Status Update, Where I've Been

I haven’t posted a blog in some time, so I figured I’d catch everyone up on what’s been happening, what I’m doing, and what’s up next from me, R.L. Parker, and the world of Ayrelon in general.

As some of you might know, a few things happened quite rapidly at the end of 2022. First, I published Dusk, my third novel, on November 15th. It’s launch was decent from a pre-order perspective, and I was excited to continue promoting it. To do so, I joined TikTok and that ended up taking over my life for the next few months. I’ve grown my TikTok account a great deal, made a lot of new writer / reader friends in the process, and helped many authors along their publishing journey. All of that has been amazing, but to say it took a lot of my time would still be an understatement.

Even with a new social media platform as a distraction, I managed to write the first draft of Enveloped by Dark’s Embrace in November, December, and February (I took most of January off). It currently clocks in at 195k words in length, and is in the hands of 3 Alpha readers, and in queue for my editor, K.D. Parker, to work her magic.

For those not in the know, that does not mean it is releasing “soon”. There will be an intentional delay for several reasons. That leads to what my plans are for 2023, and what that means to you, my readers.

Final note before we continue into 2023 plans: Ayrelon Press, LLC is now a thing. We finally bit the bullet and moved up in the world from a “Doing Business As” legal entity name, to a legitimate corporation, and my wife now offers professional Editing services for a modest fee. That has absorbed a good chunk of our time at the end of 2022, and beginning of 2023 as well.

Plans for 2023

I am in the process of writing 4 novels this calendar year: all four of the remaining novels in the A Destiny of Blood & Magic series, of which Bathed in the Blood of Ravens was book 1. As you saw above, book 2 is complete. I am working on book 3 right now, and have made a bit of progress on the first few scenes of the novel after taking a few weeks off to gather my thoughts, and find my mental focus. My writing motivation takes a few weeks to ramp up, so I’m not promising mind-blowing progress in the short term, but it will continue and grow until I knock it out of the park, as usually happens.

Because of the nature of books 2, 3, 4 and 5, I need to rapid release them. Which means, I need them all complete before I begin, since I completely fail when attempting to write by a deadline. Too much in my life is unpredictable, and I’m not a writer who can force it. So, even though book 2 is in edits/alpha phase, it will sit until book 5 reaches the same state. Once all 5 are complete, you can expect to see pre-orders spring up for all four of them, 4 months apart from each other. This should happen somewhere near Jan 1 of 2024. It may happen sooner, it may happen later.

Part of the reasoning for this approach is also the artwork, which is being produced by the supremely talented J.K. Pevahouse (Siscci, Dusk). I have a new vision for the cover art for the entire series. This will lead to a new, final cover for Bathed in the Blood of Ravens, which will make the whole series feel more cohesive on a bookshelf, and far more dramatic and epic in your hands. I’m still on the fence how to approach the re-release of BitBoR, but it’s a necessity. I have time to make those decisions, however. Just know, that change is coming, and it will bring with it a new round of edits for that novel.

The final reason for these delays is editing consistency. While all three of my published novels are fairly clean, from an editing perspective, my editor and I have both learned a lot about the process in the last two years, and we want to give all of my existing novels another pass in 2023. So that, too, will be happening this year, and will result in a better flow as you progress through the main series, and a more standardized reading experience over all. We’re both quite excited about this, but feeling daunted at the same time. I write wordy books, and that means a lot of work lies ahead of us.