Tag Archives: The Sorceress and her Lovers

The Sorceress and her Lovers – Minor Characters

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The Sorceress and her LoversHere are some of the minor characters found in Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 6: The Sorceress and her Lovers.

Sszaxxanna & Ssu: Two of Hsrandtuss’s wives, both appeared in The Young Sorceress.

Tokkenoht: Tokkenoht is a new character.  Another of Hsrandtuss’s wives, she is also a witch-doctor.

Esther: Esther is a female lizzie raised in a human household.  The fact that this particular household is the Dechantagne’s will probably mess her up even more.

Radley and Iolanthe Staff: Major characters in several of the books, the Staffs appears in this book as part of their daughter Iolana’s storyline.  Being a pivotal character, Iolanthe also plays a part in several other story lines.

Maro and Geert McCoort: Senta’s two cousins are making quite a show around Port Dechantagne, since their arrival in The Two Dragons.

Willa and Ascan Tice: A young Zaeri brother and sister, both appear briefly in earlier volumes.  Willa has now become a close friend of Iolanthe.

DeeDee Colbshallow: In The Two Dragons, the Saba’s wife Loana was pregnant.  Their little girl is now about three years old and has her father wrapped around her finger, as little girls are wont to do.

Loana Colbshallow: Speaking of Loana, she is exasperating her husband even more.

Eamon and Dot Shrubb: Police Sergeant Shrubb and his wife now have a thriving family.  The also have newly arrived relatives from the Brech homeland.

Wizard Bell: One of three new wizards hired by the Port Dechantagne police department, Wizard Bell faces some distrust from those who have faced wizards before, including from his boss Chief Inspector Colbshallow.

The Sorceress and her Lovers – Main Characters

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The Sorceress and her LoversIt’s less than a month until The Sorceress and her Lovers comes out, so it’s time to start talking about it.  As with the other Senta and the Steel Dragon books, this one rotates between several characters and tells the story from their viewpoints.

Senta Bly: Taking place just after the events in the epilog of The Two Dragons (about three years after the events in the bulk of that book), now a 21-year-old sorceress, traveling Freedonia and Brechalon with her new companion Kieran Baxter.  For her, this is a story of going home, both in the sense of rediscovering where she comes from in Brechalon and the journey back to where she has grown up in Birmisia.  Baxter is her constant companion and these chapters tell his story as much as hers.

Hsrandtuss: Hsrandtuss is a lizard man chief, last seen in The Young Sorceress.  Like Senta, Hsrandtuss is making a journey from his old home to a new land in the east, taking along with him the entire population of his village as well as many other lizzies from nearby.  Hsrandtuss’s story is one of dealing with a society in flux, as the lizardmen must deal with ideas seeping in from the human colony.

Iolana Dechantagne Staff: Now eleven years old, Iolana has grown up living in a house at the center of colonial politics.  She is extremely intelligent and precocious in some regards, but still a little girl in other ways.  Like many preteens, she has to deal with peers who alternately ignore her or try to make her life hell.  All this while living wrapped up in the Dechantagne family secrets.

Saba Colbshallow: Saba has his job as Chief Inspector of Police to keep him busy, but he’s cut off from one woman in his life and becoming more an more annoyed at the other. Of course there are many things to keep him busy– crime and terror plots being only the beginning.

 

 

Changes for Brechalon

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Brechalon (New Cover)I’m making a change in my book lineup. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It has to do with series starters, and specifically with Brechalon. His Robot Girlfriend, for instance, is a good series starter for the rest of the series. People download and read His Robot Girlfriend and like it, and so they may purchase the other books. I never envisioned Brechalon as a series starter. I always thought of it as an extra for readers of The Voyage of the Minotaur. Because I thought of it as sort of an add-on, I eventually decided to offer it free. Now however, because it is free, it gets downloaded and people read it to decide if they want to buy the rest of the series. I don’t think it represents the series very well. The characters, especially Senta, don’t grow much in this story. You could say that’s understandable, considering she’s a child of six in the story, but it’s not what readers picking up a cheap read want. I think The Voyage of the Minotaur is a much better starter for the series. It was always intended to be the first book read.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m pulling Brechalon from the ebookstores. It will still be available at Smashwords. I’m adding Brechalon onto the The Dark and Forbidding Land, which is the shortest of the series and as it’s number two in the series, it maintains Brechalon’s position as something to be read after reading The Voyage of the Minotaur. Since Minotaur is now officially, and obviously, the first book, I’m going to lower the price. Hopefully this will encourage more people to buy the book and then read the rest of the series. Already well over 60% of readers of Minotaur purchase The Dark and Forbidding Land. As a publisher, the idea here is short-term loss and long-term gain. Since I’m not really a publisher, but an author, I really just want my books read.  Everything should be in place for the arrival of book 6 in the series The Sorceress and her Lovers, in just over one month.

Whew!

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The Sorceress and her LoversThe Sorceress and her Lovers has been available for preorders for a couple of days, but I wanted to go back and polish a few things and to have the best manuscript possible.  For some reason though, when I reloaded it to Smashwords, some error creeped in.  It looked fine, but the automatic table of contents created by the epub format went all crazy.  First it listed only chapters after number four.  Then it listed them all but in the wrong order.  I ended uploading 8 different versions before I got one that was just right.  Better now than when it is released though, right?

I sat down and wrote the outline for Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 7.  When I might get to that though, I don’t know.  I want to finish the first book of 82 Eridani and then probably the next Robot book.  In any case, watch this space.

And don’t forget to preorder The Sorceress and her Lovers.  Preorders are being taken at iBooks and BN.  I let you know as others appear.

The Sorceress and her Lovers: Available 5-23-14

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The Sorceress and her LoversHere it is– the release date for The Sorceress and her Lovers.  May 23, 2014 is the release date, wherever fine ebooks are sold.  In addition, you can preorder the book at iBooks, Kobo, Smashwords, and Barnes and Noble.

For those who haven’t read the previous books in the Senta and the Steel Dragon series, watch this space for special discounts.  And if you are already a reader of the series, watch for new versions which will be out to celebrate the publication of Book 6.

In the coming weeks, I’ll have some sample excerpts here, and you may also download sample chapters from the above-mentioned ebookstores.

Update: The Sorceress and her Lovers.

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The Two Dragons (New Cover)The second draft of The Sorceress and her Lovers is done.  It’s now ready for some editing.

I mentioned that the first draft was 82,309 words.  The second draft is 82,688.  It doesn’t seem like much difference, but I probably removed 2,000 words and added 2.400.

 

 

 

 

Here is a sneak peak at the chapter titles of the book:

  1. Bangdorf
  2. The God of the Sky
  3. Iolana
  4. The Bomb
  5. Peter
  6. The Creature Beneath the Fortress
  7. A Friendly Word
  8. An Adventure
  9. The Champion
  10. Angel and Demon
  11. Yessonarah
  12. The Hunt
  13. Zoantheria
  14. The King
  15. Chief Inspector Saba Colbshallow
  16. Friends and Relatives
  17. Tea
  18. The Machine
  19. Seifer Caldell
  20. Power
  21. Life in Birmisia Colony                               

Update: The Sorceress and her Lovers

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The Sorceress and her LoversOkay.  That’s it.  The first draft is complete.  I’ll be in a better position to say when it will be finished and available after I complete a couple of revision passes, but it looks like the end of April or beginning of May.  I’ll keep you updated.

The first draft is 82,309 words.  This was quite a bit shorter than originally plotted, but I combined quite a few things as I went.  The original outline was for a 100,000 word story.  Of course as I revise, some parts may be added and others removed, so it will be interesting (maybe only to me) to see what the final length is.

I thought I would look and compare it to the lengths of my other books.  Here they are:

Princess of Amathar                                                                                94,000 words

His Robot Girlfriend                                                                                 40,000 words

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess                                        19,000 words

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress                                                 19,000 words

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon                                    50,000 words

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur     110,000 words

Tesla’s Stepdaughters                                                                             44,000 words

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 2: The Dark and Forbidding Land  70,000 words

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 3: The Drache Girl                        105,000 words

His Robot Wife                                                                                          29,000 words

Women of Power                                                                                     35,000 words

Blood Trade                                                                                              49,000 words

Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike                                         31,000 words

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 4: The Young Sorceress                 66,000 words

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 5: The Two Dragons                     105,000 words

The Many Adventures of Eaglethorpe Buxton                                   103,000 words

Astrid Maxxim and her Undersea Dome                                                30,000 words

His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue                                                         49,000 words

Update: The Sorceress and her Lovers

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The Sorceress and her LoversWow, it was only a few days ago that I was working on chapter 13.  I’ve just paused in my work today, and I am finishing up chapter 20.  What’s more, I’m a little further along than it might seem.  My original outline was for 25 chapters, but I’ve combined a few things (as I almost always do) and my new, revised outline is 22 chapters.  I might even shorten it by one more– it all depends on how I work out one of the main climactic scenes.

If I finish the draft before the end of January, as seems very possible right now, then the release might be April Fools Day.  That will give me time to get it revised and edited.

One of the main things I want to do in the revision is make sure that the tone is the same throughout the book.  I have to do this with every book I write.  My emotions, both as a writer and as a guy living my life, change over time and it is reflected in the book.  Sometimes this is a bigger job than others.  The Senta and the Steel Dragon are maybe less of a problem in this regard than some of the others I’ve written.

Anyway, hopefully my next update will say that I’ve finished the draft.

That Point

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When I’m writing there is a point in the story when I start to get really excited.  I’m not talking about the plot of the story, but a point in the completion of a story.  It’s at that moment that writing the story stops being such a daunting task and starts to look like it really might be doable.  When I get to that place– that time–  I start to REALLY want to write.  I look for every moment that I can to add a few words or sentences.

I’ve just reached that point in writing The Sorceress and her Lovers, and I realized that its been quite a while since I felt this way.  It’s a kind of a rush– kind of a high, I guess.  I never really got the high thing, since I’ve always hated feeling out of control, but this is a feeling that I want to continue.  Fortunately, even if I finish this book soon, I’ve got several that are well on their way to hitting that point.

I’m about a third of the way through chapter sixteen and I’ve finally gotten to where all of the title characters are going to find out about each other.  There.  That’s a teaser, right?

Update: The Sorceress and her Lovers

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The Sorceress and her LoversI’ve just finished chapter thirteen of The Sorceress and her Lovers, which means that I’m officially past the halfway mark.  This makes me feel good because traditionally, it’s much harder for me to write the first half than the second half of my books.

One of the difficulties that I’ve worked through is the naming of an important character.  There are quite a few new characters in this book and several of them have had name changes as I’ve written.  But this particular character’s name is very important, that I’ve actually been thinking about it for two years.  I thought I wanted a name from ancient history, but I didn’t want one that was immediately recognizable.  I tried out more than a dozen names and actually settled on four different ones.  Then I made a last minute change and took a name from biology rather than history and I’m finally happy with it.

I think this book is taking me longer than the other books because the characters have all aged and they all act differently than they have in earlier books– some more than others.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with how the book is going so far, and I’ll keep you updated here as I approach completion.