Alright, so…suffice it to say that this blog hasn’t been updated in a long time. A very long time. A time that, while not significant on the geologic time scale, certainly amounts to a very significant fraction of the life of the 23-year old authoress who started this blog in the first place. And the reason behind that is…well, there’s no nice way to say it. Arbiter crashed and burned. It burned not because it was a bad book (although looking back, there’s several things about it that I wish I could change). It burned because I had, like the naive young authoress that I was, allowed myself to be taken in by a scam, a scam that put my eBook up without editing it, hence the embarrassing amount of grammatical problems that I really thought I caught in my revision, and then didn’t give me any of my royalties, despite the book garnering a handful of four and five star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads (the horror!). To make matters worse, they removed the book from stock, which is why for years you couldn’t find it anywhere on the web.

Until now that is. I’ve uploaded Arbiter onto Kindle Direct Publishing, finally realizing that that doesn’t actually cost any money. It’s still not professionally edited and not to the standard that I’m now holding myself to for fiction, but I wanted to put it out there for people who want to read it, so that it doesn’t languish on my Goodreads page like a testament to my own private shame. I’d like to emphasize that it’s not a bad book, and I encourage you to read it if you want (link here), but I can do better. I have been doing better, and trying my best to get those efforts to bear fruit (stay tuned!). Because of this, I’m not asking for much for Arbiter. I want to emphasize something here about this book, and about all my books: I don’t want your money. I just want to write. Arbiter is on sale for $2.99, and again, read it if you want. Don’t read it if you don’t. I’d like to warn you now that I’m not sure I plan on continuing this series, but I am working on other things.

One of those things is the game Forest Heart, which is currently in development. I’m on the narrative team for this project, and I can tell you right now, it’s going to be awesome! If you’d like to follow Forest Heart, which I highly recommend, you can find its Facebook page here and its Twitter account here. Forest Heart is going to be a story-driven game, and I hope it will meet your expectations.

Another thing I’m working on is a novel called The Forge, originally written to be young adult fantasy, although it doesn’t have to be. The Forge is set in a steampunk-inspired world and is the first book in a planned seven-part series that will follow the main characters through their teenage years into adulthood. I’m already working on The Forge’s sequel, Marked, which is about 30% done. I could describe the book in so many different ways, but let me just say that this is the book I’ve had the most fun writing so far, and hopefully that comes across as being a book that’s fun to read. You can find the canned synopsis, and a link to some sample chapters, below:

Courage. Wisdom. Strength.

When Kane gets chosen for the Forge, his first thought is that he’s about to become one of the Garrison Cities’ heroes, but his first encounter with the Darksteel teaches him that heroism is not all it’s made out to be. As a member of the Order of Iron, the Blades’ recruit Order, Kane was supposed to have at least eight years ahead of him before facing conflict of any sort, and he would have, if the centuries-old war against the Darksteel wasn’t about to change.

Kane and his friends quickly find themselves thrust into the center of a seven-hundred year old war. Between fending off coordinated attacks from a rapidly evolving enemy, his classmate’s odd connection to the Darksteel and saving his best friend from her own family, Kane’s life is about to get a lot more complicated than he’s ever bargained for.

Sample: http://bit.ly/1lkZNFX

Does this sound good to you? Would you like to read it? Fantastic, because I’m working on a Kickstarter for it right now! The link for that will be up soon, and I’m going to make a separate page for it. I’m trying to not make the same mistake I made with Arbiter this time. If I can manage it, The Forge will be professionally edited before it ever graces the digital (and physical) bookshelves of readers (and if I have money leftover, I’d love for some illustrations to match!)

But what about The Color of Fire you might ask, yea reader who has followed my obscure blog posts into eternity? I’m still working on it! The Color of Fire has evolved from its original novella format and has become the huge, sprawling The Edge of Dreams, a book that encompasses both Lena’s story from the original novella, and Lena and Sathi’s story onward into the future (because the magic system I came up with was too much fun for me to not explore)! Stay tuned for that, because the book is now finished and I’m giving it a few pre-edits before trying to do anything with it (because I haven’t quite given up on traditional publishing, but a 200,000 word long manuscript is going to be a nightmare to pitch).

Oh yeah and I’m doing science, so for the 0.001% of you who follows my blog for the science related stuff (going to try and set up a separate blog for that), I should have my first first-author paper out sometime this year. So stay tuned for that too!