Fantasy

Cover is up!

/ melaradark / Leave a comment

Finally! So it took a lot longer than I was expecting. Clearly I have a lost a bit of the old speed that I had (breaks out the walker and hacks a few coughs in geriatric), and this cover has a lot of little fiddly details that took a lot of time. Still, here we are!

I’m about halfway through my reread of Vhantalya, highlighting areas that I need to quickly neaten up, and then we’ll be to the beta readers. If I have talked to you about being a beta reader, or if you are interested in being one, please email me and include in the subject header which story you are interested in beta reading. I only need about four per story, and I believe Scarlett is full. Also, don’t limit yourself to just what’s on the front page! Look at my future project timelines and if you see any there you’d be interested in trying your hand at, give me a shout. Just keep in mind the timelines those will be finished.

For those that I select for beta reads, there will be a deadline to get it back to me, as well as a form that will ask particular questions or what kind of specific feedback I may be looking for, in addition to the usual general feedback. Mostly, looking for plot holes, inconsistencies, good pacing, things like that.

So that’s where I am with Vhantalya. I’m on schedule with Reboot as well, knocking out a nice ten thousand words plus a week. At this rate I should be finishing on schedule for June/July with the first draft. I might be a bit biased, but so far I think it’s some of the best writing I have ever done. After that, it’s off to find an agent!

Lastly, I’m also working on my artwork, not just book covers. I used to have my work on Deviant Art a long time ago, but l looked at it recently to see if I wanted to revive it and I don’t think I want to keep on with that site. Instead, I will be building a website and portfolio for my art on ArtStation. Once that website is up and running, I will be linking it to this page. I specialize in digital photorealistic/semi-photorealistic paintings but I want to expand my hand into more cartoon/animation/comic styles as well.

Love you peeps!

I Dudditz!

/ melaradark / 2 Comments

Hello everyone!

I was going to wait to post this until I had finished the book cover as well, but it’s looking like that’s going to take several more days worth of work to get it where I want it to be, so look for that to be up soon!

Exciting news to share! Yesterday at 2:22 pm I finished the second draft of Vhantalya! Yes, that means on Twos-day, 2/22/22 at 2:22 pm I finished draft 2. I laughed when I saw that. Hopefully it’s a sign of good fortune ahead!

Vhantalya, the first book in my Immortal Elements series, has been a passion project of mine for well over a decade. I wrote the first draft in just about two weeks, flat out. Over the next several years (longer than I’d like to admit), I changed the beginning a hundred times, added some here, took away a little there, tweaked this and that, and started writing even more stories in my fictional world of Kaloran. Intended at first to be just a little stand-alone one-shot, this story has blossomed and bloomed and inspired what is now a ten book series that will continue with The Tree Y’Edenel, due to be done in 2024.

This project has been especially near and dear to my heart, and I’m beyond excited to get it finished up and out there.

Next steps? Well, I’m not even going to look at the story for at least a week. I am using this time to finish up the cover and get started on my next book, which I’m aiming to have finished around June/July of this year. In a week I will do a start to finish re-read of Vhantalya, making notes and tweaking little edits here and there. Then, it will be ready to go to the beta readers. Once I have feedback returned from them, hopefully there is only one last spit-and-polish, and then it’s off to find an agent!

More to come, stay tuned!