Life has gotten hard the last few weeks. A lot has been happening and my time and energy have just disappeared. I have unfortunately cancelled the pre-order for Delphinium. It will not be finished for the, already delayed, September 30th release. I am so very sorry. I will continue to work on it and it will be out as soon as possible. I am especially sorry to the 41 people who have pre-ordered it. I wish I could have done this differently.
Come ask me anything about writing, myself, or working at a deli.. 😀
Originally I had aimed to have Delphinium out on August 31st. I’ve bumped the pre-order over by a month and moved it to September 30th. There have been a lot of changes in the book just this last month with me really getting into writing it in detail and I need the time to make sure it’s right (and to give my betas more time as well).
I’m sorry if this disappoints anyone, but I hope a month isn’t much longer to wait, and it helps me get the book exactly where I want it to be 🙂
(I’m guessing on the version number by the way)
I released Larkspur over 3 years ago. Since then I’ve grown as a person and an author. I can see it in how I’m writing Delphinium and in general as well.
Last night I was reading over Larkspur to double-check something and realized I had inconsistencies. Two, maybe three depending on how you count it. These were things that once I noticed I could not un-see and it bothered me greatly that I had them in a book I released so long ago. No one else had noticed them (whether because no one cared, they were hard to spot, or another reason I’m not sure) but that didn’t matter. I stayed up way too late fixing them and making them work for future readers.
Mostly it was small things- like how Aimé could in no way start his journey from where he was living, receive a message that Pierre was sick, and meet Pierre the next day (it’s a two week trip by carriage), so I added in that he had already been traveling and almost at the castle (thankfully carrier pigeons are fast little mofos and a message could go through. Also added the mention in book 2 that the pigeons were magically modified to be able to find people specifically as well, not just home, as that’s how regular carrier birds work).
I also realized I had Pierre call Pluta magically in the last part of the book, but called out to her at the start- fixed that by adding his magic wasn’t working well at the beginning (made sense too, so that’s nice).
And I made one small change in dialogue- Pierre mentioned something about fée rings and I realized that it would more likely be said by Elizabeth, so changed who said it.
That’s all (for now). For a 15K book I’m quite annoyed that there were so many issues still. None of my writer-friends who read it noticed it, and neither did the editor and copyeditor that helped me out.
We’re up to 19 pre-orders on Delphinium, yay!
And I am working on it every spare moment I can get (and given that I have two other jobs, that can be quite random). Putting it up for pre-order was a great way to get my ass in gear (I think I’ll be doing it with future books from now on), even though a good half of me is still terrified about the release. But I have myself on a tight schedule, with plenty of days set aside for editing and polishing.
So far it’s been fun and good to be writing under this deadline. Delphinium keeps expanding- getting new characters even this late in the game, new points-of-view, more backstory. This is not how Delphinium would have been written even several months ago, much less two-and-a-half years ago when I first wanted to finish it asap after Larkspur. I know it sucks waiting for books, sequels especially, but I truly think this is worth it.
In similar news- I put Larkspur and Delphinium in new categories on Amazon! It seems to be a new category on the site in general, but Gaslamp Fantasy is now something you can find both books in. That’s the 19th century-ish ‘ghosts and spirits’ version of steampunk where it’s more about the supernatural than the tech. It fits perfectly (and is what I tried to evoke when I use the term ‘gothic’ for it).
They also have their own series page now too:
You’ll notice the series is “Stories of Clandestina” and not “Larkspur” (it was actually Larkspur for a little bit until I contacted Amazon). I did this on purpose since after ‘The Larkspur Series” there are more books that will be coming out about this realm and really they will all be connected. There are stand-alones set in the past and then future series that move forward. I have two ‘past’ novellas in mind, and two more series set in the future- making it 14 books total.
But right now I’m furiously working on book 2 and we’ll work on books 3-14 after.
Fairies, disease, and the heir’s return.
Pierre Salvador and his beloved, Elizabeth Anne, travel to his childhood home for the summer. They intend to spend some time alone together before he becomes the ruling duc (perhaps with her at his side). But Pierre finds himself set to inherit a mistrusting people with an uneasy history, and duties cannot be put off any longer. A fatal illness is spreading, he is being claimed by the fée, and someone has already tried to take his life. Though, with his being a Lord of Death, it will take much more to kill him.
The book will come out on August 31st!
I love this book so much. At first it was supposed to be a shortish 30K sequel- have a few small things happen, but nothing too substantial. Now it’s going to be ~120K. So it’s 8 times the length of Larkspur and filled with a number of new characters, plots, and magics.
It isn’t entirely done yet (or else it would be out) but I am finishing it up. A hard deadline like this should help and motivate me (it seems to be helping). So far I’ve gotten several pre-orders, so I’m glad people are still interested. I WILL NOT take this long for book 3. I hope getting into a nice groove with finishing this up helps me get book 3 out a lot faster.
