Years ago, after a three night, fifteen-thousand word writing binge, I tied the bow on the first book I ever wrote and finally sat back to ponder what came next for all of… one night, I think? before I was already making demo covers for my first ever sequel and putting pen to paper all over again. New to the game as I was, I didn’t even stop to second guess that my craft might need work, my prose was rough, the characters god-awful, the motivations and pacing world and everything about as polished as a woodchip on the playground. I was like Eve in the garden, no knowledge or concern of good or bad- just a drive to tell the story in my head.
That sequel did get finished. There was a naive beauty to it, being my second book. It was raw. Winding. Complicated. Sloppy. Hundreds of thousands of words long. And it’s not the book that you’re going to be reading with me this year.
The HARMONY that I’ll be posting throughout this year and beyond is what that sequel always wanted to be. It’s a long book, and it’s going to be markedly different from the others of mine that you may have read. Years of trying to get traditionally published refined my original style of writing to the shape you see in Memento Mori, Showmaker, and partially, Fray. It’s fast, vicious, explosive, and the polar opposite of the slow-burn, sprawling, indulgent style of writing that I wrote my first books in. Of course, you’ll still see echoes of those slower, melancholic moments from time to time. But they’re always included in concise, limited amounts that ensure the plot will always neatly resolve within one hundred thousand trope-adhering words.
HARMONY isn’t going to be like that. It’s a book where I’m going to be unlearning habits of a field I couldn’t make it in, and relearning the habits of the webseries genre, where that kind of indulgent writing doesn’t just have a home- it’s beloved. I’ll sometimes be shirking old personal rules and tradpub conventions, like every chapter must show a new scene. In a first for myself, I’m also going to be writing this book as you’re reading it. What I hope this leads to is a novel that feels more authentic to both myself and to you: one that’s less filtered by sellability and true to the spirit of what I always wanted to write. Even if it’s a little slower at times.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The next chapter of Tay’s story is going to have a scope and scale bigger than any I’ve written before. Her tale is far from over.
Separated from Cal and hunted side-by-side with the boy who murdered her father, Tay’s back is to the wall in a way it’s never been before. But the world isn’t going to wait for her to find her footing. In the capital, the enemies of her life secure their grip and prepare to make their next moves. Beyond the borders of their Section, old allies and foes of her father promise potential ways to turn the tables on her dire situation. And when the lens of conflict begins to spin away from home to the ancestral home of the Creators, the warrior lords of the gladiocracies all begin taking note of what move the Showmaker’s hidden heir will make next.
There’s just one problem in Tay’s way: she’s not the only one burdened by her father's legacy. And her bastard brother has no intention of letting her steal the spotlight he’s been chasing his entire life.
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Spoiler alert, I’m usually a bit of a perfectionist. All of the books I published here on Royal Road were finished with at least a first draft before the first chapter ever went live. That won’t be the case with HARMONY, though. Because I won’t know what I want to change until it happens, I’d like to ask your lenience in advance when it comes to occasional changes, retcons, chapter condensation, and more. This book is one-hundred percent a work in progress, so it might be lacking a bit of that usual hiraeth™ polish you’ve come to expect.
Below is an up-to-date list of retcons and changes for the series. Chapters that were changed will also include a blurb in the author footnote.
* CHARACTER CHANGE: FELIX FANG
* It’s hard to explain how I somehow slipped up and started calling him by the wrong name, but Felix Fang’s name is being updated to Siris Fang. It was always intended to be that way (his pet fox is literally named Bastia), and I think I might have just slipped into it out of a love for alliteration. There’s another character in HARMONY who is actually named Felix, though you likely won’t see them for a while.
* It’ll take me time to go edit every chapter in FRAY, so for now, please just pretend that Siris has always been Siris (: