Beth Alvarez's Blog, page 10

Cover Reveal: Paragon of Water

It’s almost time for book 3 of Spectrum Legacy!
Are you ready?

You can preorder your ebook copy now.

And here’s what you’ve got to look forward to! Keep scrolling to find out what’s coming for Zaide and the crew…

Restoring the power to seal evil depends on one man. Evil may have reached him first.

For helping Zaide recover the artifact needed to access the Spectrum Blade, Andriun was labeled a traitor. Resigned to his fate, he now lives in exile, but Zaide and Lark need one more thing. The blessing of Andriun’s father, the Paragon of Water, is the final key to unlocking the ancient sword’s power. Only once the blade is restored can they confront their enemy and halt the Rise.

With Andriun’s banishment, Zaide sees little reason to trust the Paragon, especially when the mountains under the man’s protection now teem with the enemy’s monsters. He’s certain there’s another solution, but his confidence in that—and himself—is shaken when Andriun’s knowledge uncovers secrets Zaide never wished to know.

As these revelations threaten the foundation of their fledgling group, Lark is forced to take charge. She still believes Andriun can help them, but confronting the Paragon to learn where his allegiance lies could cost the only thing Andriun has left: his life.

Paragon of Water, the third book of Spectrum Legacy, will be released November 26.

Click here to preorder Paragon of Water now!

Preptober Freebie: Stickers for writers

I guess this is just what I’m doing now, freebies for the rest of October!

This week, I’ve made some free printable stickers for writers. I thought these would be fun to use on a writing calendar, particularly during NaNoWriMo, even if I’m not doing it this year. I’ll be writing, obviously, just not doing NaNo because I know I won’t be able to hit any lofty goals.

So! This sticker sheet is sized to fit 4 to an 8.5×11 piece of printable sticker paper. If you don’t have sticker paper, you could print on regular paper and use double sided tape or glue sticks or whatever. If you get creative, all you really need is a printer! Here’s a preview of what it looks like:

As you can see, I had to turn a couple on their sides to make them fit. But it’s four designs to represent problems, and four to represent progress. They should be fun to use, and will work well on planner pages, too.

Click here to download the printable PDF.

Happy writing!

Preptober Freebie: Word count tracker printable pages

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve won the past couple times I participated in NaNo events, but it didn’t work out for my calendar this year.

That said, one thing I found that I loved last year was a free printable word count tracker arranged into bars representing 1,000 words. Each square was 100 words, and I could use a highlighter to easily fill it in. I love tangible media and like to keep track of projects in a planner, so having that printable not only let me keep track of my writing progress in a way that felt really good for me, but let me track what editing needed to be done, because I could check off each section as I went along!

There were only two problems. One, the tracker was only set up for NaNo. Only made for 50,000 words, and my books are almost all longer than that.

Two, when I went to get it this year because I was using a different computer and was ready to start planning my next project, it was gone.

So I made my own. This word count tracker is set up for 5.5×8.5 pages, which fit well in my A5 planner and get along well with my printer, and one side of the page has space for hole punching. It’s also done in a way that allows me to print as many pages as necessary for my books, because come on–I write epic fantasy. A lot of these books need at least 3 pages.

Since it’s optimized for half a regular page of paper, you can scale it up and down easily, and you can also print it landscape style and make your own folded booklet of tracked words.

It also comes in two flavors, one with a script header and one with a strong serif header. More feminine and more masculine. More delicate and more adventurous. So you can pick whichever one suits your writing project better. Pretty neat, right?

Click here to download the printable PDF of the script header version.

Click here to download the printable PDF of the serif header version.

Happy writing!

Back to work

By the end of October, Paragon of Water should be done. Hopefully well on its way to being edited, too, but we’ll see how it goes. On the whole, I feel like going is easier than it was when summer hit and writing slowed down. I don’t actually remember when I last wrote something for this book, since summer was a blur, but I definitely notice that it’s easier to get words down after having a bit of a palate cleanser.

The Assassin’s Bride was one of those stories that pops into your head and won’t leave you alone until it’s out. I’ve had a few others like that, and most of them were used as palate cleansers, too. I’ve spoken before about having written the Westkings Heist novellas in the “in-between” stages of working on the Snakesblood Saga books. Having something shorter to work on that has simpler plot threads and a smaller cast is a good way to keep the mind fresh and continue to hone skills. Sometimes, it’s a great way to un-stick yourself from writing, too.

That’s something I might try to learn from. I don’t know if I’ll continue the practice, I guess we’ll see when Paragon of Water is done. I may jump right into Paragon of Light, or depending on how much feedback I get on The Assassin’s Bride, I might write an additional book in that story world. Since TAB was 79,000 words, it’s not quite as short as the Heist books, but still easier to string together than a 100,000+ word, multiple point-of-view epic like my others have been!

Now and then, I consider adding a word count to my site so I can regularly and easily update progress on things where people would be able to see, but I also feel like I’d forget. I was updating daily word counts on Instagram for a while, but I stopped partway through writing Paragon of Water. Last time I looked at the board, it was still at somewhere around 30,000 words… and it was around 62,000 when I had to stop and take a break.

Either way, I’ll probably be outlining my next project before the end of October, but I probably won’t be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. The way projects are timing out, I won’t begin my next project until mid-November. If it’s a sequel to TAB, it might be done by the end of 2022… but if it’s Paragon of Light, well… I can already tell you, that book is going to be a beast, and I can’t wait to get to it.

Spooky season is for vampires

October’s right around the corner, and this time of year always makes me think of the books I wrote first. It also makes me laugh, because for all that I’ve been updating this blog for years with bits about writing, artwork, my doll projects, and lots of fantasy stuff.. the most popular post I ever made was the one about why we use stakes to kill vampires. Five years later, that’s still the most-read blog post on my site.

It just kinda figures that I fell in love with the supernatural creature that ended up being less popular in the paranormal genre. I always liked vampires, so writing some vampire stories felt natural. It brought a few benefits, like letting me figure out some publishing stuff in a genre that’s more accepting of shorter books. But those stories have never been that successful. They fell into a weird place, too action-oriented for a lot of readers, not spicy enough for others, and that made it hard for them to find the right readers.

Regardless of success, they were fun to write, and I still think about the world I built for my vampires from time to time. Especially as fall comes on and vampires are everywhere. My favorite book of the bunch, Her Midnight Cowboy, was set in the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which will be on us in a flash. So, I figure, why not share that enjoyment with some readers? Later this week, I’ll be sending that ebook to my newsletter subscribers as a gift, a thank-you for always being there to chat about what I’m up to and a peek into what helped me get things started. If it’s not your thing, no problem–I’ll be back to sharing fantasy tidbits next month, as things ramp up for Paragon of Water to come out in November. But if an action-heavy western romance with a vampire love interest and a bit of steam sounds good, there’s time for you to sign up for my newsletter and get it for free, too.

You can visit my newsletter sign-up page here – make sure you confirm your subscription in the first email it sends you, or you won’t be added to the list. Then, your book should come on Friday.

Do you have a favorite book for spooky season? It’s one of mine, right? Right??

Spectrum Artifact stickers

Most of the bookish stuff and projects I’ve been talking about lately have related to The Assassin’s Bride, since that was my newest release… but now I’m looking ahead again, because Paragon of Water, the third Spectrum Legacy book, will be out in November.

I have a lot of fun making my own bookish extras, and one of my favorite things to make is stickers. I made a sticker of Zaide to go along with Spectrum Blade, didn’t have time to do anything to go along with Paragon of Fire, and realized I never turned my illustrations of the artifacts into anything. So now there are stickers of the artifacts!

They’ll be going out into the world with the paperback release of Paragon of Water, and they’ll also be going up into my shop soon.  One sheet has the three main artifacts needed to retrieve the Spectrum Blade: The Vale Hymnflute, the Molten Dagger, and the Captured Spring. Someday, I may try to do a gouache painting of the Spectrum Blade as well, but I think I need more practice before I try it, so that might not happen until the last book goes out!

When Paragon of Water lands in November, we’ll be halfway through the series, and I while I’m still working on the book right now, I’m looking forward to starting the next because it’s going to have some wild twists and turns. I’ll have an update on Paragon of Water in a couple weeks, though, so stay tuned. I can’t wait to share the book’s beautiful cover with you.

The Assassin’s Bride is now available!

Or, it’s been available for a few days… oops! The time around book releases is always a little frenzied, and this one was a busier event than some of the others. I’ll share some information about that soon, but for now, it’s here.

You can click here to get your Kindle copy now!

But it’s already been asked, so let’s talk about paperbacks.

I’ll start with saying this: Yes, the book will be out in paperback! It’s just not available yet. I’m picky with my paperbacks; I always get proofs and read the whole thing to make sure there aren’t any printing or formatting errors before I make them available. Sometimes, I can get this done early in the publishing process, so the two formats launch together… or close enough together.

This time, it didn’t work.

Over the past two years, printing reliability has been spotty, to say the best. Proofs get delayed for weeks, sometimes a month or more. Publishing without proofs is possible, but it comes with a huge risk for quality issues. I always send in revisions for paperbacks at least once before that format is released, and I don’t think this book will be an exception.

Right now, we’re in the “proof arrived the day after the ebook’s release” stage of things, so yeah–it was a bit delayed.

A lot of you have been with me since Snakesblood Saga was released and got hit by major printing delays due to shutdowns, so this isn’t new information to you. The delays keep happening, and due to paper shortages all book printers are still struggling with, it’ll probably keep happening for a little while. I wish there was a way to expedite proofs, but there isn’t. Paying for faster shipping is the only option I get, and that doesn’t help if the delay is a 3-week backlog.

I’m still hoping it’ll be available by the end of the month, but we’ll see. I’ll definitely share an announcement when they’re in stock, and as always, I’ll have signed copies available for those who want them. Just know that I’m working on it, and I’ll update as soon as I have more information. Someday, book printers will be back on a normal schedule… today is just not that day.

Welcome to Kentoria

You all know by now that I love maps for fantasy books. Each time I draw one, it’s a little different, but I always try to do something.

Unsurprisingly, I drew a map for my newest book, The Assassin’s Bride, which comes out this Friday. Exciting!! This was a new experience for me in a couple ways, though because… I don’t know how many more books I’ll write in this world, if any, and I also drew it using tools that were new to me. My sweet husband gave me an iPad Air for our anniversary back in August, and I’ve loved having it to doodle on. And also to play Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp on, but that’s not as productive as drawing.

Using the iPad meant no Photoshop, though, so I’ve been getting used to using Procreate. There’s still a lot I don’t know how to do, and I wasn’t impressed with the text options, so I moved it to my PC to add text the old-fashioned Photoshop way. As far as the rest of the map goes, though… I like it.

For this particular story, I wanted to leave a lot of room to grow. If the story expands in later books, so will the map. This story begins in Kentoria, which is the largest country on this peninsula, but we venture north from there.

If we’ll venture elsewhere is yet to be seen. I’m not sure right now if I’ll write more stories like this, but the door is open if people enjoy it. If you want to know more, the best way to learn it is to preorder a copy of the book, give it a read, and then let me know which side characters you think need stories of their own. We’ll see what happens after that!

How do you think this map stacks up to the others I’ve done?

Writing is a physically demanding job, whether I like it or not

When the preorder for The Assassin’s Bride went up, I wasn’t ready. The book wasn’t done. After a writing drought all summer, leaving me with next to no words written across several months, I wasn’t sure I’d get it done at all. But now work on the book is wrapping up, and I’m a little relieved.

Deadlines can be useful. They can also be stressful if they’re demanding, because they don’t leave a lot of room for error. I wrote the book slower than what I wanted, because I ran into problems with my physical capabilities. Nobody likes to admit they can’t do something, but sometimes we have to sit down and just say it. Sometimes, you physically can’t.

I love writing, but it’s hard. Not just the creative part, not just the finding time part, but the actual, physical act of writing. As I do more, I also realize that I have more physical limitations than some. I made changes to my work area so it was more ergonomic, but I still ended every writing day in pain because my joints bend in directions they aren’t really supposed to, and that means even supportive chairs and arm rests and palm rests can’t spare my body when it’s already just not quite right.

I envy the people who can regularly do ten thousand word days. I envy the people who do eight thousand, and the ones who do five thousand. I can hit five thousand, sometimes even a few days in a row, but by the end of it, I’m in such sorry shape that I have to take time off. Pacing myself is better; it’s better to do 2,500 words every day, consistently, than to do 20k in a week and then need two weeks to recover.

Writing is a physically demanding job. We can buy ergonomic chairs or standing desks, but it doesn’t change the fact that it requires us to stay in one place for extended periods of time, committing repetitive movements that, over time, will grind down bones.

When they say creativity takes blood, sweat, and tears, they mean it; finishing that book took a lot out of me. I don’t learn my lesson, though, because I’ll be finishing Paragon of Water next, so it can be released in November.

Onward.

Cover Reveal: The Assassin’s Bride

The time is close! The Assassin’s Bride has moved into final edits, and that means it’s coming soon. And that means… it’s finally time to share a bit more about what it is.

A meeting with the king was supposed to fix the trouble Thea’s family left behind. Instead, she witnessed his death.

As the one person granted entry to the throne room, she’s now implicated in his murder. The assassin who killed him can help her escape the gallows… for a price.

After all, Thea’s no simple seamstress. As a Threadmancer, she can sew power into garments—including forbidden illusory magic that could allow the king’s alarmingly charming killer to escape forever.

In return for his aid, Gil asks for nothing but these illusions. But as they flee under the guise of being newlyweds, Thea realizes the motives behind his actions may be darker than anything she ever imagined, and two problems come to light:
No matter how dangerous the truth is, she’s not afraid of him… and she might be falling in love.

The Assassin’s Bride is a sweet high fantasy romance that delivers a whole story with a happily-ever-after ending on its own. While generally clean, it is a story about an assassin and contains action and violence on a level similar to the Lord of the Rings films.

The Assassin’s Bride will be released on September 9.

Click here to preorder your Kindle copy now!