Category: Jaiya

State of the Author, Summer 2026 Edition

Posted on Posted in ai, Art, Fantasy, Holidays, humor, Hunter Healer King, Jaiya, Jane Austen, LLMs, Mel Dunay, Mystery, One Weird Trick, Pride & Planetoids, Publishing Plans, science-fiction, Space Opera, Star Wars, Steampunk, The Stars By Degrees, videos, Weird Science, WritingTagged , , , , 2 Comments

This has been a stressful couple of months, for reasons that I’ve alluded to here and here. The real life stuff mentioned in the second post are still ongoing, so prayers are welcome. In the meantime, here’s what’s happened on the writing front in the meantime:

Three Ladies in Black: done at ~46000 words, except possibly for minor tweaks before formatting, publishing et al. This is the first in a planned series of Ruritanian cozy mysteries with an alt-history angle. Why Ruritanian cozy mysteries with an alt-history angle? Well, if you held a gun to my head, I probably could write something that didn’t sit across three different genres like a disgruntled hippopotamus, but where would be the fun in that? Anyway, the plan is to start a new pen name (possibly implied to be a pseudonym of the femme fatale narrator) and publish the first three together sometime in 2027-2028, then assess how well they do. 

Continue reading “State of the Author, Summer 2026 Edition” →

Big Romance Sale from Hans G. Schantz and L. Jagi Lamplighter!

Posted on Posted in Cheap Books, Cool Books, Fantasy, Jaiya, Jane Austen, Marketing, Mel Dunay, Oldblood Series, Paranormal Romance, Pride & Planetoids, Star Wars, The Stars By Degrees2 Comments

Hans “Aetherczar” Schantz teams up with L. Jagi Lamplighter, the author of the Books of Unexpected Enlightenment to host a wide variety of romance novels on sale. They have graciously agreed to include my own Pride & Planetoids and my newly released Ancestors of Jaiya Series Collection. Mr. Schantz’s sales always have a huge number of books to choose from. For this one, the host team plan to rotate the books’ positions on the sale page on Saturday and again on Monday to keep it fresh. Be sure and check the sale out today and on those days…something you missed the last time you looked might just turn out to be your new favorite! Also, keep an eye out for frequent commenter Teresa Peschel’s books; she has several in the sale under the pen name Odessa Moon

Cedar Sanderson Reviews The Jaiya Series! Yay!

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, Covers, Fantasy, Jaiya, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Oldblood Series, Paranormal RomanceTagged , , Leave a comment

I’ve known Cedar for a while on Discord, and she has very kindly offered feedback on some of my book covers, but I woke up this morning, sore from moving furniture and number crunching for a replacement computer, to find that she had written a very positive review of my first series on her substack: https://cedarlila.substack.com/p/book-review-the-jaiya-series?publication_id=1528321&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=3l7wwi&utm_medium=email

Thank you so much, Cedar! This really made my day! I am including your Tomato Wyrm in a post of capsule reviews coming soon to this blog.

Ten Years Ago Today…

Posted on Posted in Art, Covers, Fantasy, Hunter Healer King, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Midjourney, Publishing Plans, science-fiction, Space Opera, Star Wars, Tia Baden, Weird Science, Writing3 Comments

I put a short story with a lousy cover up on Amazon. A couple of months later, I took it down again. It was October of that year before I published my first novel. and now, well…

I would lying if I said I’d found fame or fortune doing this. But it’s been a fun adventure and I plan to keep on with it.

Weird Wednesday: The Role of Religion in My Science Fiction and Fantasy

Posted on Posted in Fantasy, history, Jaiya, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Myth, Space Opera, Star Wars, Steampunk, tolkien, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , , , 4 Comments

(Adapted from a comment made elsewhere.)

Religion is not at the foreground of the stories I tend to tell, but it is in the background, part of the “vibe,” so to speak. I tend to stick to versions of a specific cosmogony (Creator+quasi angels+quasi devils), partly because it reflects my own Catholic beliefs, but also frankly because my world-building energy is limited, and most of the time, I’d rather spend it elsewhere.

Continue reading “Weird Wednesday: The Role of Religion in My Science Fiction and Fantasy” →

State of the Author, 3Q2025

Posted on Posted in ai, Art, Editing, Fantasy, Gladiator, Health, history, Jaiya, Jane Austen, LLMs, Mel Dunay, Midjourney, Mystery, Myth, Oldblood Series, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, Star Wars, Steampunk, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , , , Leave a comment

This really should have been “State of the Author, Mid-Year,” but I was dealing with health issues for most of June (nothing serious, just distracting) and then July was kind of busy at work, so here we are…

Continue reading “State of the Author, 3Q2025” →

Friday Fragments: The Wounding of the Quantum Tree

Posted on Posted in Fantasy, Jaiya, Oldblood Series, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

When I created the Jaiya setting, I thought it best, for various reasons, to use my own religion as the inspiration for the cosmogony and beliefs of the settings, rather than messing around with other people’s religions. So, here is Afaro Viamafar, “The Wounding of the Tree of Choices”, sometimes also titled “The Wounding of the Quantum Tree.” Parts of it are quoted as chapter headings in the novel Seeking the Quantum Tree. Apparently there are other scriptural writings in the setting (you can see passing references in the text below to at least two others), but this is the only one I ever wrote out in full, and one of the first things I wrote in the setting.

Continue reading “Friday Fragments: The Wounding of the Quantum Tree” →

State of the Author, Start of 2025

Posted on Posted in bookbinding, Covers, Editing, Fantasy, Jaiya, Jane Austen, LLMs, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Midjourney, Mystery, Myth, One Weird Trick, Publishing Plans, Python, Rings of Power, Space Opera, Steampunk, Uncategorized, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , , Leave a comment

My plans for the New Year are always kind of vague, because “Mann tracht un Gott lacht” (Man plans, and God laughs).

Continue reading “State of the Author, Start of 2025” →

State of the Author, 4Q2024

Posted on Posted in Art, Cool Books, Fantasy, Gladiator, Jaiya, Jane Austen, LLMs, Mel Dunay, Myth, Oldblood Series, Paranormal Romance, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, Steampunk, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

-First off, I think my books are all in Kindle Unlimited now, free to anyone with a subscription to KU. If you see any sign that they are not in KU, please let me know in the comments.

–Undead Flight (Hunter Healer King Book 2) is now in the hands of my proofreaders. Barring complications, should be ready to publish by Christmas time. Ebook cover is done; blurb is done with AI help (stay tuned, my post on the blurbing process will be out tomorrow. Print cover is dependent on my final cleanup of the manuscript to determine page length.

-Also started Hunter Healer King Book 3 by writing a fairly dark and distressing scene from the last third of the book. This is kind of suboptimal, because stitching together scenes written out of order tends to add (wo)manhours to the first draft process, but I hadn’t figured out the opening scene at that point. I don’t know when it will be released but I know that I am aiming for Christmas of 2025.

-I have had a sci-fi Pride and Prejudice retelling in development for a long time; finally got the first scene down. No projected completion date at this time. My main inspiration for this concept was, weirdly enough, Star Wars: A New Hope. If you dig deep enough into the filmographies of the supporting cast, you will find one with a Pride and Prejudice connection in his earlier career. Regrettably, the catchy working title explicitly references Star Wars, so the official title will probably be something rather sedate of the “Pride and…” format.

-New ebook covers using AI art for Shadow Captain and Spider Star are done; still need to do new paperback covers for them, and ebook/hardcover for the 2 in 1 volume for the duology. Projected release date for the 2 in 1 is first/second quarter of 2025.

-Early stages of AI art covers for the Jaiya Series and Ancestors of Jaiya series. No text layout yet. A four in one of Ancestors might come out in third quarter of 2025; a seven in one of the full metaseries might be sometime in 2026 but a lot could go sideways between now and then.