Andrew Gates's Blog

Over the last few weeks, I’ve conducted a review of the existing Cassan Astor books. The purpose of this was twofold: firstly, to prepare myself and re-up myself on all the existing lore as I write book 5; and secondly, to find and fix any typos or errors that may have gotten through.

And wow! There were far more typos than I thought!

All content has now been updated. Books 1-4 are now better than ever. Book 3 even includes a slightly reworded chapter 28. I am glad to have these books fully updated now and I can go into book 5 with the confidence that the series is in its best shape yet.

But the typos…

If I’ve learned one thing from this exercise, it’s that I rushed the last four books. I really need another proof-read and to slow down as I go went through this process.

In 2023, I released three books: Pax Egyptus, Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress, and Cassan Astor and the Sea of Krakens. That’s a lot to release in one year! On top of that, I released two books in 2024: Cassan Astor and the Immortal King and Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War. That’s five books in two years. Definitely fast!

Prioritizing speed may have proven to come back to bite me as, obviously, I ended up going back and updating several things. These updates may not have been as likely if I had taken proper time to get these books out at a reasonable pace.

So what am I up to now?

Well, now that everything has been updated, I am going to return to work on book 5: Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm. The manuscript is already huge – already as long as some existing Cassan Astor books, but there is a lot more needed in the manuscript still!

And if I’ve learned anything from this exercise, it’s to take the process slow. That means writing, editing, proofing, and releasing. Sloooow. After all, that will save me work in the future.

I am excited to see where the fifth and (maybe) final book goes! I know it will be a great book and I’m glad I know have the experience and perspective to write this the way it needs to be written the first time.

I have completed my entire re-reading of the Cassan Astor series (read the last several posts in the blog for my other entries). Books 1 through 4 are now fresh in my mind.

So… what did I think?

Before I get into that… first of all, a note on the previous book, Cassan Astor and Immortal King. In my thoughts on that book, I’d mentioned how it had a clunky middle. It was really quite wordy! And while I think portions of Harbinger’s War are wordy as well, the problem is not nearly as bad. The Immortal King is just a wordier book, which might partly explain its larger page count.

So on that note, I already notice an improvement. The writing style is better in my opinion. It feels less robotic, less “high school writing assignment-y.”

Apart from somewhat more succinct writing, I think I ultimately like this book better. Not because it’s entirely entertaining or because it has the best character moments. I think Sea of Krakens still takes the trophy for both of those categories. But what the Harbinger’s War does well – better than any of the other books in the series in my opinion – is its slow build with a great end-of-book payoff.

The Harbinger’s War takes awhile to get going. Admittedly, it’s not the most entertaining right away, certainly when compared to Sea of Krakens for example, which starts off with a bang! No, Harbinger’s War starts off largely with characters wandering around in the snow trying to figure out where they want to go. It’s not the most compelling of starts. And even when things get going, it takes awhile for the action to pick up.

But pick up, it does! The action in this book is like a gradual slope that starts low, but continuously and consistently rises until it hits the top of a towering incline! The rising action is far more linear than any of the other novels in this series so far, so much so that when the action really picks up around the 3/4 point, I did not want to stop!

For those who want the book spoiled, I’m talking about the moment that Vaduz gets assaulted. From that moment on, I was hooked. Didn’t want to stop.

And what makes that moment – and the rest of the book from then on – so compelling is all the little, seemingly innocuous, unimportant bits that came before it. Conversations about loyalty between minor characters like Rom, Fulco, Corvus, or Walter, might seem slow and boring earlier in the story, but become all the more relevant once the fighting starts at the end of the book.

Seeing places we’ve come to know and love – particularly Konin Palace – overrun and destroyed is also heartbreaking. Places of stability, of confidence, now destroyed.

So… the end of this book? Excellent. It’s a great finale.

I think the character work is still better in the first two books. There are so many characters now that it’s a bit harder to get in those emotional character moments, but having this be the fourth in a series, most of the characters are well-enough understood at this point for the major character legwork to be done already. That is to say, I don’t feel as if it was missing. Now if Harbinger’s War was the first book in the series, well, that would certainly change things.

Just like you wouldn’t wonder who Iron Man is by the fourth Avengers movie, we don’t need to spend all the time to go through every one’s motivations. That allows this book to be much more plot-heavy.

Some negatives – this one had more typos than normal. I counted 11 typos and one content mistake. While I said in previous posts that I won’t address content, only typos, this content mistake was glaring enough that I do think a correction is necessary.

The abundance of errors I spotted might be a result of the rushed nature of this book. This book took little time to write. I was excited and energized when writing it, of course, but I do think it needed at least one more proofread. I do think I put it out perhaps prematurely.

In any case, all errors should be remedied in a new correction. You can see the new correction come out soon.

Now… going back to an earlier point…

I mentioned earlier that I had some issues with the clunky-ness of the previous book, Cassan Astor and the Immortal King. Again, while I said that I did not want to address content issues, as time has gone by, I’ve started thinking that there is a particular chapter that I might want to update. I’m not saying I will do an entire rewrite, but just a considerable overhaul of how the chapter is written. I know this is a big thing. I’ve never retroactively changed a part of a published book before beyond updating a few small typos, but it’s been weighing on me and I do think that after I make these typo and content changes to Harbinger’s War, I want to go back to Immortal King next and change one of the chapters.

The challenge for me will be to make these changes (making it less clunky-sounding) while also maintaining the current page count. If I mess up the number of pages, it will affect the spine thickness of the book, something that I would rather avoid, as reformatting the artwork for the cover is a hassle. That said, I think I can find a way to make it work.

More on that later.

In the meantime, if you would like to read Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War, you can find it now on Amazon.com

I am continuing my re-reading of the Cassan Astor series and I’ve just finished re-reading book 3, Cassan Astor and the Immortal King! We’re getting into the more recent books, so this one is a bit more fresh on my mind, but it is fun to read through it now having gone organically from book 1 and book 2 and now into this.

So… what did I think?

This book introduces a lot of characters and the scope opens up much more. We also start to see the “master plan” eluded to in the first two books finally take shape (that is, when the Harbinger and his agents begin their war to weaken the empire).

As I’ve said with the first two books in the series, I’ve been impressed by how well the narrative holds together. The pacing is solid. The story is compelling. It doesn’t go too fast or too slow. And it ends where it needs to.

There were some details that I forgot about until re-reading this. For example, I’d forgotten that Meggy had a brother who died. I also forgot that General Radish left the empress’s court so quickly. I thought he’d stayed longer.

The “master plan” coming together feels very organic and planned, having come off the first two books. The seeds are well planted for this to come together. There are sprinkles throughout this book (and the previous books) that all seem well placed and well peppered for when the Harbinger’s uprising happens about 2/3 way through the book.

That also is the point where… it gets really wordy.

Now, this is interesting. When this book was in the proof-reading stages, it got a lot of compliments on the longer, paragraph-heavy, detail-laden sections. I recall notes from at least two people highlighting some of the wordier bits and giving compliments. And, of course, when you see this book all the time and look at it as much as I did, it can sometimes be difficult to see everything as a whole, so I rely on this helpful feedback from others.

But now that I’m reading it again after taking a break… well… I don’t prefer it.

Thankfully, most of the book is not written this way, but somewhere around maybe between the half-way point to the 3/4 point, the book gets really wordy. There are either too many sentences saying the same things or similar things. Or the sentences themselves are overly complicated and littered with too many adjectives. In my opinion, it slows the pace of the book a bit, breaks up the flow a bit, and takes me out of it.

Now, I have to keep in mind, I’m approaching this with a very critical eye and, based on the feedback from proof-readers, other people seem to like this more “wordy” approach. So who really knows if it’s as annoying to others as it is to me? But for now, I’m inclined to say the wordiness jumped out at me and I didn’t prefer it.

That said, the writing style gets a bit more “normal” during the last few chapters and starts to flow again with that typical flow it starts off with. So it ends on a strong note, but has a weird early second half.

Of the three books in the series, I still think Sea of Krakens might be my favorite. The writing style in Sea of Krakens is consistently strong, the pace is great, and the scope is narrow enough to not get too overly complicated. But Immortal King lays the ground for a lot of future events to come later in the series.

This is probably my second-favorite of the three.

This time, I caught seven typos. So I’ll have to go back in and update those. One typo in particular, I am stunned no one brought up so far, not even a customer in a review. A character literally says the nonsense phrase “Yest char,” to someone. How was that not caught?? In any case, I should make those updates and have that changed by the end of the week.

Until next time!

Hello and welcome back to my continued re-reading of the Cassan Astor series! I’ve just finished re-reading the second book in the series, the Sea of Krakens. For my reviews of book 1, I blogged about it in two parts. Follow the links here:
Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress Review Part 1
Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress Review Part 2

I remembered that I really liked the Sea of Krakens, but it was fun to “dive” into it again. Especially coming right off of reading Desert Empress, you really get that narrative flow reading them back-to-back, yet this book feels wholly distinct. Although there are returning characters, it is notable just how different this story feels given the different destination, different supporting characters, and more adventurous tone. It really is its own unique book that can stand on its own without Desert Empress.

The narrative jumps right into it. Cassan is immediately thrusted into an adventure on a boat with a bunch of people he doesn’t know. The crew runs into trouble and has to survive. It’s straightforward. It’s exciting. And you don’t know what will happen. It’s a pretty simple narrative, but it works and it’s thrilling. The flow of the book is fast and action-packed.

At least… for the first 2/3. And I’ll get to that. More on that later.

Staying on the first 2/3 of the book, the story is occasionally intercut with scenes from the mainland where we see some shifty things happening in the palace of Konin. These scenes do break up the action-packed main plot, but, at least at first, are compelling and brief enough to not derail the story.

But one thing I realize when re-reading this book is just how much the flow, pacing, and scope changes around the 2/3 mark, or basically after Cassan steels the dire bat egg from the roost. Once he gets that egg, the pace slows down, the scenes from other characters and other perspectives become more prominent, and the story meanders for a bit. It does pick up again when Cassan and his friends leave the island, but only briefly, as even Cassan’s story gets a bit bogged down and meandery once he lands in Covington.

I say all this knowing where the story ends up. With the events that happen in the third book, the Immortal King, a lot of these seemingly less-relevant bits become a lot more relevant, if not essential, later on. But in the context of this book singularly, these parts do mess with the pacing and flow of what is otherwise a pretty tight, fast-moving, and focused book.

What is the expression? “I am my own worst critic?” But in any case, I do really find this book compelling, fast, and fun. I think it is a more exciting and compelling book than the first, even if it is sometimes a bit less focused in the later parts of the book.

And by the way, some of the parts of the book that don’t necessarily feed into the main storyline are still really interesting. The chapters about Aharon in Goue are some of my favorites. I love those chapters! Even though they obviously have nothing to do with Cassan’s adventures at sea. So that’s not to be critical of these more “wandery” chapters outright, only to say that they do break up the focus sometimes.

I did notice a few more typos this time around, which surprised me considering how heavily this book was proofread. I’ve written them down in a list. I count 10 typos in total – all of them small and somewhat insignificant, but typos nonetheless. That’s a big difference from the two I spotted in Desert Empress.

All in all, this remains one of my favorites. After reading books 1 and 2 back-to-back, I must say I like this one better. Next up, book 3! You can look for my thoughts on that book soon.

To read Cassan Astor and the Sea of Krakens, follow this link!

This morning, I wrote my thoughts after re-reading Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress (follow that link for that post). But as the day went on, I reflected on some additional thoughts that I’d neglected to mention in my initial post, so I wanted to add to that post here. Therefore, you can consider this post an extension of the previous one.

Those thoughts I mentioned revolve around one character: General Aharon.

General Aharon is an antagonist in this series. In the later Cassan Astor books, we know he is a cold-blooded killer, but when we initially meet him in the first book, he is coming from a very different place. Don’t get me wrong – he’s still not a good guy at first. He’s rude, he’s obscene, he’s arrogant, he gets in everyone’s way. That’s him from the get-go. But being mean isn’t the same as being a literal murderer and I forgot how well this book takes General Aharon on the journey from arrogant and annoying to outright evil. This book takes him excellently on that journey in a way that feels natural. It is really a great villain origin story for Aharon and I forgot how well that arc moves along. It’s one of the book’s strengths in my opinion.

Another thing that’s really great about General Aharon is that he’s one of the few characters to not only overlap between the Cassan Astor and Empress Isis storylines, but he is absolutely pivotal to both of their stories. The journey of Isis would not be the same without Aharon. Likewise, the journey of Cassan Astor would not be the same without Aharon. He is absolutely essential for the stories of both characters in a series where those two characters tend to have very isolated, very different storylines.

So, in short, I think Aharon is one of the strongest aspects of the book Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress.

For those of you who have read past the first book (spoilers ahead), you know that Aharon eventually loses an eye in a swordfight with Haldir. Once he loses his eye, in my opinion, that is when he becomes all the more menacing and villain-like. I look forward to continuing to read his journey as I read the next books in the series.

If you have yet to read the Cassan Astor series, what are you waiting for? Check it out now on Amazon!

As I mentioned in my last post, I am planning to re-read all of the Cassan Astor series, starting, obviously, with book one: Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress.

I just finished my re-read. So what did I think?

It’s been awhile since I read this book, but obviously, I know it pretty closely. Starting with the good: I was impressed by how well-paced and tight the book is. The story moves along really well. With the exception of the middle, where it does slow down a bit, the pace keeps moving overall and keeps the reader engaged. It all wraps up really well with no unintended loose threads that I could find. By unintended, I mean there are parts that are obvious cliff-hanger setups, but the main plot is totally wrapped up. Which brings me to another point – that the story is actually pretty simple and follows only a small amount of characters. That is VERY different from the later books in the Cassan Astor series, which juggle such a big cast of characters and plotlines. I think that’s in large part what helps this book move so well and feel so well-put-together. There are a few perspective chapters here and there with other characters, but for the most part, the book follows either Empress Isis, Cassan Astor, Sir Timothy, or General Aharon the whole time. There are also not so many references to other kingdoms, other families, or the greater geopolitics of the world. It’s a more contained, compacted story in scope and characters.

The bad: Reading one’s own work is always going to have a “did I really write that?” feeling. One thing I noticed when reading this, especially in the early chapters, is that some of my choices in when to make a new paragraph were… interesting. Re-reading this now, I probably would have sorted my paragraphs differently, especially in the earlier parts of the book. Additionally, the chapter in which Sand Snake visits the ape men in the forest feels like it needed another edit, like it was written maybe too quickly and not refined enough. Overall, there are some things I might have changed, but let’s keep in mind that this can be said of any writer who has ever worked on any project ever. At some point, you have to just say “it’s done.”

On a different point, I did notice two typos, which I will try to get updated for future prints of this book. Typos and creative choices are two different things. In the case of typos, these are just flat-out wrong. But other than the two typos, like I said earlier, you just have to stop working at some point and accept that this is the manuscript you’ve written.

The interesting: People evolve. Voices change. And one way I notice my writing has changed is in certain word choices. Specifically, the verb I use when referring to hypotheticals in the past. What do I mean? Well, in Desert Empress, the book is full of phrases such as: “He gripped the edge of the seat as it if were a railing in a storm.” My verb is “were.” Today, if I wrote that same sentence, I would write it as: “He gripped the edge of the seat as if it was a railing in a storm.” The word “was” just seems way more appropriate here. And in the newer Cassan Astor books, I definitely use the word “was” for situations like this. It’s an interesting example of how my writing style has changed. You can even see it within the pages of this book itself, as the last chapter does use the word “was” in this context towards the end. This “were” vs “was” thing is just one example, but in general, I do notice a few differences in my writing style and I can see how my voice has evolved in more ways than one over the course of this single series.

As far as the story and characters, it is fun to see a much less mature version of Cassan. When the first two books came out, one criticism I got was that Cassan takes too long to grow up. But as I re-read this book and see how immature and young he is, I cannot help but disagree and feel like this is paced really nicely. Cassan’s story, growth, and evolution is not meant to occur over the course of one book. Far from it. And this is exactly where he needs to be at this point in the story. Knowing what I know and seeing how he grows organically, I actually feel like his growth is handled really well.

So… what are my overall thoughts?

My main takeaways are this. Revisiting this book, I am reminded how well-paced, tight, and focused this story is and I think that’s one of this story’s biggest strengths. I also see how clunky some of the paragraphs are and how unfinished some portions of the book are. But I approach that knowing that I’m viewing that with “author assessing his own work vision,” which is always going to be critical. I know reviews have been overall positive on this book online, which is great to know and it’s good to see that people seem to enjoy it!

If you want to read Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress, you can buy a copy here:
https://www.amazon.com/Cassan-Astor-Desert-Empress-Andrew-ebook/dp/B0C4QD2G8Q

Next up for me, I am going to re-read the next part of the series, Cassan Astor and the Sea of Krakens!

It’s been a longer-than-normal time since I’ve written an update here on this site. And there’s a lot to tell!

I’ve been hard at work on part five of the Cassan Astor series – the FINAL part, I should mention. It’s called Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm and it’s LONG. The manuscript is currently 397 pages and 110,148 words, making this partial-manuscript longer than some completed Cassan Astor books, and it’s only about half-way done!

That means, when this book is finished, there is a good chance it will be close to double the length of the rest of the books in the series. I wouldn’t be surprised if it eclipses 700 pages. For context, the longest book I have ever written, Iris, is 650 pages. That would mean, on this present course, Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm could end up being the longest book I have ever written.

We’ll see.

Because the book is so long, I’m dividing it into three sections, each a few hundred pages long with a time jump in between each section. Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm: Part One I’m thinking of naming the Jackelope’s Last Prance. I think section two will be called the Sovereign With No Crown and part three could be the Furious Wrath of Brynnereog the White. But all these title names could change and I could make a last-minute switcheroo.

But because I’m dividing this book into thirds, that also helps me section it out as far as workflow is concerned.

I’ve just completed Part One: The Jackelope’s Last Prance and, as I have two more sections to write, I am using this as a time to slow down, review my manuscript, get caught up, and reset. What do I mean by that? Well, right now, I’ve just reread and reedited everything I’ve written as part of the Jackelope’s Last Prance section and now, instead of going full-steam ahead on section two, I want to take a break to reread the entire Cassan Astor series up to now. My thinking is that I want to make double-sure that I am entirely caught up on the story, lore, and characters so that nothing is overlooked or unaddressed as I finish out the series. Once I have reread books 1-4 and then the first part of Dragon Storm again, only then will I proceed with finishing the last two sections of Dragon Storm.

All this points to a likelihood of an early 2025 release.

As this will [likely] be the longest book I’ve ever written, I am debating releasing this in a hardcover format. So far, I’ve only ever released physical books in paperback, but a hardcover could be nice for a book of this size and length. I’ll have to do more research on what that means logistically and as far as artwork though before I pull the trigger on any decision there.

On the note of artwork, I do not yet have any art for this book, but I would like to collaborate with my long-time artist Justin Davis. Justin has done the art for all four books in the series so far and he understands what I want when I ask for his artwork. We work well together. But as of now, nothing formal has been decided. I haven’t reached out to him yet. We’ll see what happens.

As far as the future of my writing beyond Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm, well…

Look… who knows what’s going to happen in the future after this book? Not me. But I have some ideas.

Just like I couldn’t let the Color of Water and Sky go after finishing what was meant to be the final book in that series, Hive (I went on to release a short story collection of stories set in the same world), I still have ideas for what the future of the Cassan Astor series could look like in a post-Dragon Storm world.

My leading idea right now is to spin-off the series and call it Prince Cassan. If I choose to go this route, the Prince Cassan spin-off would pick up where the Cassan Astor series finishes, but it would have a very different tone to it. It would be much more light-hearted, happy, romantic, and majestic. Think more fairy tale than the dark, somber world of the Cassan Astor series. Additionally, it would be new-reader friendly, so the whole point would be to get people who want to start this series from Prince Cassan and not have to read any of the Cassan Astor books first.

That’s one idea.

Another idea I have, if I want to stay in this world and with these characters, is to do a different kind of spin-off set decades after the Cassan Astor series in a different continent entirely. This content would be more based off of medieval Asian culture rather than medieval European/North African culture. But it would involve an older, aged Cassan (and/or maybe one of his friends) living in this new continent and interacting with this Asian-inspired culture.

Anyway, I’m getting way ahead of myself here. Another likelihood is that I drop the Cassan Astor characters entirely. Who knows? Not me.

All I do know is that right now, work continues on Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm. I’m going to start rereading all the other Cassan Astor books now. And you can expect Dragon Storm sometime in early 2025.

Thanks for reading!

Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War is out and selling and you can buy it right now!

I am excited for this new book. The cover art is especially fantastic. Once again, we have a wonderful cover by Justin Davis. I like the colors used here. The fire really sparkles in contrast to the dull grey of the rest of the cover art. It looks really great in person!

Recently, I speculated on what the final page count would be. At the time, I’d assumed it would come in at 389 pages, and that proved true. The final count is indeed 389 pages, making it the second-longest book in this series behind the third book, Cassan Astor and the Immortal King.

Book 1 – The Desert Empress is 347 pages (shortest in the series)
Book 2 – The Sea of Krakens is 383 pages
Book 3 – The Immortal King is 417 pages (longest in the series)
Book 4 – The Harbinger’s War is 389 pages

I am very excited to see how this new book sells. So far, Sea of Krakens remains the most popular, which is particularly interesting given that it is the second in the series, not the first. One would expect the first book in the series to be the most popular.

Book three has struggled to sell quite as much. It’s had some “busier-than-others” weeks, but on the whole the third book isn’t doing the kind of sales that book one and two are. But hopefully with customers seeing a more complete series available, sales in book three, and then therefore four, will pick up.

As for what’s next? Work continues on what is going to be the fifth book, Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm. It’s got a great name and it’s intended to be the final book in the series, which is meant to wrap everything up.

But in the meantime, please enjoy Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War on sale now.

How accurate are AI detectors? I’m not sure, but I used this online “AI detector” tool as a test and, to my surprise, it was pretty accurate. Today, I wrote a random piece completely by myself. It said it was 100% original. Correct! I submitted a piece that was partially self-written, partially AI-written. It said it was 87% original. Also correct! And then I submitted something that was entirely AI-written and it said it was 0% original. Correct!

What surprises me about that is: The piece I wrote myself was intentionally nonsensical and bizarre. There was no fluid story, nor central character, nor theme. It was kind of just a jumbled bit of loose words that did form sentences, but not very good ones. In that vein, I was trying to replicate how I’ve seen AI-written writing firsthand. In my experience, AI writing does follow a narrative and make sense from a grammatical standpoint, but it’s usually just really weird and nonsensical in every other sense.

The AI-written piece was, expectedly, just as random and strange as the one I’d written. To me, coherence of the the content didn’t seem that different. Which leads me to wonder if it’s the writing style that sets it apart, rather than the content. But even then, I didn’t see anything uniquely distinct in the AI’s writing style. The phrasing choices seemed normal, or at least consistent with what I’d done.

To further make things interesting, while the “partial AI” piece was correctly identified as being partially AI and, probably to the correct percentage point too, what was interesting was that the program then highlighted the sections it said were AI and didn’t highlight the sections that were original. That was where it started getting things wrong. Certain sections that I wrote were flagged as AI and certain sections that were AI were not flagged at all. So the interesting takeaway there is that, while it correctly identified the mix of some AI/some original, when it came down to it, it couldn’t exactly point to which parts were which.

Conclusions: It’s actually pretty accurate as far as I can tell. I’ve tried to stump it with all AI or all original stuff and can’t. Where it is so-so is with partial AI. I am glad this kind of detection system works, as something like this should be out there to identify these kinds of writings. I wonder if future book publishers will be vetted with systems like these. I certainly would not be opposed to that.

Feel free to play around with it! I think it’s pretty fun. And who knows – maybe post an email into it and see if your friends have been faking their emails to you!

Writing and first-stage editing is completely done for Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War and now a new threshold has also been crossed: cover art!

Right now, I am doing a second-stage edit through the Harbinger’s War. After that is complete, I will then order print beta-copies and do a final edit on the physical book. This process usually comes together pretty quickly. Therefore, I expect this should be in its finished stages sometime around the mid-summer, perhaps the month of July.

As I’ve become more prolific with my writing, I’ve gravitated more toward a “when it’s done” release schedule rather than a set time and goal that I want to release on. In the past, and certainly with the Color of Water and Sky books, I had a target date. For example, I would want to release on 4th of July or something of that sort. The idea of a pre-planned release date was to generate hype and excitement to maximize sales on release day. But as I’ve gone through this process, I’ve noticed the uptick in sales for a pre-planned release is only marginally higher than if I just release the book when it’s ready.

To me, the complexity and orchestration of hitting a specific release date is not worth the marginal uptick in release date sales.

In any case, one sign that things are coming together is, of course, cover art! You’ve seen the artwork before, but until now, it never had text on it. The text is once again done by a graphics artist named Olivia, who I’ve worked with for 10 projects now – more than any other artist I’ve worked with!

Olivia did the text graphics on all the following projects:

The Pirates of Vexa Prime Series (Artwork by Justin Davis)
– Seas of the Red Star
– The Daltus Conspiracy
– Return to Red One

– Apex Predator (Olivia designed the entire cover, not just the text)

– Battle Planet: The Champion of Earth (Artwork by Justin Davis)

– Pax Egyptus: Tales of Gods, Kingdoms, and Starships (Artwork by Fiverr.com)

The Cassan Astor Series (Artwork by Justin Davis)
– Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress
– Cassan Astor and the Sea of Krakens
– Cassan Astor and the Immortal King
– Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War

And so, we have both Justin and Olivia to thank for this wonderful art:

At 389 pages, the spine isn’t quite as thick as the spine from the previous book, the Immortal King. That said, this is still being edited, so it’s entirely possible the spine thickness could change, though I don’t suspect the size change would be drastic.

For context, here is the current page count for the other books in the series:

Book 1 – The Desert Empress is 347 pages (shortest in the series)
Book 2 – The Sea of Krakens is 383 pages
Book 3 – The Immortal King is 417 pages (longest in the series)
Book 4 – The Harbinger’s War is 389 pages (for now)

As time has gone on, the average lengths of my books have become more “approachable.” For contrast, when I first started publishing the Color of Water and Sky series, my books were far longer. I do worry that the thick tomes I’d released back then may have been too “unapproachable” or intimidating to readers who were new to my series. That is why I hope these more reasonably-lengthed books will be more accessible to new readers.

For context, here is the page count for my first series, the Color of Water and Sky:

Book 1 – Iris is 664 pages (longest in the series)
Book 2 – Kholvaria is 552 pages (shortest in the series)
Book 3 – Veznek is 628 pages
Book 4 – Hive is 621 pages

To my credit, the two spinoff books, Cassidy and Atlantia, were much shorter. Cassidy was a brisk 262 pages and Atlantia was 322.

While the main point of this article was to show you the cover art and update you on the status of Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War, there are other updates as well pertaining to the Cassan Astor series.

Work never ends! And while reviewing the Harbinger’s War, I’ve also been writing the next book in the series, the fifth and final book, Cassan Astor and the Dragon Storm. In addition to having a way cool title, Dragon Storm is going to be the culmination of the entire series so far, tying up all loose ends and bringing these spread out, disparate characters together in the same way that Hive brought all the various, spread out characters into one singular place.

With a story this big, there are bound to be a lot of spread out characters. Until now, there have been some main protagonists who have never even crossed paths. Despite the first book being named Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress, those two characters have still never even met! The final book will bring everyone together for a grand climax that includes a certain winged monster.

Currently, I’m working on the fifth chapter of Dragon Storm. I expect this book will be the longest in the series (though I said that about Harbinger’s War, so what do I know?). I’ll give you more updates as I continue to work on the fifth and final book.

No art for that book yet.

In the meantime, enjoy the new cover art by Justin and Olivia. Cassan Astor and the Harbinger’s War should be out soon.