Update: June & July 2024

The last two months have been busy, so I have a lot to share in this blog post!

For the first half of June, I continued work on The Captain and the Crown. Chapter Two went much slower than Chapter One, simply because there was hardly any reusable material from the novelette version of this story, but I did manage to carve my way through all the convoluted emotions whirling around inside Prince Luis.

Worldbuilding dominated the next scene, as I took the opportunity of Luis being en route to ELS Taurus to very briefly showcase some of the technologies at play in this setting, especially related to starship design. Weaving characterization into these moments to avoid massive info dumps was fun, but tricky. So tricky my progress almost ground to a halt.

Around mid-to-late June, I stopped at the point where Luis and his bodyguard Ziva have boarded Taurus, right before the face-to-face meeting between him and Captain Korzh. I do intend to circle back around and finish this chapter, but I haven’t done so yet, due to a call for submissions for an anthology entitled Sword & Scandal.

Thanks to the daily calls for submissions posted over on The Horror Tree, I stumbled across this listing around June 20th. My creative mind already felt like it was swinging back to fantasy because of the recent reveal of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and for whatever reason, the notion of NSFW heroic fantasy–with a dash of humor and even horror–really stuck with me. In just a few days, I had rough mental outline and started the story now entitled “He Who Sows”.

Quite a bit of my worldbuilding around Tyria, its religion, and its festivals featured some elements that are maybe a little too racy for most mainstream markets who want sword & sorcery-style short stories, so this seemed like my best chance to show them off in a work that could actually be published. “He Who Sows” is set during the time when Arlise was an adventurer and gladiatrix in Tyria, but she isn’t the main character this time around. That distinction goes to archaeologist and thief Tanis of Byrsa.

It’s been a long time since I wrote an MC in Anura who wasn’t either Arlise or Earc, but I had a lot of fun with Tanis. She’s clever, adventurous, dangerously charming, and comes with a wicked sense of humor. The latter was especially fun–and challenging!–as I’ve never really written humor or comedy before, but the bawdy, unrestrained nature of this call for submissions allowed me to throw in some off-the-wall stuff. Apparently, the jokes landed, because “He Who Sows” made it into the second round of consideration with a bunch of other stories the editor said he’d love to include in Sword & Scandal.

“He Who Sows” centers on Tanis and her sister-in-arms Sunna–an adventurer, sellsword, and gladiatrix who should be immediately recognizable to anyone who’s read my other stories set in Anura–as they use the orgiastic festivities of Diluculum to infiltrate a temple to the fertility god Yarhib and steal a sacred…implement called the Phallus of Our Forefather. Aside from the aforementioned humor, this tale is soaked in sex, action, adventure and crowned with some gnarly body horror.

If the maximum word count wasn’t set at 7500, I would’ve added in more of all those elements. Alas, I had to leave a lot of wicked ideas on the drawing board because I knew there wouldn’t be room to do them justice, and even then, I still had to make some serious cuts. I ended up squeaking under the max with a final word count of 7492. Yikes!

I’m not sure what to expect for “He Who Sows”. Just making it to the second round of consideration is awesome, because I wasn’t sure if my first efforts at comedic writing would suit the editor’s tastes, but I know he has over 80,000 words of submissions he loves and funds for only 60,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if a nice, regretful personal rejection comes down the pipeline. At the same time, after a little reflection, this story turned out to be solid.

I doubt I’ll be able to sell it anywhere else if I do receive a rejection, just because there are virtually no markets in this niche (and building one is half the idea behind this anthology), but after over a year working on major projects with no end in sight, it’s so nice to finish something again!

After finishing off “He Who Sows” around the middle of last week, I unleashed a fresh wave of other submissions. One of them was Folk of Rock and Water. I dusted off that fantasy novella and submitted a query to Of Metal and Magic Publishing on Friday; Sunday brought me a full request, and I sent the manuscript yesterday. Hopefully they like what they see!

I doubt the first half of August will be very productive, since I’ll be recovering from oral surgery to remove two wisdom teeth, but my goals for next month are to finish Chapter Two of The Captain and the Crown before returning to “In the Web of Fate”. The latter strikes a very different tone from “He Who Sows”, but I love the first few scenes of that story, and I can’t stand to let them go to waste by never writing the rest. Meanwhile, I’ll continue outlining and worldbuilding for Seven Tears on the Tide.

With my interest in fantasy at a fever pitch thanks to all the hype around Veilguard, I doubt I’ll be able to concentrate on any other genre!

For most of June, my reading trended away from fiction and toward naval history. World War II at Sea: A Global History was an excellent book, detailing a lot of aspects of naval warfare in the era that don’t receive much coverage. While I would’ve liked a little more granular detail on some of the battles, it jams a lot of material into a single volume.

July saw my fantasy kick go into full swing, so I used what time I had outside of writing “He Who Sows” to finish Tevinter Nights. There are so many good short stories in this anthology. I was especially fond of “Horror at Hormak”, “Eight Little Talons” and “May the Dreadwolf Take You”. Can’t wait to see how all this ties into Dragon Age: The Veilguard!

Some of the naval history I picked up is on Audible, and I’ll be listening to those during my recovery. Aside from Ian Toll’s Pacific War trilogy, I also grabbed Castles of Steel to learn more about naval warfare in World War One. Jutland and the U-boat war grab most of the attention, so it’ll be fun to hear about some of the lesser-known aspects of the conflict.

Just scheduling the operation has been an ordeal, but it’s finally happening. I’m finally getting my wisdom teeth out on Thursday!

Well, two of them. I’d prefer to do all four at once and be done with it, but when insurance is covering the whole thing based on medical necessity, I can’t complain. I’m guessing recovery will cost me at least a week, maybe more, before I’m up to doing actual creative work again, but it’ll be nice to have these teeth out before serious issues arise.

So I’ll see you all again next month…with two less teeth!