Secrets of the Hearthwood audiobook out!

The Secrets of the Hearthwood audiobook is out!

Click here!

I'm thrilled to be able to share the sequel to book 1 with you all. Read by Sean Hardisty once again and produced by Tantor. If you enjoyed the first book on audio you'll definitely love this as well. I'll be listening to it at the same time as you guys, and I'm definitely eager to hear what Sean and Tantor have done with the book.

Book 3 news

So, first the bad news; I'm about a month behind on book 3. Two reasons. 1) I came down with a really nasty case of the flu. As in a very terrible cold that had me dead tired and stuck in bed. I don't think I can remember ever getting it that bad before. Luckily the governor shut down work just as I was struggling to get some time off to get over my cold. I ended up spending about 2 weeks doing very light writing-related work, like taking notes, making outlines, and reading over people's novels (AKA, laying about and not writing).

But that's behind me now, which leaves me with the second reason I've been a bit delayed. The ending just wasn't coming together for me. It existed, but I didn't like it. So I've broken down and rewritten parts of the draft so I can bring in a few new characters and ideas that were initially reserved for book 4. I think I've finally cracked this nut. We'll have to see what the beta readers think.

Beta reader info

I'm nearly ready to release beta copies. I have several emails in my inbox (MarvinWhiteknight@gmail.com) asking to be beta readers. I'll respond to you all soon, but I definitely still have space. I just don't want to go through my emails yet. 100% of my efforts right now are going towards finally getting book 3 in beta-reader shape. I should have room for more people as well, so if anyone else wants to take a crack at an early ebook copy just let me know via my email. If you'd like to proofread, that'd be appreciated as well. I generally like to have proofreaders take copies one at a time, that way nobody (including me) is doing the same work twice. For the story stuff I can pull information from everybody at the simultaneously and likely won't need a second wave of beta readers unless I make huge changes.

This post contains an actual image of me doing my taxes

One unexpected difficulty of self-publishing is that taxes aren't as simple as they are with an ordinary W-2. Royalty income is weird. I got something called a 1099-MISC from Amazon, so that's what I was plowing through this weekend. Or at least trying to plow through.

Above, Marvin can been seen struggling as he gazes at many, many boxes filled with numbers of unknown origin and destination.

I think I did it right, but only time will tell. I'm not going to be getting an Al Capone FBI squad regardless of how badly I screwed up (because let's face it, the FBI couldn't even fill up the gas tanks of their SWAT vans with my miserly tax payment), but hopefully it goes through smoothly and I don't have to spend any more weekends working on this.

Progress Report:

Still working on the end of my book 3 draft. I'm just over 116,000 words in, with a few placeholders earlier in the book that I need to flesh out. 2-4 chapters left depending on how I cut what remains (Yes, I said 5 before. I added a few chapters.) Progress has slowed down a bit, partially because I'm also doing a bit of editing and partially because the first few chapters and last few chapters always take me the longest.

I'm hoping I'll polish that up by next week and be able to send the book out to alpha readers while I work on more editing. I may also recruit beta readers to comb through the book after the alphareaders are done with it. It might be nice to get a few more eyes on it, though the major structure changes will be set by that point. Somebody mentioned in a comment a few chapters back that another writer they followed recruited beta readers to comb for typos? That might be useful to further my goal of releasing cleaner work right from publication. Let me know if any of you would like to volunteer. I don't know what I can give out in return. Job recommendations maybe?

Thanks for reading!

-Marvin

Currently drafting the end of book 3

I know you all like to be kept in the loop, so I'm updating my blog just to say I'm still typing along. As of 2 minutes ago I crossed the 100,000 word mark in my draft, which is a pretty cool landmark. That's about 30 of my chapters, with 5 left to go according to my outline. For reference, most books in this subgenre on Amazon run 70,000-90,000 words, so we're already ahead of the curve (page count is all messed up on Amazon. Audiobook length is your best guess, with 10,000 words being roughly 1 hour of spoken audio.)

Other authors are smart to publish at that length. Publishing more frequently keeps your Author rank higher and your books more visible, so I'm kinda dumb to write such long books. I take more time to write a book and my Author rank plummets further between books because of it. I'm convinced book 2 never quite hit book 1's sales figures because I took too long in publishing. Those of you interested in graphs or Amazon's behind-the-scenes system can feast your eyes on this image of my author rank, posted below.

That's right, I am currently the 17,992'th most popular author on Amazon! At least for now... that will inevitably continue to fall until I release a new book. And the fall will grow steeper and faster the longer I take.

But I'm not writing novels to optimize my sales, and at this point I've committed to a certain style of story for this series, and I want to stick to that style for consistency's sake. So businessy common-sense must give way to my true goal of telling the stories I want to tell.

That being said, the additional income from having a side-hustle like this has enabled me to replace my boiled potato and stolen french fry dinner with home-cooked baked salmon and grilled brussel sprouts. I'm rather fond of this change and would like it to continue. So, I may eventually launch a side series that's better designed for being an author here on Amazon. Most authors who write longer works tend to have shorter stories as well to flesh out their portfolio, which is something I've considered doing as well.

It would also be helpful to my own psyche. Should a second series of mine succeed independent of the Spellheart series, it would prove that I'm actually a moderately competent story-crafter and not just somebody who stumbled upon an interesting premise for a first book that will inevitably wither and die.

At the same time I don't want to hold up or slow down the Spellheart series, but I am sitting on most of a manuscript that I'd already written when Zeal of the Mind and Flesh took off... Decisions, decisions...

Anyhow, those are my hungry rambles as I wait for my brussel sprouts to finish grilling. We shall see if I feel the same once I am full.

TLDR; Book 3 is nearly ready to move into the editing phase, I've started thinking about where I'm going from here.

Currently about halfway done with Book 3

I hit 60,000 for book 3 sometime last night. Book 1 was around 120,000 words, and I'm hoping to keep this one around the same length. So I'm very roughly going to say I'm halfway done, given the assumption that editing the draft into something publishable takes about as long as outlining the story and dealing with post-release book 2 stuff took (about a month and a half).

Truthfully, I'm a bit behind my own schedule. I ran into some trouble at 50,000 words and I had to reoutline a large part of the story from the middle onwards and remake all my character sheets. Hopefully that trouble is behind us and it's smooth sailing until The End.

So that's the news. I'm about halfway done with book 3, which I'm tentatively calling Memories of the Reborn. I'm really, really hoping nobody nabs that title between now and publication.

Book 3 will be the conclusion to the Hearthwood Forest arc. Afterwards, you'll all get to explore the Queendom and eventually the rest of the elven world. I may also release a new series at some point between books 3 and 4 while I'm busy revamping my outline for the next arc. I was working on a cool world-hopper story when Zeal of the Mind and Flesh came out, so I may polish that up as a more actiony title that I can write whenever the Spellheart series starts giving me trouble. It does explore some of the Ten Thousand Worlds which we may never get to see in the Spellheart series.

Exciting things are happening! I try to respond to all comments, so leave one below if you have something to say.

Zeal of the Mind and Flesh now has an audiobook!

It just went live today! Get it now, from Audible!

The audiobook was done by the talented people over at Tantor Audio, who I've been working with to get this produced. Sean Hardisty is a talented Audiobook narrator, and had narrated several other series. I really loved the samples I've seen, and can't wait to hear the whole thing on audio. I'll be listening to it the same time you guys are!

Currently Alive and Writing

These posts are always hard for me.

I've been trying to be a more active author, blogging and leaving messages for you guys.
The trouble is, I don't really have much to say.

"I'm writing."

That's about it. I've been working on book 3. I know I said I was going to get the book 2 paperback out first thing but to be honest... I got bored formatting. It's just nowhere near as fun as writing a new book. I literally fell asleep at the keyboard. I've heard Vellum is some good software that can automate a lot of this stuff, but it's only for Mac. I guess I finally know why writers always seem to love Mac (Fun fact; I wrote a number of words for Book 1 and 2 on a used $10 Raspberry Pi -- But don't worry, I have since purchased a real computer).

I find formatting too similar to proofreading. I love editing for story, but I can't proofread to save my life. Part of that is because I've trained myself to read very poorly edited translated xianxia novels (often machine translated and pulled directly off of Qidian) so I just don't see typos anymore. It's like I'm physically no longer capable of perceiving them, even when I read aloud. That's why I appreciate fans sending these things in. I've already pushed out several updates for Secrets of the Hearthwood with typo corrections, so if you haven't redownloaded the book recently, you have that to look forward to.

So, I've been writing book 3 instead. That's a lot more fun, and it's the whole reason I'm writing in the first place. I spent my Friday night typing away and I just reached the 10% mark in my draft. I'm further along than that in the whole process though, since the first month was getting my outline and notes in good enough shape to actually start writing the book. I'm now actually writing the book, and have high hopes of having a working draft sometime in March to hand off to beta readers. If all goes well, we might be looking at an April release. Take that with a grain of salt though. I'm still a new-ish author and I'm streamlining my process.

I'm in the process of setting up a Patreon. Several of you have asked about that. I'm not sure what I'm going to use it for, but I figure at the very least it's a nice platform for me to post stuff I don't want the whole internet to see. A lot of authors use it just to paywall their new books so the webscraper bots don't get to it but fans can still get a sneak preview of the coming story. Having your story show up anywhere on the web can give you major problems when publishing to Amazon.

That's another one of those things that I'm going to do at some point.

TLDR; I am writing book 3. I am also attempting to make other things happen, but I keep accidentally putting those things on hold to write more of book 3. 

Spellheart Book Two: Secrets of the Hearthwood is now live!

GET YOUR COPY HERE! (Amazon US)

Amazon UK link

Amazon Germany link

Amazon Canada link

Amazon Australia link

Amazon Netherlands link

Amazon Italy link 

Those are all the countries I've sold to. Pretty cool, huh?

So, what next?

You might have already finished both books by the time you guys read this. You'll be glad to know that I'm already working on book 3! I've refined my writing process writing book 2 and gotten a lot more efficient. It took me a little over a year to write book one, but I wrote book 2 in 6 months. I know I wasted a lot of time during that period fiddling with the text only to delete an entire chapter and start again. My skills have grown and I hope to finish book 3 in around 4 months, though to be safe I'm aiming to get it in under 5. That means I'm going to very tentatively claim I'm aiming for a May release.

What am I doing now?

• Paperback for Secrets of the Hearthwood
• Audiobook for Zeal of the Mind and Flesh
• Reorganize my notes
• Finish fleshing out the book 3 final outline
• Making maps for the rest of the continent.
• Finish fleshing out the local cosmology around the elf planet of the Ten Thousand Worlds. I've finally settled on a naming scheme so I can actually start mentioning those in book 3.

That third step is going to take the longest, but is also where I'm hoping to amp up my productivity the most. The notes I had pre-book 1 release had information on every Spellheart book up to book 6, though I've long since retconned or tweaked things to the point that those notes are no longer useful.

We're beyond the level of content that I can keep in my head, so I desperately need to take the time and go over both books to make sure I'm not leaving anything behind. If there's anything you guys want to read about or an aspect of the story you find interesting, comment below and I'll add in my notes that it's something readers want to see. Some things are set in stone, but in many cases, I can find a way to fiddle with where in the world Theo goes to make things happen.

Fun fact, Secrets of the Hearthwood ended somewhere near the 60% mark of what I'd originally envisioned. Early on in the writing I had to restructure the story once I realized how much ground I had to cover. That's all going to go into book 3 instead, and I'll hopefully be able to tie up the Hearthwood trilogy. That won't be the end of the series mind you, just the end of our adventures in the Hearthwood before we venture out into the wider world.

Anyhow, I'll be on social media the next few days after this release. I'll be on here to answer questions, on my email, and also on Reddit (shout out to r/HaremFantasyNovels).

Facebook doesn't seem to like me very much and banned my old account, but I'll see if I can get back on there for the fans who only use that site for social media.