An Overdue Update

Well, I’ve been a bit quiet on the website front recently. However, there has been a good reason for this. I recently got married and went on my honeymoon. Also, it is a very busy time of year for my day job. Having said that, I haven’t been idle as far as my books are concerned. Here are some of the upcoming posts / things I am working on:

1. Concept art for the characters from Shadow of Aether.

2. Preview excerpts from both Shadow of Aether and Nomadic Guardian.

3. A short story from my upcoming anthology.

4. More information regarding the publication of my books. First up will be Shadow of Aether.

Work Page – Updated

I have updated the Work page of the site will the following pieces of information:

Shadow of Aether – I have included the blurb for ‘Shadow of Aether’ and have moved it to the top of the Work page in a new ‘Coming Soon’ section. I will add links to the page for orders as soon as they go live.

CEA Greatest Anthology – I have replaced the old link with a direct link to the Amazon page where the book can be ordered from.

Untitled Anthology – I have added the anthology about Orbis to the ‘In Progress’ section. This is a project I am particularly excited about, however my plan is to release this book after ‘Nomadic Guardian’ so it will be a while until it is released. Due to the nature of the book being an anthology, I will release small snippets of it on my website over time.

Project Updates

It’s been a while since my last update and during that time I’ve been working hard on various projects.

Shadow of Aether – An exciting development regarding my novella is in the works but I can’t talk about it yet. As soon as I can, I shall post it here on my website.

Nomadic Guardian – I have gone through my previous draft of my novel and made notes regarding the next draft. I now have a clear plan of action with regards to this project and it is moving ahead smoothly.

Anthology of Short Stories – Closely linking to the above, I have cut some minor sub-plots from the novel in the interest of streamlining the plot and telling the best story possible. However, these sub-plots have not been forgotten. They are going to be reworked into short stories of their own and will be published as part of my anthology to help flesh out the world of Orbis.

Other – As any author knows, many ideas pop into our heads. Some are forgotten and others flourish into fully fledged stories of their own. One of these ideas, a potential sequel to Shadow of Aether, has already been bullet pointed and jotted down. I won’t come back to this now until after I have finished work on the redraft of Nomadic Guardian, but I am excited about continuing the stories of the characters of Shadow of Aether.

More information, particularly with regards to Shadow of Aether, will be posted soon.

Shadow of Aether – Blurb

On my last post, I provided some information about my upcoming novella – Shadow of Aether. Now that the blurb is ready, I am ready to share it. So here it is:

Shadow of Aether – A Novella

Paradox is known throughout the sprawling metropolis of Aether for three things: her superspeed; her ability to see visions of the past, present and future and her less-than-charming personality.

When she has a vision that shows her a mysterious force taking over and corrupting her homeland, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

During the mission, she comes across someone who changes everything.

Now, Paradox must do whatever she can to put things back to normal.

Inspiration – Part Two

Click here to read Inspiration – Part One.

Last time, I spoke about how inspiration comes from many sources. As part of this, I am going to write multiple series of posts focusing on different aspects of inspiration. For example, there will be one series of posts about some books that have inspired me and one series of posts about some of my favourite characters, whatever they are originally from.

During each post, I will focus on not just what I like, but also how the topic in question has inspired me. The first post will be coming soon.

Early Ideas and Work

In my earlier post about inspiration – which you can read if you click here – I mentioned a couple of false starts. During my recent work, I was backing up some files when I found some old files from an old laptop. Delving further inside this digital folder, I discovered some old ideas and work of mine. Some of it, I won’t discuss as the ideas are still alive in one form or another in my current work. However, I did want to mention a couple of the ‘false starts’ that I happened to find.

I spent a lot of time coming up with ideas to write about and a couple of them developed further. One of them developed so much to the point where I had started writing it as a novel. It was only after writing the first few chapters that I realised something that caused me to stop. I was conducting some research for my novel when I saw a trailer for a newly released film. I watched the film and realised that the story was practically identical to the one I was writing. Objectively speaking, at least. At the time, I thought the film was probably better than the story I was writing despite being very similar, so I abandoned the concept. Hindsight is 20-20, but I am glad I made that decision. I was right. Perhaps I was never that passionate about the project in the first place, but I personally feel that it was just another step in the road leading me to the creation of Orbis and my current projects. Which I am very passionate about.

Plan

I’m currently fleshing out a plan for my next story. The plan is for a novella that will hopefully be roughly around 30000 words (although this may change to accommodate the needs of the story).

The story will be another that has Paradox as the main character, although it will be a one-off story of it’s own as opposed to a sequel. It is another story hoping to flesh out the world of Orbis.

The eventual aim is to self-publish the novella online as an e-book. This could potentially happen through Amazon, but I’m not going to rush into anything. First things first, though; write the story and give it the time it deserves.

Orbis – Map

I previously shared a map of one of the continents of Orbis; Honos. On that map, there were key features of the continent labelled. Today, I’m going to share a map of the whole world of Orbis. However, only the continent names will be labelled. I will share a close up of the other four continents over time.

Here is the complete map of Orbis:

And here is a version of the map labelled:

So far, ‘Nomadic Guardian’ takes place on Serenitas and ‘Paradox’ starts on Sapientia before moving to Honos (sort of). Raditus and Anima have not yet been used as settings for any announced stories, but characters from those continents are in ‘Nomadic Guardian’.

The next close up map I’ll post will be of Serenitas, along with some more information about ‘Nomadic Guardian’.