Hello, fellow readers and Fantasy enthusiasts!
Hope your year is going well so far. Work has slowed down a bit for me and family life is getting back into a routine, so I’ve got more time to work on my writing. I’ve been adding the extra touches on Gaea whilst tightening up the editing for another round of beta readers. A lot of map work, end matter, sorting out chapter epigraphs . . . always more than I think, plus I’m probably having a little too much fun with it. Also printed out my first reader copies with the final cover!
I was hoping to have Gaea is now up for preorder by now, but IngramSpark is having . . . some kind of processing delays. I’ve been waiting to find out why from support. Heretofore, they’ve been great to work with, so I’m hoping this is just a temporary network issue. Since I’ve pushed it back already, I won’t give a final date till it goes up for preorder.
My fantastic artist, Ferdinand Ladera, has turned in the final cover for Book Three, Luna . . . which will be revealed soon. I’ll just say I’m very, very pleased with it. I should be done with the outlining soon, at which point drafting Luna will be my main focus. I’ll be posting regular progress reports once it enters the drafting phase. My current goal is to finish the rough draft by summer and launch it by winter.
Here’s a map I was finishing up recently. It came out cleaner than the one I included in Mani. I used a couple different sizes of ballpoint pens, and cleaned it up and set the text using GIMP (hey, it’s free and it works).
As far as my book reviews go, I’ve been reading plenty of books, so that’s not why they’re absent. Rather, I’ve decided to post the reviews separately on The Idea Engine.
Another thing I’m working on is my worldbuilding process, specifically in preparation for a couple future stories. I’ve a draft or three of both floating around somewhere, but they’ll take a lot of planning, as they’re far more ambitious than the Mother books. Not as far-fetched, but similar in scope and a lot denser. I’m looking into how to construct more fleshed-out and lived-in worlds, as mine tend to be more cursory, focusing on the need-to-know and what is vital to the story.
Anyway, that should be all. Thanks for entertaining me, and God bless you!
— Jacob Gamber