So, The King of Faerie is the last book in my Stariel Quartet.
Well, only mostly, as it turns out.
Whilst The King of Faerie (Stariel #4) indeed wraps up Hetta and Wyn’s story and the main series arc, I found in writing it that there was another character whose story needed a bit more telling than I could fit within its pages. I’ve been hesitant to announce this because I initially thought this extra piece might be a bonus story or a novella that I could include as an add-on to Book 4 when it releases. However, having recently reached 30,000 words on this spin-off story without yet passing its midpoint, I think it’s time to admit that I am in fact writing another novel.
This is a very long-winded way of saying, yes, Marius Valstar is getting a book!
No blurb or cover yet, but I am delighted to announce the forthcoming existence of Of Plants & PrincesA Rake of His Own, which will sit chronologically after the events of The King of Faerie.
Update: A Rake Of His Own is now available to pre-order!
How do you reflect on a year where reality became stranger than fiction? Even from the small and personal perspective of my own indie career, the task is daunting.
To make some sort of sense of a year that felt a thousand years and simultaneously only five minutes long, I’ve split it into quarters.
I’ve also chosen to mainly focus on the small good things that happened to me. Quite aside from all the, er, general 2020-ness going on on a global scale, 2020 was my worst year ever in terms of words written, so it’s good to remind myself that wasn’t all it was.
1st Quarter: The Before Times
I publish a book
It’s slightly surprising to remember this because it feels so long ago. But in January 2020, The Court of Mortals released! Bringing my grand total of books published to THREE whole novels!
Fanart!
Also in January, the amazingly talented Chiara Schieder sent me this beautiful fanart of Wyn!!! I think I made a sound only audible to bats when it turned up unexpectedly in my inbox. One of my secret author dreams has been to inspire fanart, and I was tickled pink when it actually! happened!
I felt like a real author!!!
2nd Quarter: Lock-down
A fogbank lies over the weeks between March and May when New Zealand was in Levels 4 and 3 of our alert system. I remember driving out of Wellington on eerily quiet roads, the electronic highway signs flashing: “Stay calm; be kind. Level 4 at midnight.”
It felt like driving ahead of a storm, like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. I’d never felt dread with such physicality before; a persistent, painful tightness in my chest, the inability to focus, the bewildered surreality of a nation all tuning in each day for the 1pm press briefing.
Autumn is the loveliest time at my parents’ farm, I think, and the dissonance between the golden fields beneath crisp blue skies and the increasingly grim news headlines utterly did my head in. It was also our busiest time of year in my day job, and I was working remotely, but I didn’t get enough done, distracted and anxious as I was, and consequently worked a lot of overtime when we went back to Level 2.
3rd Quarter: Apparently a lot of stuff happened when I list it all out?
In this part of the year, New Zealand slowly returned to normal and the rest of the world largely didn’t. This dual reality continues even as I write this post. I’m grateful for my good fortune even as I worry for my friends and family overseas. Kia kaha, koutou.
Award nominations
I was a finalist in two categories for New Zealand’s SFF awards: The Prince of Secrets for Best Novel and my very own self for Best New Talent.
CoNZealand
End of July was CoNZealand! It wasn’t the Wellington-based conference we’d all hoped for, but there was an amazing array of online panels. I even spoke (incredibly nervously) on some!
Audiobooks!
In August, the first of the Stariel audiobooks was released by Podium Publishing, swiftly followed by #2 and #3. The audiobooks have brought me so so much joy. The narrator, Finty Williams, is AMAZING and has brought the stories to life. Whenever I feel my motivation for finishing the final book flagging, I remind myself that once it’s finished I’ll get to hear it in audiobook format!
Cake!
My sister made me two cakes this year, one when I launched The Court of Mortals and one when the audiobook of The Prince of Secrets released. Which now means I’m only one cake away from completing the set:
4th quarter: I finally start making writing progress again. Also, a review.
One of the last things that happened in 2020 was a glowing review for The Lord of Stariel on one of the biggest sites for romance reviews: Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I appreciate every single one of my reviews – they’re one of the most powerful ways readers can hear about my books. However, I generally avoid reading reviews for my own sanity. But this one gets a mention in my ‘list of positives amidst the sea of 2020’ not only because
(a) not gonna lie, it was hugely flattering to my ego but also
(b) it made my book sell like hotcakes,
which was extremely exciting to see when I checked my sales report.
2020 was my best year ever in terms of books sold and my worst year ever in terms of words written. I’m still feeling the effects of my lack of writing productivity; I’d originally intended to release Stariel #4 in January 2021, but that isn’t going to happen, due to the glacial progress I made for most of 2020.
I can’t even blame the pandemic. (Well, mostly; it probably didn’t help).
My writing paralysis dates from the Before Times in late 2019, after I finished The Court of Mortals. No matter how many hours I spent in front of the manuscript, endlessly writing, rewriting, arranging and rearranging scenes, the next book refused to work. My panic and self-loathing got fairly dire.
I may write a separate post about what helped kick me out of the spiral, but the good news is that my brain came back online in late 2020 and I’ve been making heaps of progress since. The King of Faerie will release in August, come hell or high water.
If you are a NZ library or bookstore, my books are available through Wheelers. You can also contact me directly and we’ll work something out.
Otherwise, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but here are some stores to get you started. You can also check out Bookshop.org or ask your local independent bookstore to order one for you!
I have sat on this cover for far too long, and since book 4 is finally, finally feeling like it’s taking a proper shape, I’ve decided to let it out of the bag.
Isn’t it just gorgeous? Once again, Jenny at Seedlings Design Studio has outdone herself. I love all my covers so much, but I think this one just might be my favourite.
LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE TOGETHER!!!
I have also put The King of Faerie up for pre-order.
I have put it on the longest possible pre-order (a year) to make super sure I have enough time to finish it, but I am hoping to be able to bring the release date forward.
Here’s the blurb:
The fae are real, and Hetta Valstar is trying her best to marry one.
If Hetta and Wyn ever manage to marry, it will be the first union between Faerie and Mortal since the Iron Law was revoked.
The mortal Queen has given them her blessing—sort of. Now, Wyn needs permission from the fae High King. There’s an intensely personal reason why they need to tie the knot as soon as possible, and time is not on their side.
The clock is ticking. Except in Wyn’s home court, which is trapped under magical stasis. To break the spell will mean venturing into the deepest realms of Faerie, where even fae princes—and definitely human lords—fear to tread.
Unfortunately, the fae problems aren’t limited to Faerie.
Public tension is rising, and the reveal of Wyn’s true identity makes him and Hetta the centre of the storm. On top of this, Stariel’s magic is going haywire, and Hetta is struggling with her intensifying powers—and she might not be the only one affected.
The High King might be the only one who can help, since he’s responsible for the fae returning to the Mortal Realm in the first place.
Self-publishing effectively involves starting your own small business – on top of the actual writing and, in many people’s cases, including my own – on top of the full-time day job and general detritus of life administration.
Piecing together stolen moments – from lunch hours and evenings and weekends, while waiting at bus stops and seated on planes – does strange things to one’s sense of time.
But it has only been a year since I published The Lord of Stariel. Wow.
The happenings of a year are too much to fit in one blog post, so here is a random sampling of eight highlights (in no particular order).
#1 Seriously awesome covers
I could not be happier with the covers for my books, made by Jenny Zemanek at Seedlings Design Studio. Here are the three so far revealed (you’ll have to wait for Book 4’s cover, but it is every bit as pretty).
So pretty!
#2 Book Launch Party
I launched The Lord of Stariel in my living room last November because I wanted it to be as non-stressful and fun as possible. I made cake; my sister decorated it. I wore a T-shirt with my book cover on. I stacked a pile of books nonchalantly in the corner and signed them upon request.
Book cake!
I highly recommend this approach to book launches and am in fact planning the exact same sort of event for the launch of Book 3 (I didn’t have an official party for Book 2 because it released so soon after Book 1).
#3 Hard copies on my shelf
I think every author imagines the moment when they will hold a physical copy of their finished book in their hands. When my box of advanced copies arrived (for the book launch!), I let out a noise audible only to bats.
#4 Publishing Book 2
Writing and publishing one book could be written off as a fluke; publishing my second book The Prince of Secrets made my dreams of a writing career feel less like a dream and more like something I could build, one brick (book) at a time.
#5 Books in libraries!
Because I am self-published, I wasn’t sure whether my books would make it into libraries. But they have! Mostly to NZ libraries, but also to some in the US! I even found one on the shelf in the temporary Wellington central library (temporary due to the closure of the main library because of earthquake risk).
(Do feel free to request your library get a copy of The Lord of Stariel or The Prince of Secrets…)
#6 Meeting other local writers
Who knew there were so many fantasy writers in Wellington!
A big shout out to Melanie Harding-Shaw, who has this year been determinedly reaching out and organising Wellington speculative fiction writers into regular meet-ups, a process that bears no small resemblance to herding cats.
Earlier this year I also attended the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference in Christchurch (and wrote about it here), which exceeded expectations in terms of both fun and learning. I have yet to make it along to a Wellington chapter meeting due to scheduling conflicts, but they keep inviting me, so I hope to make it along to one in 2020!
#7 SPFBO5 (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off 5)
This is a competition orchestrated by author Mark Lawrence. It involves 10 book bloggers working their way through 300 self-published fantasy titles to choose the winner.
The competition is still underway, and The Lord of Stariel remains in the running as of this blog post, having been picked as a semi-finalist by the blog it was assigned to. I’m thrilled about that, but that’s not actually the highlight I’m celebrating here. No, what I want to celebrate is that I fronted up to the start line and entered my book into the competition at all!
I am my own worst enemy, and tend to not even enter things because I’ve already decided I’m unworthy. You can’t fail if you don’t sign up, right? This year I’ve been making a concerted effort to stop thinking like that, and to start thinking more like, well, this:
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”—Winston Churchill
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”—JK Rowling
“The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried.”—Stephen McCranie
“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” —C. S. Lewis
I like inspirational quotes, but they can also make it sound like a very glib process, when the reality of putting myself forward and risking failure has been extremely difficult—but also rewarding, I think. The more you shove at the edges of your comfort zone, the bigger it gets.
(As well as being a small milestone in my ongoing journey of Trying To Hide Myself Under Rocks Less, being part of SPFBO has also turned out to be quite fun. There’s a feeling of community to it and heaps of good indie fantasy books to be found by browsing the list of SPFBO books. I shall have to do another post on ones I’ve read and enjoyed so far!)
#8 Readers
Last November, the only way I could make myself press that big ‘publish’ button was to pretend that no one would actually read my book.
This, delightfully, has turned out to be not true. The first time a reader got in touch to say how much they liked my book, I had to take several hours to compose myself sufficiently to be able to respond with some degree of professionalism rather than a string of incoherent exclamation marks.
So thank you, readers, for buying my book, for leaving reviews, for sending me emails, for making and liking posts, and for tweeting tweets. You have been the most wonderful part of this indie publishing gig.
Alritey folks – after much shilly-shallying, I can finally reveal the cover and blurb for Stariel #3 The Court of Mortals.
Once again, the fabulous Jenny Zemanek at Seedlings Design Studio has outdone herself. I love it so, so much! Tiny crowns! Tiny envelopes! Majestic palace!
Marrying your fae prince shouldn’t be this hard.
Hetta’s family now knows Wyn’s true identity, but that doesn’t mean they approve of their relationship. Princes are all very well – but Wyn’s not human, for all he’s spent ten years pretending to be.
With gossip spreading like wildfire, Hetta and Wyn receive a royal summons. The Queen of Prydein has heard the rumours of fae intruders, and she’s not letting Wyn go until she’s satisfied he and his people aren’t a threat. Convincing her would be a lot easier if someone wasn’t trying to blacken Wyn’s name – and if his sister wasn’t trying to kill him.
For mortal politics aren’t the only problem the pair have to face. The Court of Ten Thousand Spires is still without a ruler, and the only way out may be for Wyn to assume the throne himself – meaning he and Hetta can never be together.
Releases 18 January 2020. Pre-order your copy now!
This month I have been typesetting up a storm to get paperback copies of The Lord of Stariel ready for release in November.
Typesetting is the process of formatting a book, so called because back in the day it involved physically setting type. I’ve done this the old-fashioned way exactly once in my life, as part of a training course, and whilst fun it definitely isn’t something you’d want to do for an entire book (it took me about 20 minutes to set my one allocated line of type!).
Many teeny blocks of lead
Nowadays, typesetting means electronically laying out a book for print (and laying out the e-book, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish). I happen to really, really love print typesetting, because I am exactly the kind of person who will agonise over an extra half-millimetre of margin and spend hours weighing up the pros and cons of different fonts.
If you are not this kind of person, there are some automated solutions. I use one of these (a program called Vellum) for formatting e-books. To my mind, there’s no point agonising over e-book formatting because the appearance of an e-book changes across platforms anyway. You have to let go of the illusion of control.
You know what you can control to your heart’s content, though? Print books! For typesetting print books, I use Adobe InDesign, which is a control freak’s dream. This is both a great and terrible power. On the bright side, there will be no auto-formatting doing things you didn’t tell it to do (I’m looking at you, Microsoft Word), but on the down side, there will be no auto-formatting to save you. All faults will be entirely your own.
Truth.
You can’t truly judge your typesetting until you see a physical proof copy, but printing out pages and cutting them to the correct page size is a useful proxy. Hence my living room has been looking like a bookish murder scene recently, full of disembodied pages:
Many iterations of pages with slightly different margins, leading, or font sizes. May appear identical to the untrained or less obsessive eye.
Once you’ve typeset your book, you then know how many pages it will be – which means you can work out the spine width! And from the spine width comes the BEAUTIFUL FULL COVER SPREAD thanks to my designer:
What the paperback version of my book will look like when ironed (DO NOT IRON BOOKS!)
The last thing to decide on for a print book is the cover finish. As an indie publisher, I have two choices: matte or gloss finish (other cool combo options like metallic foiling and spot gloss etc aren’t available with the print-on-demand (POD) providers I’m using. I’ll do a separate blog about that, but basically POD means someone can order 1 copy of my book from a retailer and behind the scenes the printer will print and ship 1 copy directly to the customer.)
It’s quite hard to show the difference in a photograph, but gloss finish is, er, glossy, and makes colours seem richer. Matte is, er, not glossy, and it feels smoother in the hand but can ‘flatten’ darker colours.
Proof copies! BE STILL MY BEATING HEART. Matte finish is on the left; gloss finish on the right. (You can’t tell from this photo at all, but they actually do look extremely different in real life.)
Next step: Checking the proof copies! (It would be impossible to overstate how overwhelmingly excited I am to be able to hold ACTUAL PHYSICAL COPIES OF MY BOOK.)
It will release 1 November and I am COUNTING DAYS GUYS OMG. I am both incredibly excited to show it to the world and nervous for precisely the same reason!
I think of books as a long, time-delayed conversation between authors and readers. You can keep your writing in the back of the wardrobe and never show it to another living soul. This has the advantage of keeping it safe from criticism, but it’s also a lot like talking to yourself. It also means the book is never truly finished, because there’s nothing to stop you fiddling with your wardrobe-book forever.
It’s been a long journey, getting this series ready for release, and part of me still can’t quite believe that book one is really truly actually going to be published IN LESS THAN A MONTH.
Where will the book be available to buy when it releases?
Ebook
In the long run, I plan to make my books available on all ebookseller platforms, but in the short run they will only be available on Amazon. This is due to Amazon’s exclusivity requirements for its subscription programme, Kindle Unlimited, which I plan to enrol my books in initially.
Print
You’ll be able to order books from your preferred bookseller of choice (I can recommend Book Depository for free international shipping). I’ll let you know when and where they’re available.
A sneak peek
I’ve also put the prologue and the first chapter up on the website. You can read it here. I plan to put a few more chapters up before release date, to psych myself up for it!
