Well hello everyone!
Bit of a surprise post for you today as I did something by accident and now I must face the consequences.
While trying to set up a scheduled launch of my new fantasy serial on Royal Road, I accidentally made it live! So everyone, you get to read the first chapter a fortnight early, the actual launch date is the third of March (I wanted to make use of that double 3 date to reduce confusion) when I will be posting an additional five chapters to get the story well and truly started.
But what is this story?
Well last year I took part in the Inkfort Publishing Derby and published this short story, Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss. A short story about Leonora Lionhelm, the Goddess of Gateways, for a fantasy world I had come up with. I wanted to build a world with gamelike elements, but make it fit into the world and give it a bit of history. So we’ve got gods and adventurers, mysterious events in the past, crime gangs, that kind of thing.
This new serial is about Leonora’s niece, Soleil, who is in hiding at a Magical University, and is trying to find out what happened to the immortal realm her family once called home. Things immediately start going wrong however, and her lift to the school gets attacked by monsters!
It is called Goddess of Disaster (and yes, I am wondering if I cursed myself with that name) and is available on Royal Road. As I said, it’s only the first chapter for now, but in March I will post 5 chapters on the third and then start posting one chapter every Tuesday and Thursday.
The human characters in the story will be running on a TTRPG-style levelling system, but Soleil is a goddess, and her powers grow based on her legend and notoriety. Also, if anyone actually started worshipping her, but that’s a long-term goal, not an early one. She can work on that later. Keeping both systems in mind is a bit tricky, but I think I have gotten a handle on it. Levelling up with experience like a Dungeons and Dragons character is much easier to keep track of. Why am I doing this to myself? Oh yeah, because it is fun and makes weird things happen in the story.
ALSO
I have other exciting news, I am planning on starting a Patreon as well! This will be directly linked to Goddess of Disaster and will allow keen fans to read ten chapters ahead and get access to extra world building info and digital downloads. It’s not quite finished yet, but you can go take a wee gander right now here Link.
But yeah, if I seem super distracted or busy at the moment, now you know why!
This story has been on my mind since last year, but there were a lot of unknowns that I was struggling with. In the end I just decided to jump in head first.
Using Royal Road means that I can post chapters more frequently, so there is less friction between me writing a piece and getting it in front of readers. I think it is also going to be really useful in making me stick to the schedule, as lots of smaller deadlines work better for me than one big one in the distance.
So what’s on the cards for Soleil?
Well first of all she has to GET to her magical school, and then she can start unravelling mysteries, like why are these strange magical creatures flying around attacking people? But I won’t say too much more on that, I don’t want to spoil things. She is a really interesting character to write because while she is super powerful in some ways, she is also terribly naive and unaware in others. I am also having a lot of fun world building, balancing a world where adventurers are an important political element is tricky, so I end up going down a lot of rabbit holes to explain things, which means that other things need even more explanation, and it all gets tangled in a wonderful way. After all, the real world is hard to explain so there’s no reason to make my fictional one seem super straightforward, right?
Anyway, I shall finish things off here by saying thank you to everyone who has read this far, and to point out that all the important links will be below here if you would like to get started on reading my new stories!
Stay safe out there, there might be monsters!
K
Link to Royal Road for Goddess of Disaster
Link to US Amazon for Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss
Link to UK Amazon for Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss
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