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.