Hey all! Welcome to another blog post in the Sovereign Soul series!
Book Two: Embers of Orden has officially been out for almost 2 months now, and it has been an ordeal. From Amazon.ca unwilling to stock and sell the series, to the price, to publisher struggles, it’s been a few months of absolute chaos. Part of me was finally happy to get it in hand – a massive 1,198-page book that’s the direct result of 5+ years of insanely hard work. I’m very proud of the finished product, from the book to the cover – but I’m not happy with the process.
For anyone who hasn’t been up to date, you can check out Embers of Orden here, or here if you’re in the US. If you’re interested in Akin Minds, you can also check that out here.
Book Three won’t be published through the same publisher, and I’ve had to make some series changes from the pattern of Embers of Orden. Something I was unwilling to do with Book Two, but I’ve decided to go through with for Book Three – I’m splitting it in half.
I have no intention of writing less. I write every scene with some intent. Sometimes that intent changes, I find a different place for it, or, dreadfully, I have to cut it out to meet a page limit (I’m looking at you Embers of Orden). But I like writing a lot of content.
Akin Minds and Embers of Orden were both very time-conscious books. The finale had an exact overarching date that all the moving pieces needed to be in place by for it to work. Akin Minds detailed Ryoku’s initial days dealing with that timeline, and Embers of Orden was his, and others’, crunch to make that deadline work. A lot needed to happen, and it was a gruelling account of those times. Luckily in Book Two, time was on Ryoku’s side a bit more.
Book Two had some serious side stories going on – a lot needed to happen on the sidelines for Ryoku’s finale to work out the way it did, and if I had to cut it out, it’d have been published in another way. I contemplated it with Lamont’s side story, but in the end, it wasn’t enough content on its own to consider that road. In addition to all that happened, I wanted Ryoku’s journey, his struggle from his initial failure in Orden all the way up to the morning after the finale, to be richly detailed.
Book Three doesn’t suffer from the same time constraints. There is a deadline, an impending threat, but it’s further down the road. Time is allowed to pass. I delve more deeply into worldbuilding, spending greater lengths of time in a single world and really diving into it, a luxury I didn’t have in the first two books. Book Three introduces a few new worlds for Ryoku to explore, and each one is richly detailed. Alongside that, the cast has a huge journey to go through, physically and emotionally.
The rough draft of Book 3/4 was already longer than Akin Minds, and as some of you may know, Akin Minds barely slid under the radar for Amazon to be able to print. As I started to write, it got closer to the length of Embers of Orden, and then… exceeded it. As it stands, the first half (now book 3) will be just under the length of Akin Minds, which is what I’m now shooting for.
So now that that’s out of the way, as it stands, I’ll inform you all: Book Three is almost done being written. This is the ‘first draft’ of the new edition, and there will be some tweaks. I do multiple editing phases, do insane note-taking and cross-checking to ensure everything works out, and then I do even more. But at the current rate, it looks like Book Three is gearing toward a similar release window as Embers of Orden, breaking my 5-year cycle between books 1 and 2.
The name for this new third book is currently still in the shop. The original name for Book Three was Remnant Shadows, but I’m now shifting that to Book Four. More than likely, I’ll wait to announce the new title of Book Three until I’ve got the cover art secured, which will likely happen sometime in the next few months.
I’ll start posting content for Book Three soon. A preview, blog posts about new and changed characters, and maybe some art/merchandise, some of which is still in the works for Embers of Orden. Stay tuned for more updates!
Sovereign Soul 