Welcome back! This past week, our scribe didn’t build any new furniture. So that left time to work on books!
(This is Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker Series.)
Our editor got the changes back before her cataracts surgery. Since she’s family, Melinda (my scribe) drove her to the hospital for surgery and waited with her.
Melinda had to take off work for that. So afterwards, she returned home and worked on the edits and the formatting. I am thrilled to announce that Curse Breaker Jousts, Chaos Reigns, and Chaos in Chains are all formatted, including the special features, and we ordered the proof copies!
After Melinda edited Chaos in Chains, she went back and changed the dialogue in two scenes in Curse Breaker Jousts to harmonize with the events in Chaos in Chains since they ended up taking place at the same time. That wasn’t how Melinda thought things would go so that was a necessary step.
She’s usually wrong about the book order. But she had to guess at the order so we could tell people about the Riders of the Apocalypse Series and ask them to follow the Kickstarter. So we don’t hold it against her. After all, marketing is important.
What’s Next?
The proof copies usually take 5-7 weeks to print, ship, and then get flung at my scribe’s door. We don’t know why the person who delivers them throws them at my scribe’s door, but they always do. Also, the proof copies always arrive on a Thursday in between meetings, so the loud bang always startles my scribe.
So some random Thursday in 5-7 weeks, that’s what will happen.
Do you need to wait that long to see mock-ups?
I could make you wait that long, but I’m not mean and I’m bursting to talk about these pretty books. Melinda wouldn’t let me say anything before she ordered the proof copies because she was dithering about what to do. This is an essential part of the process.
But it’s done and so are the decisions. Now we can talk about them!
First up, let’s talk about Chaos Rises since it already came out in a previous kickstarter.
Chaos Rises Special Edition
Chaos Rises kickstarted in Spring 2025 along with special editions of the His Angelic Keeper Series. My scribe’s father passed away while she was writing the final chapters of that book, and she took a break from the series to write the stories based on this newsletter.
I can’t confirm if I had anything to do with that decision. I can see why you’d suspect me.
I got a lot of page time in that series, and Melinda was really easy to push around and convince to give even more page time since she was grieving. I also can’t confirm if any such advantage was taken of that situation. There were other characters involved so it wasn’t just me asking for page time. Maybe they’re responsible for the gap?
Anyway back to the special edition.
Melinda kept the interior exactly the same as the version from the 2025 Kickstarter. She didn’t make any changes at all to it. She just changed the cover to match the covers for the other three books which are new. She added the end pages, sprayed edge design, and gold foil, but that is it. The interior is identical except for that.
This is an approximation of what the gold foil will look like for Chaos Rises except the real version will be golder and shinier. This is what the printer shows in the digital e-proof that my scribe signed off on to give us an idea of what it will look like:
This is a mockup of the sprayed edges for Chaos Rises. It’ll have a black ribbon bookmark and black and white head and tail bands:
This is the full-color end papers design. For the first time, we’re including them since the printer changed the process they use to bind them. So now they don’t crack when you open the book.
Don’t forget to follow the campaign to get notified when it launches.
Other Formats will be available!
We’ll have ebooks as well so if you’re not into pretty hardcovers, don’t worry! You can get ebooks too. We may have advanced copies of the retail edition of the paperbacks too.
Did I get any page time?
Not yet since Melinda finalized the special features for all 4 books in the Riders of the Apocalypse Series. But she plans to start writing Curse Breaker Unleashed this week! So I’ll be getting lots of page time.
New Podcast Episodes!
Melinda recorded new episodes this week.
Winter Collins dropped by to talk about his sci-fi/fantasy book, The Pinpoint of Infinity, and then KM Mohr dropped by to talk about her epic fantasy book, Of Sky and Sea.
I hope you enjoy listening to both episodes. Both books have intriguing premises and interesting worlds.
Since email providers don’t like a lot of links, here are the general links to our podcast, where you can find all 3 episodes:
These are the latest episodes as of this newsletter, and Melinda will record more this week! So more episodes are coming.
I hope you are enjoying the increased frequency of episodes. Melinda messed up something on the scheduler, so it allowed more episodes than she would have liked to be scheduled per week. But she’s enjoying meeting new authors and hearing about new books. I hope you are too.
That’s it for this week. Next week, I’ll show you what we did for Chaos Reigns. Until then, I hope you read a good book!