Saturday morning, my 20th book slipped out into the world… so Paragon of Fire is now available to read! It’s available in Kindle Unlimited and paperback copies will be coming out shortly.
Until the paperbacks make their arrival, you can get your ebook copy from Amazon.
Happy reading!
…wow, I think this is the shortest blog post I’ve ever written.
As we stopped by aisle of coffee and tea for my husband to replenish his coffee supply, a little box of tea that was on sale caught my eye. Green tea with blueberry, pomegranate, and açaí. Sounded good.
Being that it was all of two dollars, I tossed it in the cart. A few days later, when the writing wasn’t going well, I decided to give it a try.
Normally when I drink new teas, I review them, and this one was plenty tasty… but not too different from most berry blends. Where it did differ, though, was how bright the tea was. It was a bold purple, and when I sweetened it a bit and added some milk because I wanted to go the berries and cream route, it turned a lovely shade of lavender, and it kind of got me thinking.
Tea parties could be a lot of fun if color-themed.
Pick decorations and teas that go together. Pastel teas. Brightly-colored tropical teas. Certain ingredients make for different colors, and I was a little sad when I realized I could color-coordinate my teas with my teacups, if only I had the right blends.
Hibiscus makes a strong red tea. Rosehips are more of a red-orange. Mint makes a pale yellow, and matcha, of course, is green… and not necessarily tea, by the rules of it.
I have an orange herbal blend that makes a richly orange brew, but purple? Well… this was a first. I figured blue would be out of the question, since so few plants result in blue pigmentation in the natural world. I don’t think I’m about to go mixing indigo into my tea, so it may be the one place that the desired color can’t be found through natural means.
Where was I going with this? I actually don’t remember–I got distracted drinking the last of my purple tea. All I know is I want some more. More colors, more variety, more blends that mellow the colors interestingly when milk is stirred in… but most of all, I want interesting tea colors that also taste good.
So if you have recommendations, put them here. This one is nice for a lavender or lilac shade, or a rich plum purple if you don’t add milk.
Please recommend me some colorful blends, and I’ll share photos of my teacups to go with them.
Although I shared this on social media, I realized the other day that I had yet to mention it here: At the beginning of February, I found out Serpent’s Mark, the first book in the Snakesblood Saga, had been nominated for a literary award and had made it to the finalist round.
I never would have anticipated what happened next.
And so Serpent’s Mark took the 2022 Darrell Award for Best Novel.
It was a stunning surprise and a huge blessing, one of many I’ve seen so far this year. I guess from now on, I get to introduce myself to people as an award-winning author.
In the midst of all the surreality of the award, there’s some small news for the Snakesblood Saga, too. The first 3 e-books are now available in a digital box set, so you can enjoy the alternate cover:
I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but that was the original planned cover art for Serpent’s Mark, but it took absolutely forever for me to draw everything, so I didn’t think it was a viable cover style for the rest of the six-book series. And yes, that’s a drawing; I drew the bark, the moss, the sword, the leaves… I took a ton of reference photos in the forest and at more than one botanical garden so I could be sure I was doing it right, and everything was digitally painted in Photoshop. I hope you enjoy this interpretation of the Kingsword!
This box set edition is now available on Amazon, if you’re interested in having a look. If you haven’t read the Snakesblood Saga yet, this is a great opportunity to start… and find out why Serpent’s Mark won that award. 😉
You can check it out by clicking here.
Onward!
![Spring snows [Doll photos]](https://www.ithilear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/01.jpg)
After the first blush of spring touched our home, we had a late snow. I always like trying to go outside to take some doll photos in snow, just because it doesn’t happen here very often. The juxtaposition of the early leaves and the fresh snow were an extra delight, but it was warm the next day, so the snow wouldn’t last long. I decided to try for some photos of my favorite, got him dressed in an outfit with colors best suited for spring to bridge the gap between the two seasons, and went out.
Often, I’m not really sure what to do with my doll photos. I share them on Instagram so others in the hobby can see them, but that makes it difficult to have them together in a meaningful way, and it also makes it hard to find them again in the future when they’re so far down the feed.
For a while, I wasn’t sure if I should post them here. My site’s mostly writing/book-related stuff and part of me feels it should stay that way. But then my dolls are all projects to create visual representations of characters from various books I’ve published, so it kind of belongs here… and really, for sake of simplicity, I should officially start blending the things I do into one place so it’s easy to find my work. Honestly, with the fickle whims of social media algorithms, posting all the doll projects here might be a good idea, because then it’ll be a way I can ensure people will always easily find what I’m creating, even when I’m not showing up in feeds. Not positive on that, but hey, if you like the idea, please let me know?
Anyway, I’ll just finish with the photos of Rune I got in the snow. I think he’ll always be my favorite, because his face is the first doll head I’ve sculpted… and the first thing I’ve sculpted at all, really, and I’ve learned so much about the complex mechanics that go into engineering dolls just from working on him alone. Someday, maybe I’ll put together a permanent page about his customization so it’ll be easy to see everything I’ve done. For now, I’ll just enjoy the notion of him enjoying spring.
The first time Rune sees snow happens in Serpent’s Bane, book 3 of the Snakesblood Saga. It’s a new experience then, and I’d like to think that as life goes on, snowfall never loses its magic…
Honestly, I’d be writing this amount this month whether or not Camp NaNo was running.
It works out interestingly for me that Camp started on the day I began my next project, though! I cleared my calendar for April so I could focus on writing. Everything I have planned for YouTube is done, and aside from a final proofreading pass and the official ebook formatting, Paragon of Fire is ready for release at the end of the month.
This time, I arranged my schedule in a way that I could take weekends and evenings off, too, which hopefully will help keep my creative bird feeder full.
I have time for fun projects on the side. I have time for reading and playing games, too. I have time for weeding the garden, which is good because spring is upon us and the spiderwort that was in the front garden when we moved in has still not been vanquished.
It also means I have time for a little tiny side project I have planned for my newsletter–which you should really be signed up for, if you’re not already, because it’ll have lots of bonus content and worldbuilding tidbits for this series!
Ideally, I’ll actually end up well above the 50k word mark at the end of April, since I’ll be focusing on writing each weekday, without anything else needing my attention. I’ll be posting updates on Instagram and my author Facebook page, so be sure to check those out for updates on how book 3 of Spectrum Legacy is going.
Otherwise, I’ll check in at the end of this month to let you know how close Paragon of Water is to being complete.
Have you ever joined a NaNoWriMo event?
It’s only been a couple months since Spectrum Blade launched, but sometimes it feels longer. That said, I’m delighted to let you know that the second Spectrum Legacy book is on its way! Here it is: Paragon of Fire.
The Kindle preorder is live now and you can check it out here, but paperbacks will be coming later, due to the printing delays that have now become normal. I’ll be sure to share a post when they become available, though.
Scroll down to see the gorgeous cover, but if you haven’t read the first book, you might want to stop there, because the description for book 2 may contain a few teeny-tiny spoilers. 😉
But if you’re ready, go ahead and read to the end….
Finding the legendary sword was only the beginning.
The moment Zaide pulled the blade from the skull of an ancient enemy, a monstrous army marched on Amrochan, and until the blade’s magic is restored, nothing will stop the army’s advance.
Three Paragons bear the power to restore the Spectrum Blade to the unstoppable force it once was, and the librarian Tula knows just where to start. As the Paragon of Fire, the Magister in her home city of Jadora can aid them. But first, he must be reached—and for the first time, the desert city of Jadora is under attack.
With a blade not yet fully awakened, Zaide, Tula, and Lark must breach the city walls, find the Magister, and turn the tide of war before Amrochan falls.
Paragon of Fire is the second book of the new epic fantasy series Spectrum Legacy, and will be released on April 30.
Ready to preorder? Click here to get your ebook copy from Amazon.
The past two years, I’ve kept a vision board of sorts on my desk. I cover it with photos of things I love, the things I hope to get done, the things I look forward to. Admittedly, there are screenshots of the sequel to Breath of the Wild on there, but hey. I know what I like, and I can’t wait for the next Zelda game. But I digress.
The right half of the board is sprinkled with titles. I stuck that favorite photo of my doll of Rune on there with it, because I wasn’t really sure if he goes on the “things I love” side or “stories I want to write” side at this point. Then there’s a printed copy of Paragon of Fire’s cover in WIP state, and the titles of the next four books. There’s the first Snakesblood Saga digital box set right next to Rune, which is in the works, and at the bottom, the title of a series I can’t wait to start writing. I left space for the title of a standalone book, for when I have time to print it out in a pretty font and add it to the board.
And right now, none of those books are being worked on.
I wrote a bit last week about the validity of being a writer who isn’t writing, because that’s kind of me right now. Right this instant, I’ve been working on edits for Paragon of Fire, but more of this year has been spent not writing than doing what I think of as my profession. Yet it’s still part of the journey, and right now, it’s what I’m doing to overcome some of the biggest hurdles.
Let’s be honest. Being an indie author isn’t cheap.
Sure, I get the benefit of being in control. I get to choose the artist for my covers, choose an editor who really gets my work and sees what I’m trying to achieve, choose what my books are titled and how often they’re released. I get to decide what the interior formatting will look like. Whether or not I get chapter headers. Whether or not I get maps inside. And that’s all fantastic, but it’s expensive. And when you’re new to a genre, one that happens to be incredibly difficult to break into, it takes a very, very long time for the books to start paying for themselves.
The good news is, mine are doing it. The only one that hasn’t earned back its initial investment yet is Spectrum Blade, but that’s also my newest title, and I haven’t had time to promote the book at all. It’ll get there. But if I want to keep releasing multiple books a year, I gotta be flexible, too.
So for a good portion of this year, I’ve been focusing on the odd jobs that I can pick up, which finance the work of getting these books onto digital (and sometimes physical) bookshelves before the previous release earns out. There are ways to publish at lower cost, but I’m not willing to skip paying my editor to make my book the best it can be, and every piece of cover art I hire out saves me a month that can be spent on writing instead. Those side hustles mean slower writing, but it also means that by the time you read this, I’ll have finished another contract, and gathered enough funds to ensure the rest of the Spectrum Legacy series can be published in quick succession.
Ideally, I’ll finish writing the whole series before the end of the year. That digital box set will be going out soon, too. I probably won’t have time for the standalone book that keeps slamming around inside my head, clamoring to get out, and definitely won’t have time to start that tantalizing trilogy with its title at the bottom of my board. But it means I’ll be able to ensure the series is finished, whether or not it earns itself out, and I’m sure that’s as big a relief to readers as it is to me.
Paragon of Fire goes up for preorder next week.
I’ve seen a graphic floating around recently. Maybe you’ve seen it, too. It talks about how it’s okay to take a step back from creating to do other things; you’re still valid as a creator if you take a break.
That’s probably something we should discuss more: the validity of the writer who doesn’t write, or the artist who doesn’t make art. I’m sure there are lots of things to be said about society and the expectation to be productive, but that’s not really where my thoughts went, so it’s not what I’m going to discuss today. Instead, I’d like to focus on a part that’s often overlooked: the need to not create.
My friend Megan shared a blog post last week about when you should write every day and when you should not. It was interesting to see her talk about it, because it was already on my mind when the post went up. ‘Cause you see, writing is hard, but sometimes not writing is harder… especially when you’ve already established the habit of writing daily.
The more I write, the faster I write, but it also means my high word counts are followed by deep crashes where I feel like I have no words in me at all. It’s like putting a kink in a garden hose. The water–the words–come out high-pressured when it’s unkinked, and there’s a deluge for a moment. Then the flow returns to normal, and then, sometimes, it ends up kinked again and the flow stops.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to start adjusting to is that it’s okay to work in spurts. Slow and steady is fine, but so is stopping to refill the well. Except my words aren’t always like a well. A well refills slowly, a trickle of water that seeps in through the ground until the level is back to where it was. Often, my productivity is more like a bird feeder. I’ll have a few days where the birds show up and peck a bit, maybe flutter and frolic a little, then go on their way. These are normal writing sessions. Standard production days. Then we have the days where a squirrel gets into the feeder, knocks the lid off, and sends the feeder swinging like crazy, spraying birdseed out in every direction. Often, this results in weird sprouts in the yard. But it also results in a feeder that’s empty after a moment of wild productivity, and it stays that way until I go out there to make a conscious, deliberate effort to refill it.
But what happens when I’m out there, tidying up and refilling the feeder? Not writing, that’s for sure. I can’t write until the feeder’s full again, because there are no words until I’m done.
Changing to block scheduling has helped this a lot. It gives me spells where I don’t need words, where I can take my time getting out there to refill my feeder and wait for my birds to come back. But it also means long gaps between writing sessions, and sometimes I feel bad for not making steady progress.
Does it matter? Not really, as long as the work gets done. We don’t always have what we need to refill our mental bird feeders with words. Maybe the store was out. Maybe we couldn’t afford it at the time. Maybe we just forgot, or the weather has been too bad to get it done.
The important takeaway here isn’t that the feeder is empty, though. It’s that it’s there. And whether or not it’s got seeds in it, its purpose is never changed. It never stops being a bird feeder, just like the writer who’s out of words doesn’t stop being a writer. Still there. Still valid. Still existing in just exactly the way it was meant to exist. It’s just empty for a bit, that’s all.
Refill when you’re ready. You’re still a bird feeder when you do.
How many left to go? I guess I’ll be at this quite a while–the first draft of Paragon of Fire got finished on the last day of February, but there are a lot of books left on my “to write” list. Sometimes, it feels like that list never stops growing.
When I sat down to figure out what the book would need to cover, I estimated it would be around 100,000 words long. That’s a bit shorter than Spectrum Blade, which is the first book in the series, but that’s not surprising given most of the world building happens in the first book. It never needs to be quite so deep after that. Paragon of Fire also focuses on one location, which has already been visited in book one, so everything here is just growth.
The final word count for book two was 98,271. That’s pretty close to the projection of 100k, and a whole lot bigger than the word counts I expected to hit when I started planning this series. Originally, it was supposed to be a lot shorter. Spectrum Blade was to be around 90,000 words, with the rest of the books landing around 75,000. But after writing for a while, I’ve learned I often go long, and a lot of my books are under-written, to boot. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately and I’ll probably share some thoughts on it later this month. Right now, all that matters it that means it’ll probably grow a little bit in the editing stage, so 100k very well may be where we end things.
The cover’s coming along nicely and should be ready for a reveal at the end of the month, though I sent a sneak preview to my newsletter readers as soon as the first draft was done.
And now it’s time for a break. The way my schedule works out, I’ll be doing some freelance contract work for the first two weeks, then start editing over spring break and hopefully be done by the end of the month. As of right now, Paragon of Fire is still on time for release in April, and I expect the preorder page to go up on the 26th. This time, I’m not sure if I’ll be doing a paperback preorder or not. Print times have gotten a lot better over the past two years, but supply chain issues meant changing printers and I’m not used to the new one’s schedule and don’t know what the lead time on printing is.
Of course, if people want to get paperbacks straight from me, I’ll definitely have them! It’s just a question of when they’ll be available, because I don’t know at this point if I can promise to have them available in April, when the ebook will be released.
If you have a strong opinion one way or another, I’ve been collecting opinions, so feel free to drop me a line. I’ll have more to share on this book’s progress toward publication soon.
Here we are: The end of the streak.
It’s been kind of weird how many of ICC’s teas have been good. I think that’s all of them actually… They’re well-balanced, nicely flavored, and have lots of punch and nuance at the same time. Sometimes, though, they just don’t hit right. That’s what happened with the Dirty Chai blend, I think.
I could tell from the moment I opened the bag that it was going to be strong, but whether or not that was a good thing is going to strongly depend on your tastes. See, there are two kinds of cinnamon flavoring. There’s spice, like a pinch of cinnamon on your toast or a sprinkle added to your cookies, and then there’s hot. This tea falls into the latter category. The scent of cinnamon is pretty overpowering when the bag is first opened, but I know the flavors you get aren’t always what you smell, so I went ahead and brewed.
I learned two things in the taste test that followed:
I think tea and coffee should stay separate drinks, and this tea is very hot.
The crushed coffee beans are an interesting addition, but the bite they added wasn’t quite enough to balance out the cinnamon, which wasn’t as strong in flavor as it was scent, but it was definitely prevalent and very, very warm.
I generally like a hint of cinnamon, and I really like chai, but this one was focused on heat instead of warmth, so this one’s my first pass for ICC.
My mom should like it, though!