Tartarus Rising is out and Asgard’s Fall is Audible Daily Deal!

It took a bit longer than expected, but Book 2 is finally out! Also, for those of you who like audiobooks, Asgard’s Fall is out on the Audible Daily Deal for $5.95!

The actual writing of Tartarus Rising was finished more or less on time, but the editing…my god…the editing. Despite being 1,274 pages long, Book 2 didn’t cover quite as much of the plot as I’d intended. Which seems insane since the book turned out to be such a big boy. I did manage to cut down on the tedious stat tables and what lots of readers told me was WAY too much introspection on the part of the protagonist. But somehow, I still managed to crack over a thousand pages. It didn’t even feel wrong when I was writing it, so go figure.

My wonderful cover artist, Julie Dillon, even rushed a second cover for me right before Christmas because the first cover (which now has been pushed back to the cover for book 3) had something on it which was a bit of a spoiler.

This book was definitely a learning experience for me when it comes to plotting. It’s not the plot points that necessarily lengthen a book, but the characters that add to the page count. When character X moves from A to B and discovers C, it’s the things that gets in the way (villain, storm, self-doubt) that sucks up a lot of words. If the reader doesn’t believe the conflict that opposes the protagonist, what’s the point? Anyhow, I was writing a villain near the end of Tartarus Rising and I realized she was too awesome to throw away and that the rest of the book’s plot, and the later books, would massively benefit from having her kicking around, so that required a bit more work than intended.