Well, this is the first of what hopefully will be a fun little adventure. Starting this week, I'm going to be posting two novels as a weekly serials, one for general public and one only for patrons.

Write more words and don't be a dick. — Paraphrased from Jim C. Hines and Scott Lynch

Ever since I was at that panel at ICON, I've been working toward that. This includes starting the Journals of Fedran and the weekly serial that I started twenty weeks ago (it doesn't feel like it has been that long though).

This week's second submission continues that goal by finally offering something more than words for that help. I've started at the beginning asking for patrons but couldn't really offer anything in exchange. Now I can, a second novel which got close to being accepted by at least one publisher, at least they took almost two years to make the decision and it came down to the final cut. It is also something I've been working on for almost a decade and is probably one of my best pieces.

Preparing for the change

After I decided to publish the second series, I spent the entire week working on some programs to make it easier to publish things. Posting one book was a lot of effort (about two hours) and adding a second would add at least an hour to the process. Fortunately, I'm not posting Flight on Wattpad or anything else, but I still wanted to simplify the process.

I also took the time to start consolidating my sites. Originally, I had one website per books, but I'm looking at five books right now (the three Sand series, Second-Hand Dresses, and Flight of the Scions. Not to mention . I'm pretty happy with the results, you can see from the links below.

• Sand and Blood
• Sand and Ash
• Flight of the Scions

The cool thing about the sites is that I color-coded the various areas of the section to make it obvious what patrons are getting. Basically there are two levels: $1/month and $4/month. The $4/month gets access to the full novels, if available. This includes Sand and Blood, Sand and Ash, and advanced chapters of Flight of the Scions. It will also include other stories like Raging Alone and additional issues of Journals.

I also have the system automatically creating PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats of all the chapters.

Sand and Ash 19: Exhaustion

And to the serials. I'm planning on talking about each one. The original post has links, but I noticed Facebook “helpfully” strips them all out.

We are past the halfway point in Sand and Ash with chapter nineteen but that doesn't mean heavy action. Rutejìmo continues to realize exactly what being cast out of his clan means. In this case, being turned away from shelter that he had counted on for better part of fives years (everything since Sand and Blood).

This relatively quiet chapter came from some of my own life's events. There were a few times when I made rather… poor decisions but the full consequences of those choices didn't become obvious until days, months, even years later. I came out a strong person from it, much like one of the greater themes of this story.

Flight of the Scions 1: The Letter

Ah, Flight. This novel started when a friend asked me to write a novel that she could show off. I wrote the first draft in a few months, but she ended up rejecting it for various reasons (it had a bear in it, there was a dragon, and it had a whiny pacifist). I struggled with it for quite a few years until I pretty much gave up on it.

And then my first Wiscon came about. As I was sitting in the audience, I realized how to change the story and I got excited about it again. I also joined a writing group and started redoing it.

In the end, the novel had a completely new world, a different setting (early industrial fantasy, proto-steampunk), a different main character (a girl instead of a boy, a half-black instead of assuming white), a different set of skills (engineering instead of magical healing), a third of the antagonists (though I miss the clay monkey), removed the shape-changing, got rid of the dragon (sort of), and reworked almost every character, location, and event. One might say it is an entirely different novel, but I still see it as the original story… just improved.

This chapter was the last of the ones I wrote though. I originally had it started at chapter two, but right before I submitted it to Harper Voyager, I wrote it and it ended up being one of my favorite chapters. It sets the conflict nicely and it lets me start with a happy time before everything goes wrong.

Flight of the Scions is for patrons only. The level 1 ($1/month) can read today's chapter, level 4 ($4/month) can see a few chapters ahead as I get them edited and sent through the writing group. Also, level 4 can read all of Sand and Blood and Sand and Ash.