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Last year I laid out some ambitious plans for 2021, all of which fell apart by February. What happened and why have I been radio silent?

My life turned into a tire fire that just refuses to stop burning. My brain broke under the stress, and I have not been in a good mental state. Writing was a no go for about six months.

I tried, but the results were not good. This created another stressor for me as I realized those deadlines were not feasible. Guilt over not producing caused me great distress which only added to my poor mental health.

It’s only within the last month or so that my brain fog has cleared to the point where I can think straight. I’ve had to do some hard decision-making to evaluate a schedule I can keep with all the chaos that still surrounds me and eats up a lot of my energy.

I realized I did not like the direction I originally planned to take The Tales of Remnas series which led to me scrapping the nearly complete drafts of what I intended to be books 7 and 8. After much brainstorming, I believe I have found a way forward that will satisfy both myself and readers, who must ask to be patient for a bit longer.

I’m as frustrated as you are over the lack of new books. It hurt greatly to have to start over from scratch, but a delay is better than a dud. I hope I can get the seventh installment, The Blood of Heroes, released before year end. Instead of ten books, I’m now anticipating nine total to finish things out.

After The Blood of Heroes is out, instead of launching immediately into the eighth book I will work on Marauder!, the third book of the Rogues of the Lawless Galaxy. Rogues of the Lawless Galaxy is a series that’s been on hiatus since 2019, and I am at last ready to revive it. In August, I released beautiful new editions of first two books in this spicy science fiction adventure romance series.

Please check them out at Amazon.com.

I published my first book in 2016, and here I stand four years later in 2020 on the cusp of releasing my eleventh title feeling more excited and hopeful than I did on the day the first Tales of Remnas book hit Amazon. As I finish up the final read-through of Flower in the Darkness, I know with certainty this is the point when my journey as an author starts.

On 8/15/2020, the sixth book in The Tales of Remnas series hits store shelves. More than two years have passed since the last book came out. Eighteen months since I put out a book period. And I’ve never been a trendy author who can claim massive sales figures. By all accounts, my career should be dead.

Yet something happened recently that makes me believe I’m just getting started.

The Tales of Remnas series sits uncomfortably on the border line between fantasy and romance. It’s a story of passionate love and bitter hate, big adventure and bigger biceps. This is high fantasy with rippling abs where the heroes are hot slabs of beefcake and bold heroines are eager to fall into their brawny arms.

The series is primarily about Arshé, an elven woman with the power to see the future but her visions are confined to disasters and tragedies. Treated as an outsider all her life, she gets her first taste of true happiness when she encounters Rekki, a traveling warrior on a quest. The handsome mercenary was born under a prophecy that he would become king of his people and unite them for the first time in thousands of years. Together, they work to build an empire that will change the course of history.

The series has been dogged from day one by a single problem.

Rekki is an ogre.

I can hear the record-scratch noise going off in your head, and I already know what you’re imagining. Something that looks like Shrek or worse.

Ogres are described as being like Vikings in the books. Hot, muscular love machines with a built in set of horns. But when readers heard the word ‘ogre’ they imagined an ugly, stinky, hulking monstrosity. Not exactly the stuff that makes a woman swoon. Think of all the fantastical creatures that provide fodder for the endless supply of non-human hunks in paranormal and fantasy romances. Vampires, shifters, fae. We have a frame of reference to understand these creatures as sexy because they have already been re-imagined as such in the popular culture.

No such frame was there to help people see ogres as creatures to inspire the thirst. I realized that if I had any chance of making these books go, I had to overcome this hurdle one way or another. Common wisdom is that there are three things that sell a book: name recognition, the back cover synopsis, and the cover art. The front and back cover is the only thing I have complete control over. Telling people on the back cover the ogres were hot guys didn’t work, but what if I showed them instead with a visual representation?

The original covers featured depictions of the ethereal Arshé. But you’d already expect an eleven woman to be beautiful. I looked high and low for an artist who I thought could handle this very unusual request until I eventually found one. But even she had the record-scratch moment when I described the concept as “an ogre, but also a chad with abs you do laundry on.”

The thing about artists is that really good ones tend to be booked solid. I had to wait a very long time to work with her, but it was well worth it. I think she understood what I was going for even better than I did. Behold, the fruit of her labor.

Click here to learn more about these beautiful books

Bet you aren’t thinking about Shrek any more.

The gambit paid off because a strange thing happened after the new covers hit Amazon. The books started to sell with no help from me. It’s like something magical happened, and the books were getting a second chance at life. Readers who may have skipped of them even a week before were picking these up and reading them.

It is one of the greatest things I’ve ever have felt. For once, I had momentum. It’s too early to assume I can keep riding the wave to money and fame, but even if it pitters out by the end of next week, it was enough. I assessed my problem and fixed it. If I could create something that appealed to readers once, I could do it again.

To quote video essayist Harris Brewis, “Creating art is like jumping off a cliff and building your wings on the way down. If you only want to start when you know exactly how to get everything right, you never actually will.” (I’m quoting a YouTube personality. What have I become?)

I’ve lived by this sentiment for my entire writing career, although it was just earlier this week that I saw this philosophy laid out so elegantly. My approach has always been to just do it and figure it out as I go. It took me four years to realize out I needed to build my wings out of shirtless men.

The saga is reborn and so is my passion for this project. It’s time to finish the tale.