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While You’re Waiting….

Good news! We’ve got an official release date now for The Dragonprince’s Heir (The Dragonprince Trilogy, #3). From my publisher, Consortium Books:

We plan to release The Dragonprince’s Heir on Tuesday, June 26th, along with the debut epic fantasy Schism by Courtney Cantrell.

That’s just two weeks away! Some of you have already applied for Advance Reading Copies of the book, but the rest won’t have long to wait.

In the meantime, here are a few things you could do to help support my writing and your own entertainment:

Contribute to the Kickstarter campaign

There’s only a few days left on the KickStarter campaign, but it’s an opportunity for you to support a good cause and pre-order your personalized e-book or signed first-edition paperback.

Check it out, and spread the word!

Review My Books

If you’ve enjoyed any of my books, please leave a review. It makes more of a difference than you might imagine. One of the biggest things you can do to support me as a writer (right after “Buying my books” and “Recommending them to your friends”) is leaving a review at Amazon.com.

Find more stories to love

Some of you have mentioned how desperate you are for new reading material. Maybe that’s just a cynical bid for extra consideration when it comes to getting an Advance Reading Copy of The Dragonprince’s Heir, but I’m going to take those comments at face value and offer you the recommendations I can:

More Stories from the World of the FirstKing

I have two other short stories related (if obliquely) to the cataclysmic dragonswarms that underpin the Dragonprince Trilogy.

I also have another short story from the same universe, focusing on a different era altogether (and a whole new magic system). Grab a copy of the first issue of our anthology, A Consortium of Worlds, and look for “The Bloodshield Betrayal.”

Superhero Fantasy from the World of Auric

If you’ve already read all the dragonswarm stuff, I’ve got another whole universe of fantasy to offer. The World of Auric features a brand new genre, “superhero fantasy,” where larger-than-life adventurers battle sinister supervillains in a setting that is pure, epic fantasy.

If those two short stories seem like a cruel tease, you’ll be glad to know I’ve got a feature-length novel under development (Oberon’s Dreams), and we’ve specced out at least three epic trilogies featuring these heroes.

Ghost Targets

And if you’re willing to venture outside the realms of epic fantasy, I’ve got a whole trove of other stories to share with you. The Ghost Targets series features a near future dominated by total universal surveillance…and the FBI team dedicated to tracking down those people rich or powerful enough to escape the attention of the database archive.

That series will eventually run to 25 books, but those four should be enough to keep you busy until The Dragonprince’s Heir comes out. I’m awfully proud of them.

Other Consortium Authors

If you’ve already read everything I have to offer, you can still discover other up-and-coming stars by checking out any of the other writers published through Consortium Books.

The easiest (and cheapest) way to do that is to pick up an issue of our short story anthology, where you’ll find stories from a half a dozen different writers for just $2.99.

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Overworked

My day job is killing me.

I’m not complaining! My day job is a dream come true. It’s also a frantic sprint from the moment I wake up until I collapse every night.

Writing is not exactly the leisurely, contemplative life I imagined as a kid.

Faith

I think last time I posted I was panicking about a deadline for the first third of Faith (Ghost Targets, #5). I made the deadline. It was a close-run thing, but I managed 12,000 words in three days while out of state celebrating my in-laws’ anniversary.

When I got home, I turned in my pages to the professor and then immediately started panicking about my next deadline. That’s the one you all care about, I’m sure.

The Dragonprince’s Heir

I’m attempting to complete The Dragonprince’s Heir (The Dragonprince Trilogy, #3) as the final project for my Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of Oklahoma. In April I’ll submit a finished manuscript to a panel of three much-published authors (Deborah Chester, J. Madison Davis, and Mel Odom), and then a couple weeks later I’ll have to go before them and defend it as a publishable work.

If they approve it, I’ll receive my Master’s degree. If they don’t, I won’t. Simple as that. This is my masterpiece, in the original sense. It’s fitting that it’s also the culmination of the series that made me famous.

But given the importance of that project, I hate that I’m having to rush it as much as I am. The book is about 2/3 done at 60,000 words, and I have the rest plotted and outlined, but I’m rapidly running out of school year.

In short, I need to write 30,000-40,000 words (approximately 120-150 pages) in the next three weeks.That will leave me just one week to revise the whole thing up to a standard my judges will consider “publishable.”

The good news is that it’ll leave me seven weeks to publish it. That’s longer than any of our projects has ever had to process through Consortium Books. Again, given the importance of the project, I love that we’ll be able to take it slow.

Into the Flames

And with all this hanging over me, I had to interrupt my writing time last weekend because of a critical deadline at my day job. My other day job, I guess I should say.

This week we published Jessie Sanders’s debut novel, Into the Flames, which is a young-adult urban fantasy with some incredibly engaging characters. I read it as a partial manuscript over a year ago, approved it as a rough draft, and spent the last year waiting anxiously to find out what it became.

That finally happened last weekend. Two days before we took it to press, I finally cleared my schedule and curled up with my Kindle to read the final draft.

It was phenomenal (of course). Halfway through the afternoon Saturday, I looked up at the end of a particularly exciting scene and said, “Is this really my job?”

I love it. I love the writing, and I love the publishing, too. Every bit of it makes me better at my craft and brings better works to the reading public. That’s a rewarding feeling.

Auric and the Wolf

Meanwhile, I’m working on other projects of my own, too. I’m helping develop a new digital book production company, I’m preparing some Dragonswarm short stories for the Consortium of Worlds collections, and I’m publishing the short stories I co-created in the world of Oberon’s Dreams.

“Notes from a Thief” is already out (with a recently redesigned cover that’s just stunning). And in the last week I did a big rewrite on “Auric and the Wolf,” in which I made the kid actually fight the wolf. Much more exciting that way.

That one should be out in a couple weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s available.

Live Life

I was also contacted out of the blue by someone from the University of Wisconsin who’s putting together an anthology called Live Life. They asked me to contribute a work (or works), with all proceeds going to The American Cancer Society.

And I just happen to have a perfect piece: the literary story “Building Plans” I wrote for Advanced Fiction Writing last fall. It’s about a single mother who’s widowed young and trying to find some way to make her life go on working. Seems pretty fitting, really.

I spent today mostly getting caught up on chores, but tomorrow I’m back to writing on the Dragonprince. Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.