Heya! Another super late update from me. I’m doing fine, still alive, financially secure, and in good health. Been mostly doing drafts on Cradle of Sea and Soil and getting through my Steam backlog during breaks.

I’ve mostly kept my head down and focused on getting my novel out, which has worked out pretty well. I’m very proud of Cradle of Sea and Soil and so far everything’s on track for SPFBO 6 if there is one. I will be finishing a few final drafts this week then sending it off to get professionally edited.

The cover artwork has been done for some time now, so right now I’m just waiting for my scheduled slot with Shawn King of stk•kreations. He’s done some fantastic work with other covers (and, probably none too subtly, he’s the designer for the lion’s share of SPFBO finalists). That should happen around May sometime and I absolutely can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Outside of that, it’s just taking of some tiny details, like setting up author pages on Goodreads, Amazon, and Facebook and working on the non-story content for my book like front matter and back matter and doing some early reading about Amazon/Facebook ads. I don’t plan to dive deeper into either of them (generally considered a bad idea to spend a lot of effort on advertising with just one book), but it’d be nice to have something and also start practicing with ads while it doesn’t really matter and I can breathe easy.

SPFBO 6 will be my first book’s primary form of advertisement, if we’re lucky enough to get one, and that should be enough for now.

After all this is done I plan on taking a small break and then charging right on ahead to book 2 of the series, tentatively named Stormbringers, with the hopes of getting it out by November. The final book in the trilogy will hopefully not be too far behind. I have rough outlines of the next two books already, so they should be quicker to write, and most of the stuff I had to learn or do only once will already be done.

So things are looking good. I’m still hoping to release Cradle of Sea and Soil in early June and it looks like it’ll happen. The paperback version shouldn’t be too far behind, maybe a month a most.

Well, there’s my update on things, folks! Hope everyone is staying safe and doing well.