COUNTDOWN TO THE RELEASE OF DUKE OF ITHACA – 11 days!!
We are officially at the 11 day mark until the release of The Duke of Ithaca!
April has been a hard month, but it has also had its tremendous joys and victories. I’m still working to get accommodations at work, and while it isn’t as smooth going as I would like (a lot of people still don’t understand what accommodations even are and what they’re for), I am determined to keep pushing for it. I have also met with my new psychiatrist and, while I definitely wish I hadn’t needed to change to this doctor, I am also grateful that she seems to be good fit. She’s compassionate, understanding, and listens well.
I have also been F I N A L L Y getting back into revising A Shift of Crimson. I received feedback from my sensitivity reader, and her response was incredibly motivating. I wasn’t even slotted to work on the third draft until May, but I was too excited to hold myself back. I’m already through some big revisions up through chapter 6, which means I’m over halfway done revising the first third of this book. And it isn’t just the ability to get the revisions done, it’s also seeing where the novel needs to go to reach the place I imagined when I drafted it. That’s a really huge accomplishment because it means every subsequent draft is actually going to continue to take the shape I want them to.
It also means that I am that much close to getting a polished draft. My characters (Scarlet, Liam, Nasya, Florynce, Mothers Lynx and Fornax, and my villain, Kyndra) are feeling much more thoroughly developed, with their motivations and internal conflicts making sense. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but I am on the right track to get there. If I’m lucky, I’ll be done with the third draft by the end of April/first week of May, and then hopefully I can complete the fourth draft by the end of May, and then send it out to my beta readers one last time.
I am, most definitely, going to make it to the December 21st publication goal, barring any other mental breakdowns, and that has me giddy.
Once The Duke of Ithaca is published and I’ve successfully marketed it for the first month of its release, I’ll be starting on the second book in the Olympic Fates Saga: The Duchess of Ithaca. This book is going to pick up where The Duke of Ithaca leaves off, and throughout the course of the book, it will set up all of the pieces for the third book, which will start to cover the events of The Iliad. The Duchess of Ithaca will continue to cover the marriage between Odysseus and Penelope: there will be love, sex, passion, disappointment, heartbreak, and confusion. The book will also introduce the two characters who will feature the most prominently in books 3, 4, and 5: Hades and Persephone.
Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, both Olympians. In my series, the gods and goddesses live among humans disguised as either lower nobility, or landed gentry. This is to allow them maximum ability to cause mischief among the people. Persephone, while she is a goddess in Greek Mythology, does not know she’s a goddess in my series; neither of her parents live with her and, at least for the first book, she’s not even going to know who her parents are. She lives alone, said to be the orphaned daughter of a marquess, and is unmarried when book 2 begins and we meet her more fully.
Hades is the ruler of the underworld and sibling to Zeus. (Technically also the sibling to Demeter, but I don’t like the incestuous nature of that between Zeus and Demeter, so Demeter is not going to be the sister of Zeus and Hades at all. She’s a goddess by other Titans.) In my series, Hades is nonbinary and, while definitely a dark, often morally gray character, is not evil. They don’t kidnap Persephone because yuck. They don’t force her to stay in the Underworld with them because ew. And they don’t commit infidelities against her because ugh, exhausting. Hades will be a main character in books 3, 4, and 5, where we will get their back story and a deeper understanding of the feud that exists between them and Zeus.
Hades has a tragic backstory, one filled with heartbreak from their earliest years up to when book 3 begins. They are the gothic, broody, wary deity who falls desperately in love with Persephone, queen of spring and summer. Their 3 books will have romance, passion, sex (obviously), meddling Zeus and Demeter, lies, betrayal, heartbreak, kidnapping, magic, manipulation, choosing between one love and another, self-sacrifice, monster romance (which also means monster sex because why the fuck not?), and a slew of other things. I am so excited to write these books, but first, I have to complete The Duchess of Ithaca.
One of the reasons I’m retelling these myths is because there are several characters who come to tragic, unfair ends, and I want to give them something better, something at least a degree closer to happiness. I still don’t know how I’m going to structure the books after book 2, but I’ll figure it out; with so many different characters and so many different stories being told at the same time, I’ll have to outline each book in pretty great detail. But it’s a challenge I am looking forward to because these books are going to do so well. I can feel it. They’re new, they’re different, and I think people are going to enjoy them a great deal. Especially with the Bridgerton craze going on.
I hope you’re all doing well. I love you. I’m sending light to you today.
