Benjamin Medrano's Blog, page 46

May 6th Update

I tried to write the short story idea to introduce people to Through the Fire this past week, and it was easy enough… and then I realized it was a better prologue than what I had in mind. So I incorporated it into book 1 of Through the Fire, titled The Avatar’s Flames. I’m kind of bemused, because I intended not to get into the series until I got back from the convention at the end of the month, but it appears that isn’t going to happen. I have about 6500 words written on the book, and intend...

Elves in Senkar

As I’ve said in many, many places, I adore elves. If I could be reincarnated as an elf, I’d be happy as a clam. That failing, I write about them, and I make no apologies about it. Thus, I’d be sorely remiss if I didn’t address them in Senkar and thus for Through the Fire.

The thing is, many of my elves are subtly or markedly different than elves in other settings. In Senkar, elves rarely reach past the age of 1,000, mostly because their souls absorb so much mana that eventually their bodies c...

April 29th Update

I was on a roll this week, and I finished editing Ancient Dreams and sent it to the editor early. The book has only a couple of outright new scenes, but a lot of minor aspects of the book have changed to try to help the writing flow more smoothly. Since I finished it to that degree, I decided to go ahead and Put it up for Pre-Order.

I want to add that I put the release date for July 15th because that’s when I can guarantee the editor can have the project done by. He has a lot of other clients...

April 22nd Update

I’m currently slightly less than two-thirds of the way through re-editing Ancient Dreams, and am hopeful about hitting a few self-imposed deadlines regarding it. There isn’t a huge amount to say about it at the moment… most of the things I’ve been working on has been clearing up wordings and the like. I suspect most of the additional content will be centered in Spells of Old, as I’m just getting to the winter. We’ll see, though.

I’ve also been working on a short story sequel to A Date Gone Aw...

Mid-Week Madness

Is it only Wednesday? Yeesh. So, today I anticipate reaching about the halfway point through the Ancient Dreams document. It’s enormous, but I’m just getting to the points I think need the most expansions on, so I suspect I’ll be slowing down when I hit them. My days have been further complicated by contractors, heating problems, random snowstorms, and a cat nibbling on my ankles when he thinks I’m ignoring him.

I’ve also been brainstorming heavily for Through the Fire, and I keep having to t...

April 15th Update

This week I finished my edit of Ancient Ruins for the Ancient Dreams omnibus, and got started on Spells of Old. Last week I said I needed to do better, and I managed it this week, but it’s… interesting, reading my older books and seeing where I may have gone slightly off-course in other books. It doesn’t help that both Born a Queen and Marin’s Codex were supposed to be more slice of life stories to begin with, but I could do with a reminder. Maybe I just need to re-read Ancient Ruins between...

April 8th Update

So, this past week I began going through a compiled file of Ancient Ruins, Spells of Old, and Halls of Power to edit it anew for the Ancient Dreams omnibus. Ignoring the author’s notes and the like, it came in at about 373,000 words, or well over 1,000 pages at even the more optimistic estimates of how many words fit on a page. The Word document I have open is over 670 pages long as well, which is a daunting project. This past week I managed to get through just over 90 pages… which isn’t fast...

Musings on Future Series

So, as I edit Ancient Dreams and see some commentary on Down with the Queen, I’ve thought about my project list… and have been forced to sigh in some frustration. See, one of my biggest problems is that I have too many ideas I want to write. I find coming up with the setting for a story easy, and sometimes a simple picture can spark the creation of a massive story.

Last year I put up a blog post talking about the stories I was interested in working on, and for some time I’ve been trying to go...

April 1st Update

Yes, it’s April 1st. However, I’ve never been fond of April Fool’s Day, so let’s just go with the usual update, shall we?

So, Down with the Queen came out on Friday, and overall the response has been quite good. A few errors did creep into the final version, and I’m going to update the files with corrections, but unless you purchase after that goes live, or manually update the file, you won’t see them. I’ve heard other authors say that the file will automatically update if 10% of the file is...

Down with the Queen Incoming!

I have confirmation from one reader that Down with the Queen is live in Australia. As far as I know, it goes live about midnight for each region it’s available in, so the book will be rolling out worldwide over the next 24 hours.

I’ve approved the paperback copy of the book, so those of you who would like to order it should be able to do so today. I must say that Down with the Queen was interesting to write, in large part because a superhero setting is so different compared to many other type...