I know I said I was going to take April off to settle a few things, but I didn't want to lose the momentum. So, I'm starting to serialize Sand and Blood starting with chapter eight since chapter one through seven were already available on my site.

Sand and Blood started quite a few years ago as a placeholder novel. Flight of the Scions was submitted somewhere and I thought I had a good chance of making it. I distracted myself by reading The Language Construction Kit and they had this neat little section about world building. Of course, the author was suggesting writing a 200-300 word story to show someone in the culture, I was just going to write a little 20k word novella showing the culture that Kanéko was missing.

Almost eighty thousand words later, I was only a third done with the story. Blood was the beginning of that journal. It isn't a “typical” fantasy in that the main character isn't the grand hero, and I found that a lot of people don't really care for it, but there are some who do.

But here we are, at the beginning (-ish).

Like Sand and Ash, these chapters are going to be released under Creative Commons and will be available for free on my site, Patreon, Ello, and Wattpad. I'm dropping Penflip and Diaspora because they really didn't produce any feedback from the last few months.

Sand and Blood 8: The Morning Sun

I really should have ended the preview at chapter eight. Everything up to this point was getting Rutejìmo in the middle of the desert. Chapter eight is when he wakes up abandoned by all of the adults (elders) of the clan and he's stuck with four others in the middle of nowhere.

The idea of this reminded me of a Japanese anime when ten students go out on a journey, but when they get there, they find out there were supposed to be only nine of them. Since the students didn't know each other before the journey, none of them knew which one was the extra and a lot of human nature came out of it. (It was also done nicely in Eureka.)

This is inspired by that story.

Read Sand and Blood 8: The Morning Sun

Flight of the Scions 13: The High Life

My “break,” as it were, comes from working on Flight of the Scions. Sand and Blood is pretty much final, complete with multiple editor runs, so I don't really have to do much other than write my thoughts. Flight, on the other hand, requires a bit of editing as I go.

I added a section into chapter thirteen that was cut. It was a sweet little scene between Garèo and Virsian as Kanéko realizes that they are actually interested in each other.

The new section starts at:

As he returned to the room, Kanéko leaned over the railing and looked down. A large garden filled the space behind the inn. It was a couple chains deep, going from the wall of the inn and reaching into the woods. From her vantage point, she could see dozens of little paths leading to dead ends filled with benches and quiet places to talk. She amused herself by tracing them with her mind.

“It is a lovely night.”

Kanéko gasped as she heard Garèo's voice from below. She ducked down and leaned on the railing to peer over the edge, her heart beating faster as she waited for him to call out to her.

Garèo and Virsian walked with arms intertwined as they headed into the gardens. The cat woman's tail swayed lazily as she spoke, the tip of it occasional tapping against the back of Garèo's leg.

In the original book, there is actually a chapter before and after this from Garèo's point of view when he is flirting with Virsian and then one with him and Maris. Neither of those are going to be in the book since they will show up for Kin-Killer if I write it.

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