I’m excited to announce that the next audiobook for the Sword of Dragons saga, Burning Skies, is now available! Currently only available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes, keep checking other vendors as the audiobook goes wide!
As I’d mentioned in my previous article, I’m stepping back from Audiobook recording for the next few months. The place we currently live in is not conducive to recording quality audio, and it’s getting worse and worse. On top of that, I’ve just started a new job, a new career, and as does happen often with new careers (I think?), I’m exhausted every day after work as I try to learn everything.
But that doesn’t mean I’m done – I will record the rest of the Sword of Dragons saga, including book 5 when it’s done, as well as the Chronicles of the Sentinels trilogy!
Thanks for reading (and listening!) and keep checking back for more updates!
I’m so excited to announce that my first ever compilation of novels, Chronicles of the Sentinels Trilogy, is now available to pre-order! This is a digital-only box set, though I could be convinced to release a print edition if enough folks ask ;)
Click here or click the cover to head on over to the Amazon page and pre-order today!
I’ve been thinking about doing this for a little while now, but I felt like enough time had passed since the final book came out, and who doesn’t love a good summer read?
Does Sentinels Have A Future?
As many of you already know, later this year I’m releasing the first in a new series, Project Sirius. I also plan to begin writing the Sword of Dragons book 5. So where does that leave Sentinels?
Honestly at this time, I have no plans to further write the story.
But I did. Once upon a time, this trilogy was meant to kick off a larger saga. Unfortunately, due to the struggle I’ve experienced finding an audience, I don’t currently plan to write any more stories.
However, that doesn’t mean I won’t. If I finally find the audience, if I finally figure out this whole marketing thing and Sentinels explodes in popularity some day, there’s definitely plenty of tales left to tell.
Once upon a time, I’d intended to write two standalone stories, one from Alycia’s perspective and one that would be from Emmi’s perspective, before kicking off a second trilogy.
Alycia Taylor – Created with MetaHuman Creator
Alycia’s story was meant to be a sort of detective story. While coming to terms with her powers and the loss of her father, Alycia begins experimenting more with her enchantment abilities – eventually imbuing abilities into herself through self-tattooing her skin.
But when apparent magical suicide bombers are found to have similar enchantments on the remains of their skin, the eyes of the Sentinels turn towards her. Intent on proving her innocence and stopping the culprit, Alycia dives into investigations. Her journey would take her to one of the smaller Sentinel field offices in North America, and quite possibly ensnare her into deeper, darker magic.
Emmi Dubois – Created with MetaHuman Creator
Emmi’s story would take place after – struggling with the aftermath of London, trying to find meaning in life again without getting lost in her animal forms, Emmi starts to isolate herself from the others. When covert troops from Shara’s home world strikes at the new Sentinel facility, intent on abducting the gnome Babbar, she’s thrust into the middle of action once again.
With the governments of Earth still reeling from all that they have learned about magic and other worlds, this couldn’t have come at a worse time. But since Shara is now Commander of the Sentinels, she is tasked by the President of the U.S. to travel home and negotiate. She chooses Emmi to go with her, hoping that being around other shapeshifters might help her better control her powers and find her center.
But Shara’s home is nothing like she remembers, and Emmi becomes embroiled in a far more sinister plot, very quickly finding herself in way too deep…
From there, the trilogy would pick up, and while I didn’t have full story ideas worked out, I intended for news of Earth’s defeat of Marduk to have spread to the far corners of the Universe, drawing the attention of many admirers, and making many others feel threatened – especially other Infernals.
Someday I hope to be able to tell these stories, but for now I’ll let them sit on the back burner and hope that Sentinels finds the audience it deserves.
Until then, enjoy this new box set, spread the word, and don’t forget to leave a rating or review on Amazon!
I spent some time a few days ago chatting with my friend Nick about the next book in the Sword of Dragons saga, bouncing thoughts and ideas back and forth, and came to the conclusion that there just is absolutely no way to tell the story that needs to be told in just one more novel.
There’s too much that needs to happen to wrap up not just the main story, but for all of the character stories and subplots that have built up over the past 8 years. And as I’ve begun developing the plot of ‘what needs to happen, in what order, and how,’ I’ve come to realize that even more sub plots would develop that would take an entire novel (IE: book 5) to setup and resolve.
So, as of this week, I’ve decided that the Sword of Dragons saga will be at least six novels. And without having meant to, I’ve in a way set it up to be two interlinked trilogies!
Which brings up the question of – what will book 5 be about?
Avoiding the Middle Story Syndrome
I’ve written about it before in passing when talking about the Chronicles of the Sentinels trilogy – too often in trilogies, the middle story serves as little more than filler. It helps get a story from the beginning to the end without being its own complete tale.
I actively avoided falling into that pit trap in Chronicles of the Sentinels, thinking back to the original Star Wars trilogy and how incredible The Empire Strikes Back was on its own, let alone as part of a trilogy. Granted I think a big part of that was that Lucas probably didn’t actually envision a trilogy from the get-go (but who knows – he changes his story about what his original plans were every other day), plus the ESB director, Irvin Kershner, changed some of the story and dialogue (thank goodness), and that likely contributed to making ESB one of the best movies ever, one of the best sequels ever, and one of the best middle stories ever.
I think when you look at the story of ESB, one of the biggest reasons why it was such a powerful story is that it tells a self-contained story with a distinct beginning, middle, and end all of its own, while still contributing to the larger narrative, and leaving just enough things incomplete to bring viewers back for the final story.
That is what I need to do for the Sword of Dragons book 5. This is perhaps one of the greatest challenges I’ve faced as a writer. Why? Because ever since I finished writing Secrets of the Cronal, I intended to make the Sword of Dragons only five novels (excluding The Orc War Campaigns). Which meant that the events that were to take place after Advent Darkness were meant to be one big, final story, and that was how I was developing the plot.
Now, not only do I need to split that giant story up, but I have to make the first half its own entity, its own complete story.
There’s a lot of ways I could go about it. But the one way I don’t want to do it is to just find a good ‘climax point’ mid-story and say “that’s where book 5 will end.” I know some trilogies seem to do this, and it shows. As much as I love the Matrix trilogy, you can tell that’s exactly what they did with Reloaded, and it just…wasn’t as good as it otherwise could have been. It didn’t really stand well as its own story, and was clearly meant to serve things up for the finale in Revolutions. Which is probably why they were released six months apart.
So, now that I’m no longer daunted by the task of fitting everything into one novel, I’m instead faced with the daunting task of…figuring out what the story for book 5 needs to be, and it is no longer “the final battle against the Darksteel Army.”
Thankfully, yesterday’s discussion helped me out a lot in that regard.
Funny enough, though…I’m going to be taking some inspiration from the third act of another trilogy.
Seeking Allies Like Commander Shepard Would
I’ll do my best not to spoil too much here for Advent Darkness, but be warned, there may be some minor spoilers ahead.
An important part of all of the books so far has been encounters with various groups, species, governments, etc. The orcs and the Dareann Elves, for starters. The naga and the necromancers in Burning Skies. The Star Dragons, the Dareann Dwarves, the Navitas, Kemila’s refugees.
Every single one was intentional. Every single one was meant to lead up to this. And I envision Cardin and friends seeking out those groups in the 5th novel to forge an alliance against the Darksteel Army.
Unfortunately, things are never easy. Politics are inevitable. There will be plenty of give-and-take, and for those caught up in the series, you’ll quickly realize that not everyone I’ve mentioned is ready to be an ally with each other.
Thus, as I’ve developed the next novel, I’ve been taking inspiration from Mass Effect 3.
If you’ve never played or watched someone play the Mass Effect trilogy, each game (but especially 2 and 3) revolves around the protagonist, Commander Shepard, seeking out allies to confront the antagonist of each game, and in particular the overall antagonists, the Reapers.
Mass Effect 3 took things to a galactic scale. It wasn’t just individual allies, Shepard needed to gather entire armies. Preferably every army in the galaxy.
But not everyone was keen on working together. In particular, in order to gain one ally, Shepard was forced to lose another – either side with the Salarians and allow the Krogan to face a long-haul genocide, or save the Krogans and lose the support of the Salarians. If there was a way to get them to work together with Shepard, I never found it in any of my playthroughs.
Anyway, as you might imagine, there’s gonna be some tension between potential allies in the Sword of Dragons. After all, given what was revealed in Secrets of the Cronal, and what happened in Advent Darkness, it’s unlikely the dwarves and elves would ever work together, right?
But is it impossible?
That’s one of many questions to be answered in book 5, and thankfully, it’s all beginning to take shape.
I’m hoping that somewhere in the next few weeks, I’ll finally figure out the ‘big story,’ and can start working towards filling more details that work towards that. Once I know what the climax of the plot should be, things move a lot faster for me.
That’s all for today! Thanks for reading :)
-Jon Wasik
Hi everyone, just a quick update – for those who prefer a printed copy instead of an eBook, pre-orders for the printed edition of Advent Darkness are now live!
I’m so excited to be able to offer you all this ability, this is the first Sword of Dragons I’ve been able to do this for! For unknown reasons, Amazon’s KDP (their self-publishing platform) only allows pre-orders of the Kindle edition. It’s only in the past year and a half that I’ve come to use IngramSpark to enable not just print pre-orders, but a wider distribution.
In fact, if it isn’t already by the time you read this, pre-orders will also be available through Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, and IndieBound!
Why Only Kindle for eBook?
One of the questions I still occasionally get is “Why is the eBook only available on Kindle?” In order to make my novel available through Kindle Unlimited, I have to keep my books exclusive to the Kindle platform. While that neglects other platforms, approximately one third to one half of my royalties come from Kindle Unlimited reads/borrows. Previously when I sold book 1 across multiple platforms, I had two (yes, just two) sales on Barnes & Noble, and that was it.
I know not everyone is keen to give Amazon money, but the fact remains that Kindle is the most prevalent eBook reader out there, and allows me to reach the widest possible audience of eBook readers. I am sorry for those this negatively affects, but I cannot ignore this, not when I’m still a struggling author. I can’t live off of Ramen all my life ;)
Will the Other Sword of Dragons Be Available Through Other Vendors?
I’ve been thinking about this throughout the year, and I might just try it. There’s one little kink in this, however: when I published books 1, 2, and the Orc War Campaigns, I didn’t purchase ISBN’s and instead allowed Amazon to auto-assign ISBN’s from its own pool, free of charge to me. Unfortunately, this means that their ISBN’s can only be used on Amazon.
I would have to purchase and assign new ISBN’s to the books for publication through Ingram Spark. Not expensive by any means, but I’m also unsure how distribution would work on that – the same exact book on the market with two different ISBN’s? I’ll be reading up on this soon, since I imagine I’m not the first self-published author to run into this issue.
Until then, for now, those first three books in the saga will be available only through Amazon. I’ll definitely let you all know if that changes :)
We did it!!! You did it! Chronicles of the Sentinels book 1 – Legacy launched today, with more pre-orders than any other book I’ve launched, by a massive margin!
I’ve honestly been a bit of a nervous wreck about this – I’ve felt from the moment I started developing CotS that it was something special, and the build-up to finally releasing book 1 has been a marathon and an exercise in patience. So as the day approached, I grew more and more anxious, nervous, scared…
When I got on this morning, I was so nervous I didn’t even look at the numbers. I had no idea how the pre-order was going, because neither Amazon KDP nor IngramSpark show you pre-orders until day-of-release (I suppose in case people cancel their pre-orders.) I immediately went to editing my website with updates (http://jonwasik.com), struggling with WordPress’s Block Editor (I seriously hate it…I’m writing this post in ‘classic editor’ now.)
Finally, I took a deep breath, and started at Amazon KDP. I was…disappointed. The number was very low. But then I remembered that was just for the Kindle edition – print pre-orders were through IngramSpark. So I headed over there.
My wife was downstairs, I was up in the office. All she heard was a stunned “HOLY S***!!!!!” I heard her reply in a panic, “WHAT?!”
And then I told her how many pre-orders. And I honestly started happy crying. There were hugs and more happy tears…
It’s not as much as a well-known author. Maybe not a lot to many authors. But it left all of my previous books in the dust.
And it’s renewed my hope. And my determination. Maybe, just maybe…I can make it someday.
But I can only do that with your help, dear readers. You’ve helped me make this the most successful launch of my career, now let’s keep the momentum going forward! Tell your friends and family, tell everyone you can, and when you’ve finished reading Legacy, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever you wish. Anything helps.
Let’s build momentum together, so that when book 2 comes out (in six months!) it’ll be an even bigger launch event!
Having said that, I want to say this:
Thank you.
Thank you, all of you. For your support. Your patience, your understanding.
Hey everyone, I’ve exciting news! A new novel will becoming out soon! And it isn’t the next Sword of Dragons novel! (Don’t worry, book 4 is still in progress!) (That’s a lot of exclamation marks in one paragraph!)
I’ve accelerated my plans and decided to publish Chronicles of the Sentinels – Legacy now. Well, not now now, but I’ve started preparations for it to come out later this year.
And this time, I’m doing something I’ve never done before – using original, commissioned cover art!
The Search For Art
About a month ago, maybe two months, I still hadn’t heard back from another agent I had queried back in March, and was thinking of moving on to another agent. And, just for the fun of it, decided to start looking into what it would be like to self-publish Sentinels.
Like the Sword of Dragons, I started looking for stock art to purchase rights to on Shutterstock and iStockPhotos. I’d had great luck with finding appropriate art for the Sword of Dragons, and was hoping I’d be just as lucky with Sentinels!
Guild Codex Novels by Annette Marie
It…definitely didn’t work out that way. There is a lot of amazing urban fantasy artwork out there! But it’s all very character-specific. And I also started looking back at all of the urban fantasy books I’d read, as well as the books Beck reads, and realized that was the typical cover art for urban fantasy – character-centric.
And from what I can tell, there aren’t many urban fantasies out there with a Japanese-American protagonist.
In other words, stock art wasn’t going to get me what I wanted. I could have gone in a different direction, like some of the more symbolic cover art the YA dystopian genre used a lot, but I’d learned my lesson already about making cover art appropriate to your genre. Going different means you’re less likely to attract attention from your target audience.
Which meant only one thing – if I self-published, I needed to commission an artist to have custom art made.
*Gulp*
Finding Affordable Artists
I don’t quite remember what the trigger was that made me decide I was finally going to self-publish, but it came shortly after my difficulties finding stock art. I had ideas for how to afford custom art, primarily centered around funding a Kickstarter campaign. I made a Kickstarter account and started looking at, and backing, several campaigns.
I was blown away by the amount of support for authors on Kickstarter! Most projects I found were at least fully funded, and several were upwards of 200%, 300%, or even 400% funded! I thought to myself “Surely this means I can succeed! There’s already a lot of support for my new trilogy, I’m sure I could garner enough attention to get at least enough funding for a cover!”
But I couldn’t possibly know how much a Kickstarter campaign would need to be without knowing how much the art would cost. So began the search for an artist.
It…didn’t start out good at first. But that’s also because I ‘shot for the stars.’ I approached a couple of very well-known artists just to see how much I might need to raise for them. The amount was somewhat staggering…the least expensive of the artists would still charge more than I’ve made throughout my entire writing career thus far!
I certainly don’t resent that – based on their cost and how long they estimated it would take them for most projects, they still are probably only barely making a living wage from it! But the biggest reason I didn’t go with them isn’t because of cost – that could potentially have been covered by a kickstarter.
It was timing. They were booked out to either the end of the year or even well into next year, and I’ve become hellbent on publishing book 1 in time to take it to our booth at WhimsyCon later this year.
It’s thanks to suggestions by friends on Facebook that I finally found an artist, and a talented one at that. A website that, ironically, I first heard about through an article that said to stay away from it, but then multiple self-published author friends suggested it as an excellent source: Fiverr.com
Naturally the first thing I did was read up on Fiverr.com, and it quickly became apparent why that first article was so adamantly against the service – there are scams on Fiverr.com. Not scams tolerated or encouraged by the owners, but like pretty much anywhere online that offers services, it was subject to people who abuse its system.
Let’s just say that ratings and rankings on Fiverr.com matter. Do your due-diligence. Within 10 minutes of looking, I found at least four ‘artists’ on Fiverr.com (who were only members for about a month) that were showcasing the exact same artwork as their own. All of these artists had no ratings or reviews, and their biography was so ‘stock’ and full of bad grammar and misspellings that it reminded me of emails scams.
Before long, I’d narrowed down the list of potentials to five artists. Then further poking around made me realize that two of those artists were potentially fake and using other persons’ artwork as their own.
Finally, it boiled down to an artist with dozens of five-star reviews, who has been a member since 2019 and has lots of successful projects on showcase, and whose style matched what I had envisioned for the front cover.
And he was affordable. So much so that, if I chose, I could completely skip the Kickstarter campaign (more on that in a little bit.) So I contacted him with a detailed message about what I wanted, what I was thinking, etc. He replied quickly, and was very enthusiastic about working with me! After only a couple of days of very positive collaboration, a job was officially created through Fiverr.com, and work commenced.
I was both excited and terrified! I feel like, especially over the past year, a lot of things have worked against me, and every time I think something is going to work out and be exactly what I want, I’m disappointed or even burned.
That didn’t happen here. After eight days, the artist showed me the first draft (is that what artists call the initial artwork?) and I was immediately in love with the art! I only needed to request a few relatively minor adjustments, and by the next day, the project was completed, and I had the final artwork in hand. I’ve over-simplified the entire collaborative process, but let’s just say that the artist Shupeipa was a joy to work with, and I fully intend to commission him again for books 2 and 3!
Yup, you read that right – the cover art for Chronicles of the Sentinels – Legacy is already completed and in-hand! So what’s next? That’s a good question…
To Kickstarter or Not To Kickstarter
The artwork was affordable for me, so a Kickstarter campaign isn’t necessary…however… The artwork still cost out-of-pocket money, and there’s still a lot of work ahead of me that’ll cost out-of-pocket.
But, perhaps more importantly, is the potential marketing behind a Kickstarter. I can generate buzz ahead of the release, and if I get the funding I hope for, I could spend money on some extra goodies. But most importantly, it’s potential exposure to more audience members. It’s pure and simple marketing.
But the question is – what extras would I include? And before you start giving me ideas, here’s the thing – I recently started a new job that’s requiring a lot of attention and energy, my hours have shifted as a result, and I’m already feeling somewhat overwhelmed with the new aspects of this project and the prospect of a Kickstarter campaign. There are a lot of great ideas I’ve already had or been suggested, that are simply too much for me to do, in the time that I want to do, with what little free time and energy that I have at my disposal right now.
And then there’s distribution of print editions for a successful Kickstarter campaign. I don’t know how I would do it internationally, without spending an ungodly amount of money or charging potential backers an ungodly amount of money.
Which means that I’d have to limit physical shipping to the U.S. only, drastically narrowing down the pool of potential backers.
Is it worth it to go through with this? I honestly am on the fence right now about it. Which is even worse, because I need to get it going as soon as possible if I want to have a month-long campaign and still be able to publish by early August.
What do you think, readers? And what are some low-impact ideas for Kickstarter rewards? We’ve already had the idea of putting every backer in the Acknowledgements section of the book, autographed physical copies for those who do the higher-end tiers, bookmarks, maybe bubble pins/buttons with adorable custom artwork of Nina by Beck (Nina is a foot-long dragon featured throughout the trilogy, who has a penchant for hording bottle caps.) And perhaps a digital or even physical poster of the cover. Any other ideas that won’t require a ton of work? Or do you think that might be enough goodies?
Anyway, this blog entry has already gone on longer than I planned, so I’ll leave things at that. I’ll definitely post more later as things develop. In the good news department, though, I’ve already put together the print edition cover, and have ordered a proof copy of the book from Amazon KDP! All in all, things are moving fast, in a good way :)
If you’re reading this post, then congratulations, you made it through 2020! That in itself is a monumental accomplishment! For some, this has been a devastating year, filled with setbacks, immeasurable losses, and some of the worst consecutive historical events in recent times.
But today’s post is not to recount the global hardships, there is plenty of news coverage for that. Today, as it is every year, I present to you my annual ‘looking back, looking forward’ blog post. And I have a lot to write about, because while most folks have had to hunker down to survive 2020, it has been a busy, busy year for me.
Down For The Count…Twice!
It began with recovery. In December 2019, I had just undergone a hip surgery to remove excess bone growth and repair a torn labrum. For New Years Eve 2019, I was still on crutches and unable to put any weight on one of my hips. Recovery mostly went well, and at one point when I had to stay home from work in March due to suspected COVID infection, I was able to walk over 3 miles.
And then I did yard work sometime after I recovered from COVID (never confirmed I had it, Colorado had no available testing kits at the time,) I pushed myself too hard and re-injured it enough that I set my recovery back a good 2 months.
Worse still, during one of my last physical therapy sessions, something pinged in my other hip during a particularly strenuous exercise, and I knew almost immediately what had happened, because the doctor warned me it would eventually happen – my other hip’s labrum had just torn. I gave it a month or so to see if it recovered, and when it didn’t get any better (and in fact was getting worse) I called up the doc and made an appointment. Sure enough, same deal – excess bone growth, torn labrum.
And so, amidst a global pandemic (but thankfully between surges in infection rates,) I found myself under the knife again. Thankfully, this surgery went more smoothly, and recovery has been considerably easier.
The Most Productive Writing Year Ever!
For all of the bad that’s happened, something wondrous has come of it – I have written an entire trilogy in one year!!
Yup, you read that right, I finished writing the third book in the Chronicles of the Sentinels trilogy ahead of schedule!
Thanks to three different time periods of being stuck at home away from work, and not being able to go on trips or visit places like zoos and museums (and not being physically able to do projects around the house beyond basic cleaning,) I’ve had ample time to write.
So what does that mean? Well first of all, the trilogy is written, and book 1 is mostly polished. I have some final pieces to polish based on a 3rd beta reader who is an Aussie and was able to give me some feedback on the two Aussie characters in the story, but other than that, it’s ready to pitch to agents (more on that in a little bit.) Book 2 and 3, however, are still in need of serious work.
Book 2 has been through a single round of beta reading, and I will go through their notes this week and implement necessary changes. After that, I will print out a hard copy so I can put it through another round of proofreading and editing. Book 3 has only just gotten into the hands of beta readers, and I will await their feedback with excitement :D
Current numbers for the entire trilogy?
912 Pages
98 Chapters
275,807 words
That’s a lot of words for one year, especially for someone who is still only able to write part-time! And actually, those aren’t the only pages I’ve written. In between books 1 and 2, and between books 2 and 3, I wrote 10 chapters of the Sword of Dragons book 4 (totaling 30,000 words,) and a short story.
Soooo…yeah, this has definitely been a productive year! On top of that, I’ve read a lot of books, especially in the urban fantasy genre to help keep me inspired for Chronicles of the Sentinels. Among these were almost all of the Iron Druid Chronicles, six Dresden books, and five Guild Codex books(by Annette Marie,) plus an assortment of other books.
The End of 2020
I know I’ve been more fortunate than others, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I’ve only glossed over all that has happened to my family and I in 2020, and we’ve seen and been affected by many of the major events out there. However, through it all, I still have a job, and I still am alive and (mostly) healthy.
I’m ready to say goodbye to this year. I’m hoping next year is a year that things turn around, on more than one front. But most of all, I’m grateful for my amazing wife, my Starshine, Beck, for being there with me through all of this.
And to two of our friends, who have been our ‘COVID buddies,’ friends we’ve spent time with during all of this, trusting one another to stay healthy and safe and help each other survive the isolation, Wayne and Hannah. I’m so glad to have these two in our lives!
Likewise I’m grateful for our friends Nick and Natalie, our west-coast brother and sister that we’ve spent time with virtually quite often this year, through video game streaming and occasional virtual Cards Against Humanity parties.
Looking Ahead – 2021 and Pitching and Writing
What does 2021 hold in store? First and foremost, I hope an end to the pandemic. I miss going places, like to the zoo or the botanic gardens or museums. Second, healing – I want to go hiking again!
But there’s something else I’m hoping for. With an entire urban fantasy trilogy written, I hope this is the year I find an agent willing to take a risk on me. To that end, one of the most exciting moments ahead for me is a virtual pitch session arranged by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers organization. I hope so much that I’ll be given a chance, and that the agent I have selected will be interested in my work.
But, should that not be the case, I plan to continue to query agents throughout the year on Chronicles of the Sentinels – Legacy. I believe this is the most well-written, interesting, and unique story I’ve written yet, and it represents my greatest chance at traditional publication.
On top of that, as editing on books 2 and 3 of Chronicles winds down, I’ll be picking up book 4 of Sword of Dragons again and intend to finish writing it in 2021. Depending on how fast and how well that goes, there could be a 2021 publication date for it, but as I’ve learned throughout the past 5 years, it’s better not to rush these things. As always, I’ll make sure those on my mailing list, and those following me here, will know all about my progress.
Book 4 so far has represented a combination of the writing style fans of the Sword of Dragons have come to expect and the lessons I’ve learned and applied writing Chronicles of the Sentinels, and I’m quite pleased with how the first 10 chapters came out. I’m looking forward to finishing this book, and seeing what all of you think of it :)
It is difficult to know where things will go from there. It may depend greatly on agent and, subsequently, publisher interest in Chronicles book 1. If there’s immediate and earnest interest, I know that book 1 likely won’t see a publication for another year or two at best, if what I’ve read about the publishing industry is true. Having said that, I have no doubt there’ll be work to do during all of that time, including further editing based on agent and, later, editor feedback.
I also have another book series that is itching to be told, and after I finish Sword of Dragons book 4, I may write the first book in that series. But that, my friends, is a tale for another time.
For now, I shall bid you all a fond farewell. And tomorrow, we shall finally, inevitably, be able to truly look back with 2020 vision.
;)
Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik
Trials and triumphs of writing, finding an agent, and publication.
I’m excited to announce that the next audiobook for the Sword of Dragons saga, Burning Skies, is now available! Currently only available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes, keep checking other vendors as the audiobook goes wide!
It began with recovery. In December 2019, I had just undergone a hip surgery to remove excess bone growth and repair a torn labrum. For New Years Eve 2019, I was still on crutches and unable to put any weight on one of my hips. Recovery mostly went well, and at one point when I had to stay home from work in March due to suspected COVID infection, I was able to walk over 3 miles.
A Writer at Heart 