K. Vale Nagle's Blog, page 3

Gryphon Insurrection Boxed Set One is Available Now!

Yay! If you’re looking to catch up on the gryphon series before Crestfall releases next month—or if you’re hoping to nudge a friend to catch up—there’s now a Gryphon Insurrection Boxed Set One with ebook editions of Eyrie, Ashen Weald, and Starling in it.

Would you like to see a boxed set for the paperbacks or hardcovers, too? Which of the first three books is your favorite? Feel free to let me know on Facebook or Twitter =]

Dustin Porta Fantastic Beasts Interview

I got a chance to sit down (figuratively) with another of the authors in the SFWA Fantastic Beasts story bundle and ask him some questions. This isn’t just any writer, however—in addition to being the author of nautical fantasy, Dustin is the developmental editor on my Gryphon Insurrection series. If you enjoy the books, he definitely deserves some of the credit. Though if you think too many fisherfolk died at the start of Ashen Weald or too few at the end, you can lay blame at his feet for those. He’s been a guiding light for the series, and I appreciate all of the work he’s done helping me.

And… I love the nautical fantasy he writes. I grew up in Florida, and he did a great job of recapturing the feeling of the islands and marine life. I wasn’t surprised to see that the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America had picked Whalemoon as one of the picks for the Fantastic Beasts bundle. It’s a great match, and it was good to see a familiar face among the authors this year.

VALE NAGLE:
Hello, Dustin!

I’ve noticed how excited other interviewers (like Richard Parry in your interview from last week) have been to talk to you, and while I think you’re a very smart person and that sense of awe is earned, I also come from the place where, when we’re both not busy working on books, we often ramble to each other about the author business, editing, and books we love. Sure, you’re also an impressive writer, editor, and artist. I guess I wanted to say that, unlike your past interviewers, I’m not intimidated by you. =]

Having set that as the precedent, I just wanted to add that I love Whalemoon. I was in the middle of a 100 book reading challenge when I received my advanced reader copy, and I just happened to start reading it a little that evening when I didn’t have my usual e-reader on me. The moment I hit the shark selkie, I was in. (I refuse to say “hooked” when we’re talking nautical fantasy.) I knew I was going to drop everything to finish reading Whalemoon that night.

So my first question is this: how did you come up with the character of Mako? Listening to the audiobook, I suspect the narrator loves her as much as I do.

DUSTIN PORTA:
Oh, the narrator took that character in a completely different direction than expected.  We had a long conversation about how neither of us knew how to voice her. 

I just gave up and told Lynsey to go wild with it and see what she came up with. The result was instead of sounding like a crusty old sailor, she sounded like a know-it-all teacher’s pet. It added an entirely new dimension to her personality. Which informed some of the decisions I made while writing book two.

You just had to ask the selkie question. I’ve been dodging this question since you first mentioned it but I guess now I have to tell you. I had no idea what a selkie was until you told me that I had written one.

Ironically, Mako was inspired not by Scottish, but by Irish folklore. The story goes that Ireland was first settled by one man and 50 women. And the man I guess wasn’t up to the task so he jumped into a river, turned into a salmon and swam away. No explanation. This happens all the time in Irish folklore. While Mako’s transition is a little more detailed, the goal was the same. I wanted it to be something that people in the book just take for granted without needing to know how it’s possible. 

At the same time I was re-watching my old DVD of Jacques Cousteau’s river adventures. It was the episode where he journeyed up the Amazon and interviewed villagers about local folklore. The most interesting to me was the pink dolphins of the Amazon who turn into beautiful humans and cause all sorts of terrible mischief.

We weren’t given an explanation for why it happens, that’s just something that dolphins do. So that’s how it happened in my book. Flopping onto land and shaking off their shark skin to become human is just something that sharks do.

It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t know about selkies or I might have written her as a seal instead of a shark. 

All right, I guess I should turn the question back on you. You have taken an even stricter no magic approach to your books than I did. Everything has a biological explanation. And it is treated in such a way that it all feels very magical. Is there an early draft of your first book that includes real magic, or did you know that you wanted to write a magic free story from the beginning? Why do weird animal adaptations feel so magical and awe inspiring?

Also, what is a serpentine whale, and is it really possible for a gryphon to train one?

VALE:
That’s really interesting about the pink river dolphins. It seems like selkies are almost a kind of universal myth that exist in different forms in different cultures. I’d go so far as to say that selkies are much less interesting when they’re dolphins or seals. Those don’t capture my imagination the way Mako did. The eyes, the teeth—she’s a brilliant image even before you get to know her.

The lack of magic in Eyrie really sprang out of the origins of the gryphons themselves. There are many ways to write gryphons. Magic constructs, magical creations, genetic engineering gone awry—take your pick. I wanted to try something different and find an ecosystem that could support them. Once I’d made that decision, having mages or scientists didn’t make sense. And to help support the idea of an ecosystem with gryphons as the apex predators, I limited the land-based mammals to a few invasive rodents and made certain every other animal in the series was real, even if it was extinct in our world. The serpentine whale is based upon a real, serpent-shaped whale: the basilosaurus.

Genre is a funny thing. The same way a science fiction novel can throw science out the window and revert to knights fighting space wizards and laser dragons, fantasy can sometimes look very different from what Grandpa Tolkien read as a boy. You can strip away the magic, the humans, the swords, and still create something that’s undeniably fantasy. And I love that.

Of course, fantasy thrives on sense of wonder, but nature handles that nicely. There’s nothing I love more than learning about new cats and birds to base gryphons off of. I had no idea there were so many water-loving cats to pair with cranes and diving petrels, but coastal gryphons are a joy to write. Then there’s gryphons based entirely on extinct species like the Haast’s eagle and saber-toothed tigers. And that’s before we even start looking at green beard altruism, oilbirds, microraptors, sandgrouse, or pumpkins for inspiration.

So the answer to why nature feels magical is that, well, it is. Maybe not in the hocus-pocus, “I cast fireball” sense of the term, but I’m always impressed by the world we live in. We say dragons aren’t real, but is a wyvern really that different from Hatzegopteryx, a pterosaur that weighed 850lbs, could fly, and preyed upon dinosaurs? Or we talk about magical shapeshifting spells, then read about parasitic plants that use horizontal gene transfer to borrow the DNA from their prey. Doppelgangers, demons, and changelings are the stuff of legend, but several types of spiders kidnap ant children, steal their scent, then hide in ant hives, preying upon any ants who find themselves alone away from the hive.

Pulling myself back from listing off more strange animal facts, something I really appreciated from Whalemoon was the focus on storytelling. I suppose all authors are storytellers at their core, but you really seem to love not just the story on a novel level, but the stories that the characters inside the novel tell themselves and others. A high school student could fill an essay with peeling back the stories in sea shanties, the stories of past whalepike owners, those told in jewelry, those told by the sharkling, and those told by her enemies.

In a way, Whalemoon is a story about storytellers. Where does your love of storytellers come from? Why the emphasis on the stories we tell each other?

DUSTIN:
I don’t know. Maybe because I have a short attention span and I like big stories stitched together from little stories (Moby Dick, Dracula, Canterbury Tales). But also, stories are how we learn. I can read an entire novel without bothering to learn the main character’s name. But I will remember an interesting moth on the third page of the second chapter, because it taught me the the character is observant. And because I’m interested in bug and where to find them.

As a poet, I learned that rhymes were created to help storytellers remember long epics. If an ancient bard couldn’t remember the next line of a story, she could at least guess what the next rhyme would be and go from there. I don’t know if you noticed, but there is no writing in Whalemoon. It doesn’t exist. Even on maps and drawings, nobody has invented language. This is particularly important when the legends surrounding a magic sword are the only thing that gives it power. So, where you have stripped magic out of your fantasy and replaced it with biology, I stripped it out and replaced it with stories and superstition. 

There is a small glitch in the magic system that happens when blood interacts with steel. Swords that spill blood for a purpose develop a memory of their own and will twist fate to make it happen again. That is the closest I come to real rules of magic.

It might not be apparent in book one, but Phehl’s people are unique in that they have invented pictographs. In a world where oral storytelling can change the course of history, the ability to carve a story into bone and make it permanent is actually very dangerous. And there are some clues, in the confusing wording or the opening poem that more history has taken place on Phehl’s little Atoll than anyone realizes. That’s second problem with writing down stories instead of memorizing them, you can change what is written nobody will remember it differently.

Sorry, I sort of dodged your original question by talking about my magic system instead. Too late now.

Here’s a follow-up if you’re interested. Do you have any arbitrary rules that you follow in lieu of magic. For example:  MacGyver doesn’t have high tech gadgets, but if you give him a paperclip and some chewing gum he can invent his way out of a problem. Another example: One of my old characters always had a knife in his pocket. No matter the circumstances, or how unlikely it seemed. He was literally impossible to tie up or to catch unarmed.

Do you have any fun rules that you impose on yourself as a writer? Like: Owl gryphons do not lose fights at night. Or: Cherine will always be captured. And where do you draw the line between things that only you think are clever and things the readers will actually pick up on and enjoy?

VALE:
That’s a good question. You came close to it with your comment on Cherine always being captured. I think the actual (subconscious) rule is that no prison can hold Cherine. He’s the one character who never tries to fight no matter the circumstances. He’s a scholar and an observer, and even though he’s a lanky golden eagle opinicus, there’s no meat on his bones. So he’s every easy to capture, but karma has a way of opening the doors to his cells.

I suppose I do have one more. In one of my books, Lei comments, “Nothing bad ever happens when Zeph is around.” I would counter that if Zeph shows up, either something has already gone wrong and you don’t know it yet, or something is about to go horribly awry at any moment. He never just shows up for a preen and a scream; he’s always chasing trouble.

Okay, that’s my interview with Dustin Porta! If you enjoy shark selkies, stories about stories, or sea shanties involving sea gnomes with whisker lances riding flying fish into battle against sea gulls, pick up his book from the SFWA Fantastic Beasts story bundle.

SFWA Story Bundle 2020: Fantastic Beasts

Eyrie is in SFWA’s Fantastic Beasts Bundle with a lot of other exciting books from now until June 18th. If you’re looking for books with gryphons, werewolves, shark selkies, or dragons, you can find them all on Story Bundle!

I’m having a great time reading through all of the other authors in the bundle with me. Here’s a few I’ve read and loved.

Windsworn by Derek Siddoway is gryphon riders in a setting full of arcanepunk golems and saber cat riders. His pacing and sense of adventure are always top notch.

Whalemoon by Dustin Porta is a nautical adventure, but I was hooked (er, drawn in? I need help finding a non-nautical pun to put here) the moment shark selkies showed up. He uses sea shanties at the start of his chapters which are delightful. I especially like the sea gnomes riding flying fish into battle against sea gulls.

And most of my family has been reading Lindsay Buroker dragon books all pandemic to stay sane, so big shout out to her.

I’m still reading through the rest. Ben Galley I already know because of his beautiful teal gryphon cover for another of his series. And Richard Parry’s werewolf covers always catch my eye. I don’t know if it’s spoilery, but the cover of the third Night’s Champion book has always made me want to read that series, and now I’m getting my chance.

The rest are all great authors I’m enjoying for the first time, but I’m honored to be in the story bundle with them. So if you’re looking for some new fantastic beast books to read, check it out!

https://storybundle.com/fantasy

Reevesbane is available now!

Reevesbane is available now at all major bookstores and library apps! As per usual, it’s available as an ebook, paperback, hardcover, or large print edition. What is new is that you can now get it from your library app and you can purchase it from other ebook stores like Apple Books/iTunes, Google Play, Kobo/Wal-mart, Barnes and Noble/Nook, or any of a few other stores. Click the link above, and it’ll give you a few choices for picking up the ebook. In fact, the whole series is now available on the major library apps and ebook stores. You can see them all here!

And if you’ve missed the Gryphon Insurrection series over the winter, you’ll be excited to know that The Ruins of Crestfall has an August 31st release date. So you won’t have long to wait for book 5, either. Brenda’s finishing up the last of the interior art pieces for that one as I type this.

Here’s the back cover copy for Reevesbane. I hope you’re as excited to read it as I am to have it release. Stay safe and healthy!

They stole her mate, so she stole the night.

Ninox.

Pride leader. Murderer. Vanguard. Mother.

When the Ashen Weald captured Cherine, they made a grave mistake. In the months since the bog expedition, bodies have begun appearing in the night. Is this the owl gryphon’s vengeance? Or is something more sinister haunting the night?

As Cherine’s trial approaches, Ninox’s allies and enemies alike attempt to hunt her down before she goes too far.

Reevesbane is an epic creature fantasy full of vengeful owl gryphons, deadly assassins, sinister scholars, and Zeph Reevesbane. Pick it up today to protect yourself from owl gryphons!

Gryphon Insurrection Official Map

Long ago, when I wasn’t yet a gryphon author, back when I was just a gryphlet author, Jeff Brown and I talked about making a series map for the Gryphon Insurrection. Jeff, cover artist for books one through seven, usually makes maps for board games, tabletop gaming, and video games. He said he doesn’t do small maps, but he promised that if I could fill a continent, he’d provide an epic map.

Well, it took five written books, a short story collection, and an outline for the sixth, but I could finally fill in every part of the continent, and Jeff got me my map. Since Reevesbane isn’t out yet, you won’t have to wait for book six to see the map. It’ll be included with book four. Or, heck, why wait? You can click the map below to see the zoomed in version!

Speaking of Reevesbane, I have a proof copy here and it’s getting its final editing touches taken care of. My usual editor had more heart trouble, so I have a new editor I’m excited to work with. It should be out soon, however, and she’ll be doing the copy edits on Crestfall right after Reevesbane since both novels are complete.

Meanwhile, I’m writing book six, Opinicus. While editing health troubles have slowed down the publishing schedule, they haven’t kept me from writing, and now the new editor is playing catch up.

Okay, back to writing for me. It’s been weird working on book six while readers are waiting for book four, but you’ll catch up to me soon =] Right now, the series arc should wrap up with book seven. So we’re in it for at least that many!

Gryphon Valentines

Happy Valentine’s Day! Okay, I’m a little early. But if you have gryphon fans in your life that you need to get cards for, Crystal Gafford and I have you covered. Crystal’s dedication to cute gryphons is well-documented, and she turned all of the couples from the Gryphon Insurrection (GryphIns) series into Valentine’s Day cards you can share with your loved ones.

I added them to the Goodies page, or you can click on the images below to go to the full resolution PNG version for printing. Also, in honor of all of the people shipping Tresh and Rorin, we added a card for those two =] Your fanfiction writing efforts are appreciated.

Who’s your favorite couple (canon or non-canon)? So far, the responses I’m getting from my newsletter suggest that Henders/Foultner, Zeph/Kia, and Zeph/Hatzel are the top three. Feel free to use the contact form to let me know, and I’ll write you back on what I think that relationship would look like!

Tresh and Younce



Satra and Mignet



Pink Paw and Xavi



Ninox and Cherine



Deracho and Thenca



Askel and Triddle



Tresh and Rorin for the shippers out there

Kindle X-ray Enabled on Gryphon Titles

Good morning, fantails!

I’ve been reading a lot of epic fantasy with large casts recently, and I got into a conversation with a friend who says they love epic fantasy but the can’t remember more than four characters, so they feel like it’s impossible for them to read. They wished they could just click on someone’s name and get a refresher of who they were, what they did in the last book, etc., and that’s all that kept them from reading epic fantasy.

And I went: Oh. Because, at least on Kindle, that’s possible. It takes some time and effort, but if that’s the only barrier between some readers and epic fantasy, count me in. And as someone whose memory isn’t perfect (thanks, clots), I can appreciate how this is also an accessibility feature.

So I’ve gone in and enabled the Kindle X-Ray feature for Eyrie, Ashen Weald, and Starling. You may need to nudge the book if you’ve already downloaded it (I clicked the … on the paperwhite, x-ray was greyed out, so I clicked book details. When I returned to the book, x-ray was magically working), but I’ve tested all three titles and got them working.

What information it’ll tell you: A brief description of the character and what they did in the previous books and their relationship to other characters. If you scroll down to the “Author’s Commentary” below, it’ll also list the bird+cat of each gryphon and opinicus character. I get a lot of questions about that, especially because they’re in an ecosystem without cats, so there’s no way to work that into the text, and the Author’s Commentary option should answer those questions. I’ll also sometimes include comments on characters who had a different role in earlier drafts or whose scenes always get cut before publication (Pink Paw).

What information it won’t tell you: spoilers for the current book you’re reading. I considered including easter eggs like, say, Younce being secretly afraid of fish, but I don’t want to make you feel like you need to click every name.

If you try out Kindle X-Ray and you like it, let me know. While it does take time away from writing, it’s not an unreasonable amount. I’m not sure if I can have it enabled the moment Reevesbane launches as there’s an approval process on our end and Amazon’s end, but I’ll give that a try, too.

In other news, the Mega Gryphon Twitter Giveaway (4 hardcovers + Younce plushie + Brenda Lyons signed print) is still going strong. It ends in a little under a month now. Reevesbane is getting its final proofing done (I’ll take a picture when my author proof arrives, the interior art is amazing). The outline for Crestfall was approved by my editor and I’ve started working on it.

I’ve got two smaller projects that I’m keeping a secret until they’re closer to being completed, but my focus is entirely on gryphons right now. I had that slowdown with the health problems and tests in the autumn, so I “only” had around 320,000 words of fiction published last year, three gryphon novels and the short story collection. My goal this year is four novels.

Huge Gryphon Giveaway!

Remember those adorable Younce plushies from last year? Well, it’s time for the first giveaway! In honor of reaching the halfway point in the Gryphon Insurrection series, this Twitter giveaway includes the following:

A signed hardcover of EyrieA signed hardcover of Ashen WealdA signed hardcover of StarlingA signed hardcover of Blue Eyes & Other TalesA Younce (gyrfalcon+snow leopard gryphon) plushie made by RezzitYour choice of a Brenda Lyons signed art print of any interior art piece in the series!

Wow! How amazing is that?! I’m pretty excited about reaching the halfway point, and I’m happy to share my excitement with all of my readers! If you miss out on this giveaway and are really hoping for one of the Younce plushies, I’ll be doing one more giveaway at the end of the series, too, so you’ll have one more chance.

So go on, enter the giveaway on Twitter! Tell a friend! Read gryphon books!

PS – If you’re new to the series and are curious about Brenda Lyons’ interior art, she just showcased two of the pieces from Eyrie on her own twitter, a saber-toothed tiger gryphon named Hatzel and an emerald peafowl opinicus named Brevin. Check’em out =]

2019 Retrospective

2019 has been an exciting year for me. It’s the year my fantasy novels were published, the year my autoimmune disorder got upgraded to catastrophic, the year I met two of my literary heroes, and the year I read almost 70 gryphon novels.

I don’t even know where to begin to look over it all. Maybe it’s best to start with the books themselves. Practically speaking, how did this year go?

The first words of Eyrie came in 2017, but the novel itself was published on March 31,st 2019. There was a lot of editing and feedback in there (special thanks to Dustin Porta, Tim Marquitz, Glenn Birmingham, and Roz Gibson for helping me get Eyrie from first draft to finished version). I had a hard time letting go of this book. I have a note that says “Eyrie ready to release” from August 2017. Instead, it went through several more iterations. Ultimately, I don’t know if taking two more years with it made a big difference, but I think new authors have trouble letting go of their books. Ultimately, I’m proud of it.

Like most authors, I wrote a few novels (and even edited them) that weren’t published before settling upon a more serious publication attempt with Eyrie. I did this for a specific reason—my health wasn’t great and it looked like they were going to be doing some fairly serious surgeries. My spouse has often complained that there aren’t enough stories about gryphons, especially not ones with gryphon protagonists, and part of how they deal with grief is through reading fantasy. I share a similar love for gryphons, and I felt like if I was only able to write one series before dying, I wanted something that would give my loved ones comfort.

No pressure, right? But I’d also read a lot of gryphon books growing up, and it always bothered me that there weren’t any epic nature fantasy books. And that gryphons were usually eagle and lion based. So I took everything I wanted but couldn’t find in the gryphon literary canon and went wild.

Thanks to the Gryphon Reading List, I had more preoders than I expected. I even had someone trying to get signed hardcovers months before release (Hi Saylor!). All of the fan mail and love made it a success. Of course, I’m the kind of reader who loves series, so I never planned on Eyrie being a standalone novel.

Ashen Weald released on June 19th, 2019. Eyrie had clocked in around 70,000 words, and as a fan of short epic fantasy, I expected my next book would be similar.

It was not.

Ashen Weald is over 120,000 words. It was an epic fantasy of the sort I loved reading as a teen—a Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince-style doorstopper. It had a lot of points of view and a lot of problems in the first draft. More than any other book, I felt sure this one would be the death of me. Between my creative writing degree, reading all those gryphon books, workshops, and everything else, nothing taught me so much about writing as Ashen Weald did.

I realize I make it sound like a problem child, but I love the book it became. I was worried sick that no one would pick it up, but readers were willing to give me a chance. I worried the added length and juggling so many points of views would be a problem, but instead those were the things that brought in more fan mail. And characters like Foultner who weren’t even in the first draft were fan favorites.

Starling released on August 6th. I was having health problems, so in retrospect, I would have spread out Ashen Weald and Starling’s releases so there wasn’t a gap in the autumn where the fourth book should have released. That said, I had a lot of big plans for Starling’s release, none of which I was healthy enough to do. (Look for some amazing giveaways and a Larry Dixon interview next year when I’m healthier.)

If Eyrie took two years of editing and Ashen Weald was getting reworked a hundred times in those same two years, Starling was the easiest book I’ve ever written. It didn’t hit 120,000 words, staying around a healthy 90k. While it has a good number of points of view, it feels like it’s specifically Tresh’s story. In fantasy, we call that heroic fiction versus epic fiction. Tresh is a wonderful character, and I loved getting to write her—though you’ve probably realized by now that every protagonist is my favorite character when I’m working on their book.

I worried that this book was too big a departure when some readers compared it to a horror movie with gryphons or when someone would comment that they loved 120k epic fantasy books. Ultimately, though, Starling was well-loved, and I’ve decided to stop worrying about little things like heroic vs epic and 70k vs 120k.

Unfortunately for me, what came next was a break from writing as I went through a litany of invasive medical tests. They drew so much blood that I had to spread it out over several days. Catastrophic APS had tried to kill me a few times, but now it was giving me fatigue and constant pain, which required testing out a lot of ineffective treatments to make my case to insurance about covering real care.

Thankfully, that gave me time to try out something a little different, something I may not have tried otherwise.

While it was hard to keep all 100k of Reevesbane in my head while in pain, it was a lot easier to take a set of good days and combine them to do short stories. Thus, Blue Eyes and Other Tales was born.

I’m no stranger to short stories. My first publications on my literary fiction pen name was a short story about a little old lady who just wanted to be happy and ended up as a serial killer. Writing fantasy short stories, though, was a different cup of tea. I was unsure of myself, but there were characters whose stories I wanted to tell, and nothing was going to stop me.

I also discovered a secret. There’s a saying that every reader has a ‘cookie’—a trope they love to a high degree. I suppose that’s probably books with gryphons in them for many of us. But as I ran my short stories through some friends and beta readers, I was excited to watch what happened as a short story turned out to be someone’s cookie.

A beak-cute lesbian gryphon love story with terror birds? That sentence more than tripled my mailing list size. (I decided to release the stories one at a time for free on my newsletter and Patreon to help tide readers over while I recovered.)

Thenca and Deracho together on a rescue mission? There were readers who just liked seeing them be a couple and do good in the world.

Connixation? Let me tell you, “one small gryphon versus the end of the world” was definitely several people’s cookie.

Blue-eyed Festival combined the cookies of Christmas stories, gryphons, and extended epilogues, showing Younce and Satra after the events of Starling. I won’t spoil it, but I’m already getting happy feedback.

Did I plan to write a linked short story collection this year? No. Would I have rather released Reevesbane? Definitely yes. But watching readers’ eyes light up as they see a story that’s their cookie was rewarding. I might do this again sometime if my health gets me down. And my hope for this year was to give readers four books, and a short story collection made that happen.

How did the series do?

There’s a saying that readers won’t try out a new author unless they have out at least three books, usually five. After Starling released, while I was mostly dead and recovering and not doing any promotions, sales started to crawl up. Where before, a reader might try out Eyrie, now I was usually seeing sales on all three books at the same time. It’s an exciting feeling to watch sales start slow and creep up and up and up. For the second half of the year, every month has had more sales than the previous one.

It’s not “quit the day job money” (author’s note: health insurance is important for me to have right now), but it’s a great start that fills me with hope. It’s also had some rather unusual quirks. Let’s talk about the things I expected as a new fantasy author and what they were really like. (Author’s note: literary fiction doesn’t come with fan mail or gryphons or making money, but I like selling short stories to literary magazines. My heart is fantasy, but I do have that other pen name, so I’m specifying new *fantasy* author here.)

Myth: “Most of the money from fiction comes from ebook sales on Amazon.” That’s a big statement and precisely what I was expecting to happen. There are four editions of each book: a Kindle-exclusive ebook edition, a paperback edition, a dust jacket hardcover, and a case laminate hardcover large print edition. The ebook being exclusive to Kindle allows it to be in the Kindle Unlimited program, sort of Netflix for books except I get paid around half a cent per page read with certain restrictions. So I released Eyrie fully expecting there to be limited paper sales and everything to have come through Amazon.

That’s not what happened.

I’m still figuring things out for taxes, but Amazon was maybe 20-25% of my income. Really, it was the hardcovers (especially the large print) where the bulk of my royalties came from. I suspect this is because readers are done with dust jackets and love having the cover printed directly on the book. I’ve noticed that there’s a selection of readers (including myself) who love having paper copies of books with beautiful mythical creatures on them, especially gryphons and dragons. I received a LOT of fan mail that showed off gryphon shelves, which I always reply to with a picture of my own gryphon shelf.

Next up, since I released a Telegram sticker pack and I was getting a lot of fan mail from furries and gryphon megafans (gryfans?), I was expecting those to be where most of the sales were coming from. That wasn’t the case.

Actually, they make up a much smaller percentage. They’re just very supportive of authors and artists and love reaching out to let them know. So thank you to all of the furries and gryphon megafans =] I’ve loved your emails!

So who is buying my books? There are a few groups. Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar fans make up a lot of paperback sales, and also a bit of ebook sales. There’s a group of YA creature fantasy fans who read Jess Owen’s Summer King Chronicles or Warriors, Wings of Fire, Guardian Herd, FoxCraft, or similar books who also enjoy mine. There’s a selection of nature and low fantasy fans like those who enjoyed Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons. There’s fantasy/scifi war fans. There’s a large number of readers who love fancy mythical creatures on covers (especially hardcover sales here). There’s fans who like fantasy that isn’t comedy but has fun comedic elements.

It makes sense. Those are all elements in the books. While I’d love to have found out that there are thousands of gryphon ultra fans, it’s a little reassuring that if I write non-gryphons in the future, I should still be okay.

Phew, this is running long, and I’m running out of energy. In addition to fans, fame, money, and working towards my dream of publishing a hundred novels, I also met a lot of other authors. Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon (The Black/White/Silver Gryphon) invited me out to their home for a week. Roz Gibson (Griffin Ranger) helped me along my path. Jess Owen (Song of the Summer King) was there to talk gryphons. I was able to help out both John Bailey (Dire) and Alexander Bizzell (The Gryphon Generation). My favorite person, Glenn Birmingham, put his hat into the dragon author ring while also supporting gryphon authors like me. I had fun with a lot of my peers.

What does 2020 hold?

I wasn’t able to get Reevesbane out this year, but it’s in edits and it’ll be here next year. My goal for 2020 is to release books 4, 5, and 6 for the Gryphon Insurrection, wrapping up the main story arc. I also plan to release a standalone fisherfolk novel with Rorin and Tresh. Like Blue Eyes, its ebook will start as a free newsletter/Patreon exclusive and get listed for sale everywhere much later on. Brenda Lyons is painting the cover for this one and the excitement is high.

Assuming I get coverage to treat my catastrophic APS and have more energy next year, I’d like to take things a step further and start on a dragon series. I’ll talk more about that when I get there, but I have some ideas for high fantasy that I’d like to write. If all goes well, I’ll get at least one dragon book out next year when gryphons wraps up.

Lastly, my editors and the authors I idolized as a kid want me to take one of my books to the Big 5 Publishers. I like being small because it gives me power over the cover, editing, and content of my books. But I have a novel I’ve been wanting to rewrite that my editors keep telling me sounds like it’d be a perfect fit for the biggest publishing houses, so I may try to work time in to write and edit it so it can make the rounds. If it gets rejected, no big deal—I’ll release it like I did with the gryphon books later on sometime. If it gets picked up, it’ll probably be years before it’s released, but I’d love to see what it’s like to work with the big publishing companies. I’m nothing if not a student of the publishing industry.

Well, this certainly ended up feeling like a “Dear Diary” entry. If you read this far, welcome to the end! You should go take a nap. That’s what I’m going to do. And then I’m going to go through the latest round of edits on Reevesbane!

-Vale

PS: In total, I published 329,682 words of fiction this year!

Connixation

November’s newsletter short story has been sent out and it’s….. Connixation! For anyone who’s read at least Ashen Weald, that should be an ominous title. While the other short stories have been set within a few years of Eyrie, this is the first short story that goes all the way back to a time when the taiga ‘pride’ was actually dozens of prides which stretched from Sandpiper’s Dune all the way up the continent to the northern coast. It’s one small Williwaw gryphon against the end of the world.

The term “connixation” is a fun word. Imagine con-flagr-ation with the word for fire replaced with the Latin for snow, ‘nix,’ and you have the ultimate blizzard. I could go on a little, but I don’t want to spoil anything in the story. If you aren’t a newsletter subscriber, you can sign up and the first email should have a link to download all the free stories. And Patrons of any level have access, too.

Next month, we’ll wrap up the Blue Eyes series of short stories with a Blue-eyed Festival tale involving Younce. If all you wanted for December was a Gryphmas story, I’ve got you covered. You didn’t think I’d do an entire series of taiga gryphon stories and forget about Younce, did you?

On the writing front, Reevesbane is still coming along nicely. I have a dragon rancher story out on submission that I hope will get published after the Gryphon Insurrection is finishing up. Jeff Brown just sent me an amazing new gryphon cover, probably my favorite so far. And one or two secret projects should hit the point where I can talk about them.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers =] Be on the lookout for the tastiest of gryphs, the ham-turkey hippogryph.

Disclaimer: Do not eat gryphons.