Category Archives: Mage of Fire
Apparently my writing muscle is really, REALLY swole
As you know, Bob, it’s been a busy couple of months for me—I finished Typhoon Warning, sent that off to the editor, then put it up for preorder. And then because that simply wasn’t enough, I nailed my shapely butt to the chair and finished my Hidden Empire novella Goddess of the Nile. Because why not?
Buuuuuuuut once I finished Goddess and put it aside to marinate, my muse (who apparently has learned how to be a slavedriver) reminded me that I have Book Five of my Two Thrones series teed up and waiting on the writing desk. And so, as of today I have completed the first chapter of Mage of Fire, which follows the (well, let’s be honest here) fuckboi Ignis mage Luc Bernais from Lady of Thorns as he gets sent off to the dangerously pious country of Muñoz to locate and retrive a vital book of lost magic from a bibliophile count’s library. My Patreon members got a sneak peek of it, and I’ll be posting more chapters there as I finish them, so if you want to read the book as it’s being written I invite you to consider becoming a member.
One wee problem—said library is managed by the count’s lovely daughter, who is about to be married off to a man she doesn’t love. And Luc does love a challenge…
I also had a thought this morning on the way into the day job. Typhoon is my nineteenth published book, and Mage will be my twentieth. That number seems special, somehow, so I need to come up with some extra ways to promote and celebrate Mage once it’s out (which may be early August at this rate). I’ll have to muse on that some more, but if you have any ideas let me know and I’ll give you a free ebook.
Oh, bee tee dubs, I’m still looking for ARC readers for Typhoon Warning so if you’re interested sign up here.
And Goddess of the Nile is Soup
As of a few minutes I ago I finished the Hidden Empire novella Goddess of the Nile, which weighs in at a respectable 28,376 words. I’m going to let it gel while I get to work on the edits for Typhoon Warning, then I’ll get it cleaned up and off to the editor. At this rate I should be able to release it sometime in late June.
And while I’m editing Typhoon I’m going to get cracking on Mage of Fire because I really want to go back to that series and pick up where I left off. Also, they’re in completely different worlds and can act as a palate cleanser for each other.
Yes, I know, who am I and what have I done with Nicola? All I can say is, writing is a muscle and at the moment I am swole.
The End is Nigh
Bet you thought I forgot about you. Not a chance.
I have been busting my ass for the last week writing a chapter a day on High Tide (and putting them up on Vella—I’m currently up to 58 episodes so that tells you something). As of last night I finished Chapter 22, which means I have three more chapters and High Tide is finished (hi Susan!).
Now, it still needs to be edited, and according to the Vella rules I can’t publish the story until thirty days have passed after I post the last chapter and mark the story complete. Which means the earliest I can publish High Tide is on June 19th.
Am I gonna do that? Nah, because I want to give myself a little wiggle room in editing, getting stuff to the editor and betas, getting stuff back from the editor and betas, doing the weasel word pass, the spelling/grammar/punctuation pass, and the final polish. So you can expect to see High Tide available on all platforms on June 25th. I’ll even set up an Amazon pre-order on Monday so that I’m locked in, how’s that?
So what comes after High Tide? Well, my mind is still firmly in Olympic Cove so I’m going to go straight onto Hurricane Warning. This is the last book in the series and will be Chiron’s story, wherein you learn his background with Asclepius, where exactly Asclepius has been all this time, and the role they play along with their lover Dr. Nessa Bryant in the final battle against the Mad Nereid. And since people seem to like following progress reports, I’ll post them here daily.
I’ll also be working on finishing A Court of Green Clover (Division Street Fae 1) at the same time, but that’s 1) a novella and 2) already half finished so I can do that in the evenings after working on Warning. What I would like to do but will not promise because every time I do that I get bit in the ass is the following schedule:
Finish High Tide and publish it.
Finish Hurricane Warning and publish it.
Turn Olympic Cove into an ebook box set and publish it.
Finish A Court of Green Clover and publish it.
After that, I would like to work on Crystal Reflection (Paladins of Crystal 3), To Love a Wild Swan (Hidden Empire 3), and Mage of Fire (Two Thrones 5). I strongly doubt I can finish all of these in 2024 but I’m going to give it the old college try. After that, I want to finish off the last two books in the Paladins of Crystal series, then trade off between Hidden Empire, Two Thrones, and Division Street Fae. Two Thrones has a projected eight books and Division Street Fae has five books. Hidden Empire does not have an end date and can continue on as long as I come up with stories for it.
And then there’s Pacifica Rising, my poor lonely SF romance series that does not follow the android/alien/lab creature trope. Is there an SF equivalent of romantasy? I know some people hate the term but it’s a damned handy marketing term. Speculative romance? Romascifi? I need to come up with a better term. But I’d really like to finish the other five books in that series as well (I see you cheering there, Jackie).
So now you’re all caught up to date, and I need to get to work. See you tomorrow, kiddos.
Busy, Busy, Busy
I have three new episodes of A Court of Green Clover up at Vella at the moment and I’ve been working on the next episode of High Tide this morning, with hopes of publishing it this evening. Can’t guarantee anything, but since I started drinking a cup of Flow State coffee in the morning (I started on Saturday) it’s done wonders for my ability to concentrate and get work done. I don’t know if it’s the caffeine or the lion’s mane and chaga mushroom powder in the coffee, but it does seem to work for me.
At least for now. My metabolism has a remarkable ability to adapt to practically anything I put in it and make it stop working. Frex, I can only take ibuprofen for a certain amount of time before I have to go off it and use other, less effective painkillers because at some point my metabolism says, “Nah” and I might as well be eating M&Ms.
What I might try with the Flow State brew is one week on, one week off. That should hold off the acclimatization process and I still get at least two weeks out of a month where I’m insanely productive. Because I have sooooo much to do—I need to finish ACoGC in the next week or so in order to publish it in March, I need to finish High Tide because that is painfully overdue, then I need to finish Hurricane Warning which will wrap up the Olympic Cove series, then write To Love a Wild Swan for Hidden Empire and Mage of Fire for Two Thrones. And that’s just the writing part of the biz; it doesn’t include setting up my Shopify store so that I can direct sell ebooks and signed print books, learning how to do sprayed edges so that I can offer those in the store as well, and cranking out content for my Patreon, newsletter, and social media.
And yet I still feel like a slacker. I don’t know why my brain dislikes me, I really don’t.
Is It Possible To Have Flashbacks Of Your Own Books?
As you know, Bob, when I wasn’t working on High Tide in November I was cleaning my house for a guest visit (which went very well, thank you). An interesting side effect has been that I’ve been spending an hour a day doing general cleaning (sweeping, emptying the litter boxes, feeding/watering the cats, wiping down counters, laundry, et al) and in-depth cleaning on a single room. I know from experience that this will last until I get sick, get a big project dumped in my lap, or some other time sink happens to swallow all available seconds, but for the moment it’s nice.
That being said, I keep having the weirdest experiences while cleaning, or cooking dinner to be honest. I keep getting what I can only call flashbacks of settings from my various books. I’ll be dusting a bookcase or vacuuming the living room, and suddenly I get hit with a memory of what the Hellene Royal Palace looks like, or Henry’s house from Shadow of the Swan, or the hunting lodge from Crystal Blade.
None of these places are real, mind you. They’re an amalgamation of places and buildings I’ve seen throughout my life, but for some reason they keep popping into my head in full 3-D color. And I suddenly really, really want to write another story set in that universe.
I think my creative brain is trying to tell me to get the lead out with High Tide, get it and Hurricane Warning finished, then get to work on either To Love a Wild Swan, Mage of Fire, or Crystal Reflection. The original plan was to take the last week of December off, but it now looks like I’ll be writing all the way through it. But hey, I love my job so that’s all right.
BOY, it’s been a busy two months
When last I left you, my friends, I was prepping for my sister’s arrival (aka frantically trying to make the house not look like a heavy metal band had been camping here for the last six months) and getting started on TikTok. I’m happy to say that the house was indeed cleaned, the visit was lovely, and she’s coming back with her husband in two weeks. Which is good because I need the time to re-clean this place–granted, it’s not nearly as bad as it was in September, but I got some contract work this month and went to Vegas for a week (more on that later) so some of the housekeeping kinda slid by the wayside.
As for TikTok, that’s turned out to be an immense amount of fun — I’m coming up with skits I want to do, I made it over a thousand followers so I can now put a URL on my profile page that links to all of my books, and generally it’s a good outlet for being the goof that I am. It also gave me a good reason to buy a new tiara (there’s a Thing on BookTok where if you’re a romance writer you wear a tiara while you do your videos. Far be it from me to say no to wearing a crown).
And that extra tiara (I now have three) came in handy when I went to Vegas for 20Booksto50k® 2021, which is a faboo conference for indie authors and publishers. In the space of five days I learned SO MUCH both about the craft of writing and the business of being an indie author — marketing, ads, stacking promos, how to construct a book launch properly, bookkeeping, starting LLCs and similar companies, everything from soup to nuts. I came back thoroughly pumped, started adding A+ content to all of my Amazon books, tweaked blurbs and ads, and rewatched videos of panels to get deeper into the best way to construct Amazon and FB ads.
Oh, and I’m doing NaNoWriMo, too, because I’m a masochist who doesn’t know when to say no. Right now I’m up to 35,085 words on Crystal Shard (ooh — did I mention that I’m doing a rapid release Reverse Harem series next year? I’m doing a rapid release RH series next year) as well as finishing The Crimson and the Black (and man, did I get some insights into that book while in Vegas). Right now it looks like Crimson will be coming out mid-January, and Crystal Shard will be coming out mid-March with the next four books in the series following in April, May, June, and July. Oh, and I’m also working on Mage of Fire (Two Thrones 5), release date TBD.
Yeah, definitely a masochist. But at least I’m having fun.
Nicola Cameron Writes 