Benjamin Medrano's Blog

Thanksgiving is over, I’ve visited family, and generally got very little writing done due to the interruptions. Circle of Ashes has been doing… okay, I suppose. I think it’s just barely paid off its production costs at this point, assuming Amazon’s estimates are close to accurate.

Moving on to Born of Chaos, I did get a little writing done, and am up to approximately 68,500 words. I didn’t get quite as much done as I’d hoped, but I’m not surprised when I had to pick up a story from a while ba...

Circle of Ashes is now live! This is likely the final book, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you think. This was hard to write, primarily because I wanted it to cover all the parts I intended. It ended up with even more, honestly. I love it, so I hope all of you do. Here are the links.

Circle of Ashes – Kindle ebook

Circle of Ashes – Paperback

Circle of Ashes – Hardcover

Also, I’ve sent the manuscript to Tantor, so they’ll be handling the audiobook at their own pace. I have...

Okay, I’m home from my vacation, over the cold which ambushed me as soon as I was home, and Amazon finally got up the pre-order for Circle of Ashes. Which is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FXHMHGLV

I’ve gotten Circle of Ashes back from the editor as well, and went through the changes over a few days. It took me a bit of time to look them over properly, and now it’s formatted and uploaded for release on the 24th. I wish I could’ve gotten it out this coming week, but that just wasn’t going t...

Good news! The audiobook of Talyn: Blooming has been released! I’m really looking forward to hearing how you like Tess Irondale’s narration!

Link: https://www.audible.com/pd/Talyn-Blooming-Audiobook/B0FT5XRJPQ

Enjoy!

Editing on Circle of Ashes is going well, and I should have it to the editor this week! As I had to do some rather heavy edits, I’m both excited and nervous to see the response to it. Either way, I’ve submitted a pre-order to Amazon, and it’s been just… hanging out for a few days. Customer support says there’s an issue on the back end they’re trying to resolve, so hopefully it’ll be up in the next couple of days.

Anyway, when the pre-order goes up, it’ll be scheduled for November 24th, to giv...

Good news, the rough draft of Circle of Ashes is done! It ended up at about 183,000 words when I completed the draft… and as of now, when I’ve edited about… 1/3 or so, I’ve managed to cut it down to below 180,000 so far. Just lots of restructuring of sentences, removing redundant lines, and all of that. I also suddenly had a particular writing rule I’ve struggled with for ages finally click, which has allowed me to remove a lot of dialogue tags (asked, said, replied, and so forth).

So far my ...

I’m almost done with Circle of Ashes! Well, I’m almost done with the rough draft. As the time of this writing, I’m a couple hundred words over 180,000 words, making it the longest single published book I’ve written to date. The second-longest is about 161,000 words, though I think one of my other unpublished books is a bit longer. I’m not certain of that.

In either case, I’ve finished the climax, and now I’m just working on the final chapter(s) of the book. I think it’ll only be one and an ep...

Circle of Ashes is up to a little over 160,000 words, and I give very good odds that I finish the rough draft this week. If not, I’ll have finished the climax, and will have moved into the wrap-up of the story. Things have gone insane inside it, with some elements I didn’t expect coming to the fore.

I’m also done with major interruptions until the end of the month, so I’m trying to get as much done as I possibly can before then. I’d like to have it to the point that I can send the file to an ...

As you can see above, I have the cover art for Circle of Ashes! I love what Mario Wibisono did with it, and hope you like it too. And yes, it’s intended as a mirror of the omnibus cover.

Currently the story is at about the 150,000 word mark, with the final conflict scene and wrap-up to go (and getting to the scene, but I hope to handle that in a single chapter). I’m not setting up a pre-order because I have no idea how long this will take, after all my other estimates ended up completely ...

Circle of Ashes is up to ~135,000 words, and I’m not sure how much longer it’ll be. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it ends up being in excess of 150,000 words, but we’ll see how that goes, overall.

This coming weekend is going to be a bit disruptive due to me traveling, so don’t expect an update next week. I’m hopeful that I’ll still get a significant amount of writing done, but we’ll see when we get there.

That’s it for the week! Be well!