Hello Everyone!
August and September have been rather rough months. I had to deal with an infection that was sapping a lot of my energy dealing with it. Fortunately I’m now at the tail end of it and mostly better now. Unfortunately it’s been an erratic couple months of ups and downs in terms of what I could do. I was able to get a lot done, but not as much as I had hoped to by this time. That being said, I think I’m mostly on schedule.
Publishing Book 3: The Legend of Nariko: Shadows of a Dead World
I’ve had a talk with my editor and our goal is to still try and publish book 3 for the holiday season, however I feel that might be a bit ambitious. There’s still quite a bit of editing to do and I do need to finish the book cover and get a print proof in to make sure it turns out correctly. That being said, there’s still a chance that it might be out in time for the holiday season. Realistically though, I think it’s more likely that it won’t be ready by then. As much as I would love for that to happen, my priority is always to tell the best story that I can but I still want to be an author that has a reasonable publishing schedule. I will have to check with my editor by the end of October how we’re doing, but I want to say, at the latest, publishing could be in February though the goal is still late November to Early December.
New Editions of The Legend of Nariko: The Mark of Silverfrost & The Goddess Prophecy
Yes I’ve been talking about this for quite some time now and I’m very happy to say that it’s soon to become a reality! The only problem right now is a technical matter. I used to use Photoshop for the final steps with the book cover but I no longer trust Adobe after the numerous questionable and devious tactics they’ve implemented. That being said, it means I need to find a new program that can convert and art file from RGB to CMYK and also save it as a PDF. I’m hoping to find the relevant programs this week to produce the art file to order the proofs to arrive by the time I return from vacation. If all goes well, the new editions will go live in November.
New Science Fiction novel/series in the works
I’ve been brainstorming a science fiction novel idea for quite some time now. I’ve had several different ideas floating around but I never felt that spark of inspiration with those story ideas. But over the weekend, an idea came to mind that I was rather excited about. I started writing and ended up writing two chapters at roughly 2.2k words. It’s still very rough but has the making of being a story that I can be happy with and proud to say I wrote. That being said, writing the fourth book in The Legend of Nariko series still takes precedence but I’m hoping to work on both to publish within the next two years (early 2026 if possible).
Art Print Shop
A bit of a side project I’ve been working on that I’m hoping to set up in early 2025. I’ve been trying to improve in my artistic ability not only for my book covers, but also for creating artwork in general. I’m hoping that sales from art prints and potentially going to art conventions can help cover the cost of marketing for my books as it can get rather costly. I will look into setting it up, however I don’t plan to invest more time than I already do for art as I want to maintain a balance between art and writing.
I will be going on vacation for the month of October and will return at the start of November. While I’m on vacation I will still be writing, editing and maybe drawing as I don’t want to fall behind schedule. I don’t plan to be a workaholic and completely ignore the fact that I’m on vacation, but I recognize I’m the kind of person that if I don’t consistently do something, I quickly forget how to do it. I am also hoping the vacation will help refresh my creativity and give me some ideas to update this blog as well. I haven’t been the most consistent with how I manage this and I do want to be better about it.
Thanks for sticking around and I hope you all have a great October! 😊
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 