A'mara Books Update

This week at A’mara Books:

It’s been an interesting week here at A’mara Books. We will start with the fact that Chapter 3 of Brighid’s Blood gained a Curie upvote this week! That would be #6 on my books to date. It really makes my week every time!

Over 9000 new words!

I had to start a new Libre Office file for this update since I’m keeping them by month so that I can look back. The beginning of September, I was just starting a new story that is now called Sands of Survival and is now the longest story of these romantic collections. (Only Birth of the Neví is longer – and its sequel promises to be longer again. Maybe I will get to novel length one day, lol. Half novels are plenty long enough for my purpose though.)
Anyway, all 9000 new words went to Sands of Survival which now sits at 39,000 words. I expect another 1000-2000 as my thread-builder file becomes bare and I wrap this story up this coming week. I dare say that you’re going to like these Yeziling… eventually.

Re-editing and republishing

I finally finished the re-edit of Friendship on Fire that I’ve been promising! I did that on Thursday and reuploaded it, so the book as it is for sale is now the corrected version. There wasn’t that much to be done, honestly, mostly a couple of consistency errors, a couple of references to other books that were easily slipped in, and a point-of-view error that simply can’t work in a first-person point-of-view.
Since I got that part done…
I went ahead and put together the entire collection of Rebound of Power - 850 T.C.E. Collection of Romance as I’ve been wanting to do from the very start. The published length surprised me though – I don’t have the correct margins to give a 100% accurate feel for the book length. So, the 124K words resulted in 528 pages! Yay!
However, that caused a slight crisis that has resulted in...

Book Bumping

Currently, the full Acting the Part - 851 T.C.E. Collection of Romance sits at 130K words! And the final story is only about half done! I’m not trying to create a 700+ page monster!!! Yet, that’s what it has become. The reason being that the individual stories are trending larger than the 850 set… In general, this is a good thing – my writing improves and progresses, I have more threads to tie in, everything gets longer. But, I have to solve the current problem as I do foresee some of the books being actual physical books as well!
So I’ve made the difficult decision to BUMP a story!!! The obvious solution is to move Janys’ story forward in time by a few months to stick her into 852 T.C.E. It also gives Sennon a little more time to learn the language he’s going to need. They don’t speak Common Tongue in Atrua, after all.
This bump will have the knock-on effect of pushing Shana’s Courtship set back as well (which is fine with her, she’s still a bit young after all…) AND I’ll need to find another set of stories to feature. I’m mostly out of old storylines to bring into this right now as everything I already have has been more or less set into the timeline already. (Mentally preparing for some big writing weeks.)

Coming this week

Six more chapters of Brighid’s Blood on Steemit.
Beginning of the 850 TCE Collection on Whaleshares and WeKu, so if you missed it the first time around, go over there to catch it again. After this round, you’ll almost certainly have to pick it up from your favorite digital publisher (except Amazon – who won’t publish it because I’ve shared it here for free.)
Finish this draft of Sands of Survival.
Begin a final edit/polish of the 851 TCE Collection.
Create a new cover image for the 851 Collection – I may play around with DAZ and Poser to create the image I want… I have much more confidence in my GIMP abilities than I did when I began this journey this year.
I probably need some more maps for this collection… so that needs to start happening.
Update the Character files with my additional Sands of Survival characters.
I might create designs for Yeziling and Zley dress, both for day-to-day wear and for raiding outfits. We’ll see, as that’s not fundamentally required for the collection to be published. It also may prove to be well above my abilities, even though I have a fair idea of what they will look like.
And, I think that’s where I’ll leave you for now. I just had an idea for the binding story for the 852 T.C.E. Collection and need to write that down in my files before it disappears.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on here at A’mara Books this week! I hope you manage to take a few minutes to immerse yourself in my world of Terrenden – which I’m so delighted to share with you!

(This post is crossposted at Steemit, Whaleshares and WeKu.)

Links to Buy the ebooks

Birth of the Neví – 829 T.C.E. It is a tumultuous period of Terrenden history. As is all too common, there are those who wish to profit from the misfortune of others. Some of these come together in a new "charitable organization" and step on the toes of the notorious Uugli. Combine this with draconian new measures to combat pollution and Terrenden has a situation ripe for a power struggle.

Rebound of Power: 850 T.C.E. Collection of Romance - Terrenden is being terrorized by a previously underestimated Neví who through the mysterious “Curator” have been controlling elections all over the planet. In this collection, we meet some interesting women.

Rebound of Power: Iyva is a homeless teenager in Irola whose untrained power leaves her close to death.
Friendship on Fire: Marc’la is a breeder of prized caballus in Kasago whose heart lives in the past.
Courage to Trust: Zukie is an abused widow whose heart is afraid to try for future happiness.
Elect to Change: Jenna is an elections assistant manager and masseuse who has a prejudice against A’mara.
Ocean of Empathy: Kami is a chola student in Varkevand who has been assigned to protect Ardin, a man who has his own reasons to distrust A’mara.

Don’t forget!

I’m still offering 1 Steem Basic Income share for any newbie (100 SP or less) who asks me a question which prompts an “Ask the Author” post! I’m thinking about putting these into a Dbooks ebook all its own, actually.

Image Credits:

Cover art based on image from Pexels – creative commons, no attribution required.
Shaze based on a katana from Pixabay – creative commons, no attribution required.
Shaze chapter ender from Wikipedia Commons – used within terms of license – sword adapted for use as a shaze.
Grass texture for maps from Pixabay

All maps/editing by myself on GIMP and Photoscape, both free programs.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Although the penalty of knowing me in real life is that you will influence the creation of my characters; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.