All of you know me because of the Erafeen series, and you want updates on that. I’ll discuss that briefly: I’m nearly done with the sixth book’s first draft (234k words in). It will release at the end of 2020.
This update is mostly about a new fantasy series I’ve been teasing at for a couple of years now. It’s currently in its fifth draft. I finished writing it a year ago. Soon, my editor will finally read through it. It will also release at the end of 2020. I’ll tell you a little bit about it, then I’m going to post a small excerpt from the prologue.
World’s Worst Witches is the first novel in The Raptorial Dynasty, an epic fantasy series that will stretch across multiple books just like Erafeen. The theme, tone, and characters are more mature than Erafeen, and considering their age range, the story leans New Adult to Adult, whereas Erafeen is Young Adult. Obviously, because it’s epic fantasy the story doesn’t take place in our world (Earth).
I’ve learned A LOT from writing the Erafeen series, and the lessons are evident in this new project.
I’m not going to say a whole lot about the gritty details of the magic and world of The Raptorial Dynasty, for that will be revealed when you read it after its release, but I’ll chuck some keywords your way:
Birds
Raptors
Feathers
Trees
Sea
Witches (unconventional)
Gods
And if that’s not enough, here is an excerpt from the prologue. I can’t wait to share it all with you. Remember that this is in draft form and subject to change by the date of publication.
Prologue – The First Betrayal
Five years ago.
Renee Rellington stood at the top of the crater rim that had been a golden lake just six months prior. In the months since, the lake had slowly receded, the liquid-life absorbed by a tree at its heart. One of five godly trees scattered throughout their world, the Healing Teak dwarfed the palaces of the mightiest covens. Leafs shrouded the tree from trunk to canopy, an unnatural shifting gradient of tawnies, pale yellows, and ambers. Patches of incandescent gold dotted its highest reaches, few and far between, for these leafs were the most valuable denomination of currency in both Faulknia and Laceon.
As she crouched at the precipice, two miles from the trunk and a mile from the outermost leafs, she surveyed the strata of the crater. Had it not been for her eight years of university education, she wouldn’t have known this as a recently emptied lake. The lakebed was dry and cracked, sure signs of decades of water depravity. Not only had the Healing Teak sucked all the liquid from the lake proper, but from the soil, too.
She glanced to her right at the wall of lush greens and browns a mile away, completely encircling the crater. Hard to believe they were in the depths of the world’s only rainforest.
Standing, she reached for her sources of magic by stroking the feathers hanging from her dream catcher necklace, as if they were security of which to grab hold, to anchor a fluttering heart. Someone more familiar with the emotion would have explained the act as a habit of pacifying one’s anxiety, but Rellington women didn’t fall victim to such blights.
But you’ve also never faced a bigger moment in your life.
She squeezed her eyes tight and inhaled deeply, her magic in sync with the armory of plumes with which she was equipped: ten from the tail of a woodpecker on her necklace, seven entwined in the ends of her curly hair, and dozens more adorning armbands. Ten other young women, all students on the cusp of graduation depending on the results of this final mission, stood at the crater’s rim along its perimeter, armed to the beak just like her.
Beyond the task of snagging five gold leafs from the Teak’s canopy, which would result in a passing grade, Renee had a personal objective. It was highly discouraged by professors and harshly disciplined in most cases, but worth that risk for Renee. Like her mother and older sister, she would transition from witch to mage. That meant seizing the feather of—
—a God Raptor burst from the lakebed, fissures splitting the stratum in a hundred directions, an audible array of thunderclaps layered beneath the waking beast’s scream. Broken rubble tumbled down its wings as it lifted itself into the sky, the ground beneath Renee’s feet reverberating from the shower of debris that hammered the lakebed.
Her eyes widened, jaw and shoulders slackening as she was momentarily stunned by the magnificence of a first in her lifetime. The Golden Osprey was the deity that served as the guardian of the Healing Teak, a favor returned by the tree in a symbiotic coexistence.
Both were alive and hostile.