Category: Oldblood Series

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…

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Blurbing With Claude AI: Slaying a Tyrant

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, Editing, Fantasy, Gladiator, LLMs, Marketing, Mel Dunay, Oldblood Series, Weird ScienceTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

(Disclaimer: some of my past “blurbing with LLMs” posts have been very TL;DR because I included a lot of unnecessary fluff that the LLMs churned up and that I didn’t use. This prompt below helps cut down on the fat, so, although this is several paragraphs long, it is much shorter than those previous posts.)

First off, I prompted Claude in this manner: You are a book marketing expert trying to help a fantasy writer. Please help her improve her blurbs. The first novel in her fantasy series is Slaying a Tyrant by Mel Dunay, which may be part of your training data, if so, please feel free to refer to your training data. The problem is that the Empire mentioned in the blurb is mostly a background issue throughout the series [then I spelled out what role the Empire plays throughout the series, and fed Claude the existing blurb for Slaying a Tyrant].

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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.

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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.

The Independence of Jaiya: Anora’s Work

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My own country celebrated its Independence Day this week, so I thought I’d publish a couple of excerpts (one today, one tomorrow, one Saturday) from the opening chapter of my novel Scapegoating a Hero, which deals in part with the fictional country of Jaiya gaining its independence.

Continue reading “The Independence of Jaiya: Anora’s Work” →

Weird Wednesday: Audiobooks!

Posted on Posted in Cool Books, Cool Websites, Jaiya, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Oldblood Series, Paranormal Romance, Space Opera, Weird Science, WritingTagged Leave a comment

Thanks to the auto-narrator function at Google Play, I now have audio book versions of four of my novels available:

Shadow Captain
Marrying a Monster
Waking the Dreamlost
Loving a Deathseer

Right now I am working on polishing Shadow Captain’s sequel. I hope to have it published by late December of this year, at which point it will spend 90 days in Kindle Unlimited so that the KU readers of the first book can enjoy it. The audiobook for the sequel will be made available around the time it comes to Google Play, sometime in 2023. Once I have Shadow Captain’s sequel completed, the focus will be on re-editing the Ancestors of Jaiya novels in preparation for their audiobook release, and on a new project to be announced later.

Happy Listening!

Jaiya Series Collection Released

Posted on Posted in Cool Books, Covers, Fantasy, Health, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Oldblood Series, Paranormal Romance, Publishing Plans, WritingLeave a comment

2020 Jaiya Collection Final

Three Books in One!

Hello! I hope you and your families are all well in this time of uncertainty. While on administration leave due to COVID19, I finally found time to replace the cover art on the original Jaiya Series and compile the three individual novels into one volume. This compilation is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Google, and Kobo. Just click on the name of the bookstore of your choice to be taken to it. I’ve included a synopsis for the collection below.

Journey to the country of Jaiya, in a world not quite like ours. Here, humans ride trains, drive cars, and use cell phones, but they share their world with insect people and trollfolk, and stranger things lurk in the shadows…

Marrying a Monster: As a favor to her parents, Rina agrees to come back to her hometown and take part in an old local custom: a symbolic marriage between the town’s women and the Mountain King, a mythical guardian spirit no one really believes in. But the Mountain King really exists: a monstrous being that feeds on fear and suffering. Rina’s only hope for survival may be Vipin, the dashing scholar hunting the Mountain King, but Vipin is hiding a few secrets of his own…

Waking the Dreamlost: In a place like Jaiya, a woman can’t just back out of an arranged marriage to a bigshot, even if her amnesia keeps her from remembering when and how she agreed to it. Her engagement to a politician makes Itana a target for terrorist attacks, but a former soldier named Marish keeps rescuing her, and gives her a chance at real love. She doesn’t remember hiring him to find out who is stealing her memories, but he is determined to finish the job…or die trying!

Loving a Deathseer: In a place like Jaiya, a servant has to obey his employers’ every whim, even if the whim isn’t in the job description. Erno spends his days rushing around while his wealthy employers bark orders at him. By night, he cases out his employers’ homes and sells the information to his burglar friends. He has only three rules: don’t get close to anyone, don’t let anyone get hurt, and don’t let anyone get framed for the crime. But his latest job will plunge him into a world of political intrigue,and test his rules to the breaking point. His only chance at redemption lies in the love of a persecuted young woman named Zeni, with the power to foresee his death….

New Giveaway on Prolific Works!

Posted on Posted in Cheap Books, Cool Websites, Covers, Fantasy, Freebie, Gladiator, Instafreebie, Jaiya, Marketing, MMA Fighter, Myth, Oldblood Series, Space OperaLeave a comment

Happy start of spring! Fantasy author Katherine Wibell has organized a freebie giveaway on Prolific Works (the website formerly known as Instafreebie). She has pulled together a collection of stories and sample chapters that speak of worlds not quite like ours. Some of the covers may not be “safe for work,” but there is a wide variety of worlds and stories represented here.

My contribution is a sample chapter from Slaying a Tyrant, the first book in the Ancestors of Jaiya series: G-rated cover, PG-rated content. Feel free to check it out, if you don’t already have a copy.

New Books in November!

Posted on Posted in Cheap Books, Cool Websites, Fantasy, Jaiya, Marketing, NaNoWriMo, Oldblood Series, Paranormal Romance, WritingLeave a comment

Wilson New Releases Nov 2019

Happy Thanksgiving! So, NaNoWriMo has started, and most of the posts you see from me at this point will have been written a few weeks ago, and scheduled for release during November.

Steampunk author Dean F. Wilson has put together a promotion at SFF Book Bonanza, showing off the latest releases in science fiction and fantasy. He graciously agreed to include Slaying a Tyrant, the first book in my Ancestors of Jaiya series, but there are plenty of other new releases to check out as well. Be sure to click here to check out all the latest books!