The book that changed everything

Hi!

So the point of this message is that I am going to post chapters of a stand-alone book that is unrelated to the Divine Apostasy every Wednesday. I plan on releasing it to the public in a few months. It has a long history that shaped my writing career (for good and bad). If you want the details, keep reading.

The long-timers will remember me posting one of my earlier works here. I got about 2/3 of the way through and realized I needed to rewrite the entire last 1/3. I didn't have time for that as the book, quite frankly, was one of the first things I wrote and the writing showed that. It took me way too much time to bring the prose up to my current abilities, and I abandoned the effort.

You would think I learned my lesson but I'm about to do it again. The differences this time are: the book is finished already and the writing is at my current level. In fact, while I was waiting for edits back on book 6, I went through the entire book again.

The book is short at 74k, it is not LitRPG, and the original audience was for Upper Middle-Grade (think the first three Harry Potter books).

I modified the story to make it borderline Young Adult. I'm not sure how successful that was. I look forward to your opinions.

Why did this book change everything? Because an early version of this book got me a literary agent. I had dreams of a big NY Publishing house buying the book. That would validate me as a "real" writer and I would find happiness.

None of that happened. I spent years trying to get that and another book published in NY. The feedback was consistent from the editors that read it. They loved much about the books, but they were too complicated for Middle-Grade readers.

Shocking! Me? Write something complicated. Ridiculous.

Eventually, my agent and I split ways. That happened in March 2019. I immediately started a book called "Shade's First Rule" which released in July that year. You know the rest.

I think now and then about what would have happened if this book had not gotten me an agent. I would have begun independently publishing years earlier. But would it have been LitRPG? I don't know. We will never know. For better or worse, this book shaped my path that brought us together.

And I love this book. It saddens me that over 10k words were cut from it so we could meet NY Pub house expectations for novel length. The book is very lean. But, what remains is dear to my heart.

You will see I have common threads in all my books (there is another book that maybe we will do next year): libraries, mental companions, martial arts, secrets, parents that aren't what they seem...I guess they are the tropes that I love, and I've always just written what I love.

I modified the book to add more explicit progression elements and tried to age it up a little. Hopefully, I succeeded.

So, starting tonight, I will post this novel that deserves to be read. Ry and Thelt were the beginning of so much. You will see their shadows in many of my other characters. I love them, and I hope you do too.

Here we go.

I added chapter 1 to Root.

I added chapter 1 and 2 to Harvester.

I added chapters 1, 2, and 3 to Step Master, Blapy's Favorite, and Divine.

Enjoy!

Thank you for supporting me. It makes me happy that the first people who get to read this are you, the best supporters a writer could have.

Take care,

AFK