Another update, so soon!? Yep! Let me tell you a little story about a somewhat longer story, shall I? (For the quick version, you can buy a Halfax Novella now.)
I’m currently running a Patreon as a way to make shorter stories financially viable. I tend to price my books low, which means stuff less than 50,000 words or so has to be 0.99 cents. A book that cheap has to sell a LOT of copies to make back the cost of a professional cover and a professional edit. But in a patreon, so long as the whole subscribership can get me up over the cost of the cover and the edit, then I can release a story a month without putting myself in the poorhouse or having to so aggressively push their sale that you all get sick of me.
The art (until recently) has been provided by Fable. They’ve really done a great job, but they’ve got some tight deadlines so they’ve had to hand off the illustration task to a whole phallanx of other talented artists. A few months ago, they got to work on the cover for Halfax. When the release date came around, I had (roughly) this.
Looks good to me! But I believe the specific phrase Fable used was “I am becoming invested in this dragon.” So I released with a placeholder and the illustration continued, now with the $100 price tag bumped to $200. Over the course of the next few months, that kept happening. Month after month, the cover became more gorgeous, more powerful. Finally, this glorious thing arrived in my inbox.
Magnificent, right! But then I was in a dilemma. This beautiful piece of art was intended to be applied to a story that was already released, hidden away where only 18 or so people could enjoy it. AND THAT MUST NOT STAND!
So what we have is a situation where art was so good, it got the associated story a full release. Thanks Fable!
Now, what sort of story is it? One of the first stories I ever released was Jade, a distant spin-off sequel to the main Book of Deacon series. Halfax is a sequel to that. So if you’ve read Jade, you’re ready for this one. Enjoy!