveal today, but alas the cover is not ready to be revealed and I am now left in the unfortunate predicament of not having any blog post scheduled for today.

So, I guess I'll just give a brief update on where we stand with A Tale of Gods and Glory. 

I finished the final round of edits on it!!! It ended up being 120,000 words long which is... hehe, that's a lot more than the 80k I originally estimated it would be. But now that the edits are done that's it, it's ready to go, it could technically be published today if I only had the cover. But since I am still waiting for the cover, I've decided on the slightly less ambitious release date of...

1.31.2022

It's so close. I honestly cannot wait to share this chaotic tale with you all. This story has been so much fun to write, it's a mixture of comedy and horror and tragedy all told through the eyes of Taliz, my extremely oblivious main character.

The only thing we're waiting on is the cover. Since I don't actually have a specific date that the cover will be done (although it should be done before the 31st, I have my fingers crossed that ends up being the case), I'll probably juts do a post about it as soon as I have it. No fancy cover reveals this time around, we're cutting it too close.

If you don't want to wait till the 31st to get your hands on ATOGAG I currently have a few ARCs to hand out. Simply fill out this form to let me know your interest. You do not need to have it read by the 31st, but I would really appreciate it if you could manage to do that!

“Very well. I will tell you the story of Lord Taliz, but I need to warn you, it isn’t what you are expecting. And it isn’t the tale you have been told.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I believed the tale I had been told.”

The name of Lord Taliz the Champion of Coldhaven is one that almost everyone has heard... but the story? Well, the story is less well known. Now I don’t mean the tale that is sung in every tavern across Ruskhazar. I'm talking about what really happened.

Taliz and his sister Sofarynn are exiles seeking a new home in the mountainous peninsula of Ruskhazar. What they find instead is a world where monsters and magic exist outside of bard’s songs. While looking for work, Taliz instead is recruited by a reclusive group of individuals only to realize too late that they are werewolves. Now a member of the pack with powerful abilities he doesn’t understand, Taliz must learn to balance between who he once was and who—or what—he has become.

To many people Taliz is a hero, a legend, perhaps a figure made up by the bards. Some believe that he never existed at all. Oh, his home Coldhaven was certainly real enough, but how could someone like Taliz have lived and still be considered a mortal?

As the years pass, Taliz works to prove himself to his pack and perhaps in the process woo a beautiful but aloof werewolf named Ylfa. Sofarynn turns her attention to unlocking the mysteries of magic, a force that exists only in Ruskhazar. Except where Taliz goes trouble always follows. The siblings soon find themselves defending their new home from werewolf killers, a cult that worships a tiny statue, and bounty hunters sent to bring them back to their desert homeland to face charges. However, there is something buried under Coldhaven far more dangerous than anything they have ever faced, and it just came back from the dead.

But I’m here to tell you, Taliz is real, he existed, and he is not the hero you believe him to be. Yes, he did the things the bards claim. He charmed monsters, rose in status, saved Coldhaven, and then burned it all to the ground. But there was nothing exceptional about him. So, you may ask how did an ordinary man—a foreigner no less—come to be revered as the champion of the very city he destroyed? Well, I suppose if you trust the bard's accounts it’s because there was a worse fate than the fire, but if you ask me... the bards got it all wrong.

Anyway, that's all for today, hopefully I'll have a cover to reveal later this week. We're almost there, folks! My first release of 2022 coming out very soon.

It's only been what? Three years?

 

(art of Alicia and Dante by Ireen Chau)

In the fall of 2018, I published A Certain Sort of Madness. The first in an Alice in Wonderland themed duology, set in the same world as the My Time in Amar series. It was the story of a slightly bonkers but extraordinarily optimistic young woman named Alicia who was born into the wrong family. Her powerful magical abilities were inherited from the grandfather who wants her dead, or in the very least eternally disposed of. It's about the team of misfits who come together to steal from the faerie queen. Dante, the huntsman who also happens to be Alicia's not-so-imaginary-anymore friend, a debonaire illusionist thief and his monkey, an apothecary's assistant who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Alicia's two cousins—one who is from Earth and one who is from Amar, both determined to protect her in their own ways.

It's to this day one of my highest rated stories, and I have been told by multiple individuals that it was their favorite of my works.

It was such a fun book to write, and I got started on the sequel shortly after I finished ACSoM. A Matter of Curiosity is set about a year after the first book and picks up where book one leaves off. This story introduces a crazy faerie circus, a deadly game, and a whole lot more insanity. Except the problem is that MoC is also where the story ties in with My Time in Amar and cannot be published until after My Time in Amar book three A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils. Because of this, I put aside MoC when I was about 44k words into it to focus on the My Time in Amar books and then I got carried away with other series and then I was taking a break from Amar and before I knew it, it had been three years and I still had a half-written draft just sitting there waiting to be finished.

Well, I finally decided that I have been keeping my fans waiting far too long for the sequel. Especially with the way that book one ended. So, in the last week of the year, I picked up MoC and started to work on it, my goal was to have it done to be published by May, but as I started writing this story was just begging me to finally finish it. So yeah, after some weeks of insane writing feats I ended up writing 49,000 words in three weeks and I'm so proud and happy to finally be able to say...

I finished writing A Matter of Curiosity

Sure, I have a ton of edits to do (only in the second half, the first half is pretty well polished), but I'm just so happy to finally have gotten this story that has been living rent-free in my brain for all these years onto a piece of paper so that it can hopefully start paying rent soon. It's 93,000 words long which is around the length I thought it would be. That measures out to about 350 pages.

Also, I contacted my cover designer. Hopefully it isn't too early to say that I plan on doing a cover reveal for this book on 2.22.22

(For those of you still waiting for a cover of Taliz's book, I know and it's coming soon, but it takes longer to make the kind of cover I ordered so we must be patient...)

So yup, there you have it. That's what I've been busy working on these past few weeks, now onto my next project... Harbinger of the End.

And editing A Season of Subterfuge of course.

Not to mention publishing A Tale of Gods and Glory.

This has been a busy, busy month indeed.

I have a gameplan, it looks a bit like this

In my last post, I gave my goals of 2022, which mostly revolve around my writing goals. Now it's time to discuss what completing those goals is going to look like.

In other words, today I'm sharing my gameplan. Now I'll admit, it's not much of a gameplan, but what can I say? I'm a planster, I like a little structure and to come up with the rest along the way.

As I mentioned when I stated my 2022 goals, I only have to finish writing two of the five projects that I want to release this year. These projects are A Matter of Curiosity (expected publication May 2022) and Harbinger of the End (Summer of 2022). I'm over halfway done with MoC (60,000 words out of approx. 90,000) and only about 7,000 words into Harbinger (I've currently been trying to get all of my thoughts for this story jotted down into a chronological order).

So, these two stories are my main writing projects going into 2022. For editing I have A Tale of Gods and Glory (hopefully coming out this month !!!!!) and A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils (expected publication March of 2022). I'm halfway through the edits of SoS, and on the very last rounds of edits of AToGaG as I add in feedback from my beta readers.

Obviously, I'm planning to be entirely done with AToGaG this month, however I am also hoping to finish up the first draft of MoC by the end of this month (actually I'm trying to have it done by the end of this week, but only time will tell if that is a realistic goal or not). I'm also hoping to have finished the main edits of SoS either sometime this month or mid-February to give my editor some time to work on that. Harbinger I've given myself until the end of March to finish.

Once I finish those two books, I'll be done writing all of the books I wish to publish in 2022, that leaves most of the year to focus on getting some 2023 releases written. I have six books I want to try to release in 2023, the final books in three series—A Winter Bright and Burning (Winter Cursed book 3), Of Dawn and Fire (The Of Dreams and Nightmares Trilogy book 3), An Era of Evil, Dragons, and Dark Lords (My Time in Amar book 4)— as well as two books set in Ruskhazar, one the continuation of the Rage Like the Gods series and one starting a whole new series. I also plan on starting two other books that will be the beginnings of their own series, I haven't announced these stories yet, but I will once I'm a substantial bit into them.

I'm not entirely sure what order I'm going to work on them in, I certainly want to work on some more than others. And even though I have a rough idea of what order I want to publish them in, that's all subject to change, seeing as what we are talking about is a year out and the order that I publish them is subject to change. It's going to especially depend on which projects I will have done when the time comes for publishing. I do however intend to try publishing AWBAB next January or February so that's one that I definitely need to write this year.

I'll keep you posted as to which ones I will pick up after Harbinger (I'll probably start working on the Ruskhazar projects after I finish MoC, but that's about all I've decided on so far). There's still the April and July Camp NaNos and NaNoWriMo itself so I need to figure out what I'll be doing during those.

My editing goals are as follows...

As I finish editing SoS, I'm planning to pick up edits on RLtG and work on that for about a month while MoC sits, hopefully I'll be able to finish a POV or two on that one before I pick up MoC and give it one last readthrough before I sent it off to an editor as well. After that I'll pick up Harbinger and get that edited up, before I return to RLtG. I don't know how long until I am done with editing RLtG it's a very large book, but if there is any time extra in the late summer or fall, I'm hoping to try to edit LoT as well. After RLtG's release, I'm planning to edit AWBAB because that is my first release of 2023, I'll also try to get a start on ODaF since currently I'm planning on trying to publish that one in the spring.

So yeah, mostly my intention is to focus on Harbinger, MoC, SoS and finally publishing AToGaG in the first three or so months of the year. After that, my schedule is far more fluid so I can go with my muse. Hopefully you liked this somewhat more technical post and for those of you who were wondering how I was planning to publish five books in a year hopefully this post answered your questions. Or maybe it only gave you new ones to ask like, is this girl sane?

Looking to 2022: My New Goals

A conglomerated mess of collages of my current WIPs
(all images via Pinterest, I take no credit for them)

Well, all right then. Apparently, it's 2022. Which now leaves me in the awkward predicament of trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself for another year. So here we go, as per tradition I shall set a bunch of goals that I shall struggle to accomplish for the next twelve months so that at the end of the year I can laugh at what unrealistic expectations I had.

Life:

In terms of life goals, we have no life goals. I mean technically, yes of course I have life goals, but I don't really have a list of things I want to accomplish this year to get there. I have a job I enjoy; I already eat pretty healthy... etc. There isn't really anything about myself that I feel the express need to call out and change. So, I guess for this I would say, keep on keeping on, and continue winging it because so far it has worked out for me.

Oh, and idk, maybe find an exercise regimen that works for me.

My word for 2022 is: CREATE

Hobbies:

Mainly my focus will be on my art this year, I want to keep drawing, keep practicing and getting better. I want to get back to digital art and give that another go, and just as a whole develop my craft.

I want to open up a Redbubble shop for my art and my books and my art for my books (maybe this should have been in my life goals? I don't know, all I know is that the reason I haven't opened it yet is because I feel like I haven't created enough things worth opening a Redbubble shop for, so it technically hinges on my art goals)

I don't need any help setting goals for video games or watching TV. Hehe...

And I guess I'll try to read a book or two (in loving memory of my attention span, 2008-2018)

Writing:

This is by far where I have my biggest and most complicated goals. I've divided it into three categories to help keep it from getting too messy and confusing

Writing: In 2021 I wrote over 600,000 words so I figure to stretch myself in 2022 I'll aim for 700,000-800,000. I don't really know, let's just see how it turns out. However, in terms of my specific goals I have...

Folly of the Gods (book one was 300,000 so we'll go with that for this one too)

The Gods Created Monsters (I doubt it will be longer than 130,000 words) 

The last half of A Matter of Curiosity (probably about 50,000 words)

Harbinger of the End (it will probably be around 115,000 words long, that's like a ballpark guess because I have no idea how long it will actually be)

Writing an as of yet unannounced project that I plan on releasing in 2023 which is the first book in a NA dark academia fantasy trilogy feat. enemies to lovers (I have no clue how long it will be, but let's say 80,000)

A Winter Bright and Burning (I doubt it will be anywhere as long as AWDAD was, let's go with 100,000 words)

Of Dawn and Fire (probably about 115,000 words long like book one was)

Other than Harbinger of the End and A Matter of Curiosity, all of these projects are the books I want to release in 2023, so I probably don't have to write all of them this year. However, I've been trying to work on books that I want to publish in the next year. To help me publish multiple stories in the next year.

Editing: In the past, editing has been a chore, although the past several books I've edited, I've actually quite enjoyed working on so maybe we're entering a new era where I actually enjoy editing. With all that said, here are the books I need to edit this year

A Tale of Gods and Glory (only the very final stages left to do) 

Rage Like the Gods (without a doubt going to be my biggest editing project this year, it's the longest book and it has the most that needs to be changed)

A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils (halfway edited)

A Matter of Curiosity (also halfway edited)

Harbinger of the End

League of Thieves (I'm unsure if I will actually be able to get this story done this year, the books I'm actually planning to publish in 2022 take precedence, but gosh I hope to squeeze it in)

I also want to at least start on some of my 2023 projects to help lighten the load for when that year comes around, but we shall see how much I am able to get done there. 

Publishing: I want to publish five projects this year, which is way more than my previous record of three books published in a year, but I'm going to try anyway. My publishing goals look a little bit like this...

A Tale of Gods and Glory (Winter of 2022—hopefully this month)

A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils (Spring of 2022—maybe March?)

 A Matter of Curiosity (Late Spring of 2022—hopefully May)

Harbinger of the End (Summer of 2022—aiming for August)

 Rage Like the Gods (November 11th, 2022)

So yeah, that's a lot of projects, but I'm pretty confident (okay maybe 76% confident) that I can do this. Of the books I want to publish A Tale of Gods and Glory is already written and been through the majority of edits. A Season of Subterfuge is already written and halfway edited. Rage Like the Gods is already written. A Matter of Curiosity is halfway written. So, the only story I have to write the mahority of in 2022 is Harbinger of the End. I've already done most of the heavy lifting for my publication goals this year back in 2021.

 

(Via Pinterest)

And there you have it; the gauntlet has been thrown down. The goals have been announced. Here we go, 2022.