Getting Another Book Ready

I was hoping to get the second Shadowmage book done this month, but that's not going to happen. But I do have another book in the hopper that I will have ready before the end of January. It's fantasy, but a much different one than what I've written before.

This book dates back a long, long time. In fact, it's the first book I ever finished. It was the first book I sent to a publisher. And...it was the book that convinced me that I wasn't going to be a successful writer since I got rejected. I know, I know...I was young and foolish; it was literally half a lifetime ago. But a couple of years ago, I decided to give it another try. Unfortunately, I had lost the manuscript, and I didn't have access to a floppy disk drive to get it back from the saved copy I had.

I wasn't kidding when I said this was a long time ago. Do you even remember floppy disks? Are you old enough to know what they are?

Anyway, I didn't have the original, but I had the story in my mind. I knew it very well. So, I rewrote it from scratch. I had to change a couple of character names that I could not, for the life of me, remember in their original incarnation. But most of it was still there in my mind, so I wrote it again. Not word for word, of course. But I have learned a lot about writing over the years since then, and I think I gave the book a greater weight and maturity the second time around. And, since it was literally twenty-five years since I'd written it, it didn't feel like I was wasting my time or anything like that. It was actually fun.

So, what's the story about? As I said, it's fantasy. But it's got a very different setting. Back in the day, I was a big fan of martial arts and Asian culture, specifically Japanese. And that's what I wrote. A westerner in a far-away land, cut off from everything he knew and having to grow up in a foreign land. It was very exciting writing it the first time, and even moreso the second time. There's a different feel to the magic in this land, a magic that exacts a price from its wielder.

I'm going to release the book in two parts; it's actually seven parts altogether, but I'm splitting it into two books. I debated on making it an actual trilogy, but I'm comfortable with two. I would rather have had it as one book, to be honest, but it would be a doorstopper; it's running at about eight hundred pages. Yeah, it's big. But two parts will work well; there's a natural break after part four that works to split this into two books.

Well, I'd better get at it; there's still some work to be done, and I need to find a cover for it. In the meantime, here's a link to my first fantasy book, Arrival, which introduced the land of Meterra, which is not where the new book is situated. But it's still a fun read, so give it a try.