A Progression Fantasy Novelist
Just wanted to quickly let everyone know that there’s been a delay in the production for the audiobook version of Soulbrand. I can’t provide any more details right now, but we’re still going to try to get the book out as soon as possible. I’ll provide an updated release date when we have one confirmed.
Edit: Small update. The new target release date is November 23rd.
Hey everyone!
Just wanted to briefly let you know that Six Sacred Swords, the first book in my Weapons and Wielders series, is currently on sale on the US Kindle store for 99 cents. If you haven’t already picked it up and you’ve been itching for something new to read, this might be a great time!
Hope everyone is having a great week.
-Andrew
Hello everyone,
Just a basic status update today.
The last month has been relatively slow in terms of things I can actually talk about. As I’ve mentioned previously, I have a number of secret projects in the works – some of which might not be able to be unveiled for a while, given that I’d need approval from the other people (or companies) involved.
I finished writing and the main revisions to my secret novella this month, which is the last major outstanding project before I can shift to working on AA4. This required more time than I expected, and it’s still not *entirely* finished – I’ve done three content editing passes, but there’s still going to be another general copy editing pass after that. Fortunately, the copy editing work should be pretty painless compared to the content edits, some of which were pretty significant in scale.
I’ve continued to work on AA4, but slowly. I’d estimate the first draft to be at about 20%.
I’ve also continued the first stages of work on W&W4. This was mostly to get the recap done while W&W3 was still fresh in my mind, as well as to get the intro of the book ready, for the same reason. I don’t expect to spend too much more time on W&W4 until after AA4 is done.
I have a couple other small novels still in progress (such as Carefully Worded Wishes, which I’ve talked about before) and some other experiments. I’ll probably continue to dabble with these when I’m not in the mood to work on AA4, but at this point, I anticipate AA4 will probably be my next major release.
In terms of release timing, I’m now aiming for sometime next year. I’m hoping to get it relatively early, but I don’t know how realistic that is – it depends on where the book ends up in terms of scope. If it ends up being as massive as Soulbrand, which I know many fans want, I’ll probably end up launching it near mid-year. I may have to throw some small project in there in the middle if it takes that long – not sure.
Aside from that, a lot of my time is going toward those things I can’t talk about. Much of that is multimedia – think things like the tabletop game, but with a broader variety of projects. I’m hoping to have a formal announcement about at least one or two of these by the end of the year. These are pretty time consuming to arrange right now, but once I get them launched, I think they’ll be largely self-sustaining and won’t take up too much more of my time and energy. I consider these projects to be very worthwhile, both in terms of letting people engage in the story setting in additional ways (e.g. gaming) and in terms of giving me much-needed breaks from just writing constantly. I wish I could say more, but it’s still too early.
I hope everyone has a fantastic month!
-Andrew
Hello everyone,
Just wanted to let you know that the paperback version of Soulbrand is now available! You can pick it up here.
In terms of other updates, there isn’t too much to say right now. I’ve finished my first draft of the secret novella that I mentioned, and I’m currently discussing revisions with the publisher. I don’t have a firm estimate on how long those revisions will take, but I’m hoping to get the manuscript finalized within the next month or so.
After that, my plan is to focus primarily on Arcane Ascension 4. As previously mentioned, I’ll be dabbling with some other books at the same time to avoid burnout, but I still expect AA4 to be my next major release.
Hello, everyone! Hope you’re having a good month so far.
First off, I’m thrilled by how much people are generally enjoying Soulbrand. In terms of ratings and reviews, it’s the best rated book I’ve written to date (although it’s still way behind the Arcane Ascension books in terms of sales). I found these reviews encouraging for the overall trajectory of the series and I hope that this trend continues with future books.
For those of you who aren’t already aware, preorders are up for the Audible version of Soulbrand. The tentative release date is October 12th November 23rd!
Next, in terms of paperbacks, I’m working with my graphic designer on that right now. This took me a little while because it was tough to get it into the right format for a paperback due to the length. Some things don’t play well with KDP paperbacks, like italic text and images. It’s doable, it just requires some tweaking to make sure everything stays within the margins properly, and that impacts the final page count – which is required before the full cover can be made.
I don’t have a firm date for paperbacks yet, but I’m guessing it’ll be within the next couple weeks.
Soulbrand has continued to keep me pretty busy post-launch, mostly in terms of things like getting the book formatted for Audible, fixing small mistakes that were discovered post-launch, reading (and occasionally responding to) community discussions and questions on Discord and Reddit, etc. At this point, that’s wrapping up and I’ve been getting back into the cycle of doing more writing each day.
In terms of writing projects, I’m not quite done with that secret novella yet, but I expect to be within a couple weeks.
After that, my primary focus will be on AA4, with some time spent on W&W4 and small projects on days that I don’t feel inspired to work on AA. This type of system has been helpful for making sure I stay productive, and by using this method, I already have a fair head start on AA4 (around 10-15% of the first draft) even though I haven’t started working on it full-time yet.
I am behind where I wanted to be in my schedule when I talked about it at the end of last year. This is largely because Soulbrand ended up being much longer than expected (it’s almost as long as W&W 1 and 2 combined). AA4 launching this year is looking less likely. I’m still going to aim for a December release, but it depends on how busy I end up being with other things in life, as well as where I end up deciding to end the book. (I’m still not sure if I’m going to try to do all of Corin’s second year in one book, just one semester, or something else.)
If I don’t launch AA4 by the end of this year, I’m going to aim for early next year, but I’m not going to make any promises in that regard, either. Writing three long books back-to-back is exhausting and difficult to scope properly. I’d rather give you all realistic expectations.
After AA4, the next release will either be a small side project or W&W4 – I’m not sure yet. It depends heavily on if AA4 and W&W4 turn out to be monstrously long like W&W3 was. If W&W4 is looking like another 250k beast, I may publish something smaller in the interm to stay fresh and keep readers engaged.
Hope you’re all enjoying the books, and thanks to all of you who have read and rated Soulbrand!
Best,
-Andrew
Hey everyone,
To celebrate the launch of my third Weapons and Wielders book, Soulbrand, the first book in the series, Six Sacred Swords is currently available for free on Kindle!
For those of you who are new to the series, Six Sacred Swords follows Keras Selyrian, a swordsman from a foreign land, as he explores the unfamiliar continent of Kaldwyn in search of allies and resources to help his homeland. Keras is a relatively powerful character from the start of the story, blending magic and swordplay in battle, but his lack of familiarity with the local land and magic system put him at a significant disadvantage. The story is heavily inspired by Japanese action/adventure games and RPGs like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Ys. It’s a story of magic, swashbuckling, bibliophile dragons, and talking swords.
The first book in this series is a quick, light-hearted introduction with flashy anime-style combat and larger-than-life characters. As the series progresses, the books get longer and heavier, with more world building details and character development.
These books are related to my Arcane Ascension and War of Broken Mirrors books, but designed to be readable without having read those first. (Timeline wise, the main body of these stories takes place after the War of Broken Mirrors and before Arcane Ascension, but with a frame story that takes place after Arcane Ascension 2.) If you prefer to see a character’s story in chronological order, you may want to read the War of Broken Mirrors first, but plenty of people start with my other series.
Soulbrand, the third book, just came out on Kindle this morning and will be coming to other formats soon. Preorders are already up for the audible version – narrated as always by the amazing Nick Podehl – and it’s set to launch on October 12th. I don’t have a release date for the paperback yet, but I anticipate that will be within the next month or so.
I’m extremely proud of Soulbrand. I think it’s one of my strongest books to date and I truly hope that readers enjoy it.
Best,
Andrew
One more quick thing: a group of awesome people has started a new Discord specifically for role-playing in the world of Arcane Ascension. If you’re interested in participating, you can find that Discord, The Perfect Stranger, here.
Soulbrand is now out on Kindle in the US. Other regions may get it at different times of day. You can get it here!
Hey all,
I’m going to do a quick Q&A for Soulbrand’s launch over on the Climber’s Court in a few minutes! Please feel free to come by and listen if you’re interested.
Hey everyone,
While you’re all waiting for Soulbrand’s release on Friday, I’ve got a book suggestion!
![A Hollow Mountain (The Brightest Shadow Book 2) by [Sarah Lin]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51P-6ezcFCS.jpg)
A Hollow Mountain is the sequel to The Brightest Shadow, one of my absolute favorite books. I recently heard someone describe it as a “wuxia Stormlight Archives”, and I think that’s a pretty accurate starting place, but I think the author – Sarah Lin – has managed to make this stand apart from the genre’s foundations even further than that.
Unlike many progression fantasies, these are third person books with balanced casts of several characters (which draws a part of the Stormlight comparison). It delves deeply into the motivations of each character and the complexities of their relationships, both with each other and other members of the cast that don’t get perspective chapters. I’ll give you fair warning that these are massive books – that’s part of why I like them, but much like with Stormlight, getting involved can be a heavy task.
This particular book does a great job of expanding on the characters and mythology of the first book, as well as introducing a few new cast members that have quickly worked their way into my heart. I’m excited to see more of all of them in the third book – and beyond.
If you’ve already read The Brightest Shadow and enjoyed it, I’d recommend picking this one up right away. If you haven’t read The Brightest Shadow…well, go do that. I think you’ll love it.
