Author Update #2

Hi Everyone!

While waiting for the final proof copy of Book 2 to arrive, I took some time to reflect on how I got here and how long it took to really finish and publish The Legend of Nariko: The Goddess Prophecy. My initial goal was to publish this book back in July and then immediately start working on Book 3 to publish the next year. In practice, I found the process to be a lot more difficult which, in all honesty, I should have expected from the timeline of publishing book 1. 2020 has been a very stressful year. It’s not surprising that it had caused some delays with this book. But I don’t want to focus on blaming the events of this year as the primary reason for the delay. I think there were core things I hadn’t considered that would make this take as long as it did.

The editing phase took much longer than I had initially thought. I feel the main reason for the delay, especially in the editing phase, was that this is the sequel to my first book The Legend of Nariko: The Mark of Silverfrost. I had to constantly refer back to the first book to make sure that what I had written in the sequel matched the events of the previous novel. I initially did this while writing the manuscript. But as I edited the story, I found I had to change certain events. Either they felt wrong or misplaced upon a second or third read through or the character moments needed further refinement.

I’m also at the point of determining a marketing budget that may be more constricted this year. Do I market book 2 and book 1 with the same amount of effort? The logic being you can’t reasonably read book 2 without reading book 1. There’s also the review copy budget I have to determine, especially considering the delay for publishing this. The main issue is that I can’t reasonably expect the reviewers for book 1 to review book 2 in time for the Christmas season.

Ultimately I am still learning and trying to do the best I can. Writing and editing come naturally to me yet I still need to plan accordingly and put in a more appropriate buffer time so as to not constantly delay my book. It feels bad every time I’ve had to push back the release date but realistically it’s more important to put out the best work that I can rather than rush out a mess. With that in mind, I will try to have book 3 published in the Fall of 2021. This may still be rather ambitious but I want to aim to publish one book a year.

Thank you all for your patience! 😊

– Raphael