A'mara Books Update - July 22

Exciting week beginning with my Monday chapter (Chapter 17 for Rebound of Power) getting recognized by @curie!!! In case you don’t know, @curie is a group of awesome people (with a huge curation trail behind them) who look for amazing posts to support. They have strict criteria which must be met, and each of the two times I’ve been “curied,” the first clue was that I was asked an interesting question from someone with relatively high reputation and SP behind them. I then come back to 550 votes and a high article value! (Now, they also comment, unlike the first time I received this honor.)

over 12,000 new words

Ciatra’s story - Strangely, after having a quiet week, last Sunday ended up being a huge writing day for me, scoring nearly 5000 for the story about Ciatra – which now sits at nearly 8000 words. I’m not focusing on that one at the moment though – especially as it doesn’t even have a secured spot in my line-up yet, but it’s been a fun draft.
Zara’s story - The rest of the new words this week went to Zara’s story – which still doesn’t have a working title. This one is now sitting at 15k words, even after removing parts of now-redundant plot.
So, after hitting 12,000 words for the week on Wednesday, I decided to spend the rest of the week on other kinds of writing work.

Editing

Thanks to a Discord group I joined this week, I was made aware of a mistake I’ve been making in my third person point of view (POV) portrayal – too much “head-hopping!” Most of the time, I’m fairly consistent, but sometimes, if I’ve got a group of people, I have some trouble deciding which character gets the POV.

Most of the corrections have been relatively simple – especially as I have a wealth of telepathic characters to help me. But, occasionally, I run into a group of paragraphs where the changes have been difficult and time-consuming. Yet, it must be done!
(Worse, I've been reduced to noticing POV errors in books I'm reading! Thanks, @rhondak!)

So, two days spent on making those corrections – so far. The 850 TCE collection is nearly done being corrected, (but not yet uploaded for epublishing). Next, is to fix Birth of the Neví along with its final read-aloud edit as I’m working on getting this one ready for you for mid-August.

While doing this, I got all the chapters of Ocean of Empathy and the final chapters of Rebound of Fire queued for Steemit, which really does feel good.

Research points

Only one this week, but it was an interesting point!

Injuries associated with strangulation – Seems a strange point to research, and I don’t want to give you any spoilers, but one of the characters in a future book has to deal with this frightening thing – near-strangulation.

Her hero saves her and uses a dragonstone to assist the leya in her healing. But in order to do this correctly, I had to research exactly what happens in a near-strangulation situation. From blood vessels to brain trauma to muscle damage, it was surprisingly complicated. To the degree, in fact, that near-strangulation victims sometimes die days later from their injuries. The vast majority of these victims are sufferers of domestic violence, unfortunately.
https://www.strangulationtraininginstitute.com/health-issues-result-from-strangulation/

Cover Art

In preparation for presenting Birth of the Neví, I realized that I needed a new cover. Although my romantic cover isn’t prefect, it has been good for my romance novellas. Although Birth of the Neví has many romantic elements, it isn’t fundamentally a romance, so it needed a new cover.

I featured the development of this cover in two parts this week – including one that was curated by Esteem, but here’s the final for you to see.

Birth of the Neví takes place in multiple locations, but Irola (the dirty city here) and the rainforests in Çtaráña (pronounced stor-AHN-ya) are major parts. I put the two elements together - only slightly blurred the edges of the city into the forest - for the fact that they are separate places intimately related. Then, I created a new shaze to bind the elements together.

Coming this Week

Six more chapters of Ocean of Empathy. I’m also adding Author Commentary notes as my first reply for the post. Hopefully, this will create more dialogue for the chapters. Autovoting is amazing, but I really want you to enjoy what I’ve written!

Mapping. For Birth of the Neví, I require my Kri’enden map to be completed – probably maps of Joton (the capital of Kri’enden) and Towani City as well. I will eventually need the map of Omrill in Çtaráña as well, but that can probably wait until the sequel, Rise of the Neví.

Editing. Hopefully finish the POV and final edit of Birth of the Neví. It’s time to get this thing epublished! (And the others updated.)

Writing. I’m hoping to get Zara’s story mostly wrapped up this week - including its title. Maybe start working on the other threads that come in on Taurian’s story - Learn of Magic (working title only) – both of these stories are for the 851 T.C.E. collection, Acting the Part which will be shared after Birth of the Neví and Brighid’s Blood. Maybe I’ll also get some work done on Rise of the Neví, pulling together some of the other threads that go through this story.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on here at A’mara Books this week! I hope you manage to take a few minutes to immerse yourself in my world of Terrenden – which I’m so delighted to share with you!

Don’t forget!

I’m still offering 1 Steem Basic Income share for any newbie (100 SP or less) who asks me a question which prompts an “Ask the Author” post! I’m thinking about putting these into a Dbooks ebook all its own, actually.

(Note! I'm actually pretty easy to get talking/writing - I am a writer, after all! Don't be shy in asking your questions.)

Image Credits:

Cover art based on:

City image from PXhere
Forest image from Pexels
Shaze picture developed from PXhere

Shaze divider based on:

Sword image from Wikipedia Commons

All maps/editing by myself on GIMP and Photoscape, both free programs.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Although the penalty of knowing me in real life is that you will influence the creation of my characters; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.