The Puzzle Pieces Tell All
This week, I bring you some puzzling books news and some art confusion.
Last week, I meant to send our newsletter on Monday like always. But I was so excited, I scheduled it wrong and it went on Sunday instead. Oops!
If you were happy to see my pop into your inbox day early, then carry on! It wasn’t an error. I meant to do that all along. 😉
Sometimes days get confused when fictional characters are running things. It’s not our fault since we don’t usually keep track of the days during an adventure. That’s our scribe’s job.
Maybe I should ask her to keep track of the days for the newsletter too. That’s a thought. I’ll make a note of that.
This week, if I got the scheduling thing right, you should see this pop into your inbox on Monday at the usual time. If it didn’t, then maybe next week I’ll get it right?
It went out on the right day for many months before this so I’m bound to get it right again eventually. At least I think that’s how it works.
While ponder that, let’s go to some book news!
Chais in Chains Book Update
Melinda posted chapters 21-24 of Chaos in Chains for our paid members on Patreon and Substack. You can read them now!
She might also have written herself into a corner. Don’t worry! I’m on the case. I have some ideas for how to get the story unstuck so new chapters can be written in time to post them on this coming Thursday.
Will my scribe like my ideas?
I’ll have to report back to you next week about that since she’s working on Curse Breaker Jousts right now. I’ll just wait until she reaches a stopping point. I don’t want to interrupt that because it’s important work, and that brings me to my next update.
Curse Breaker Jousts Special Edition Update
Melinda took my nagging to heart and started working on the formatting for Curse Breaker Jousts. I don’t have any images to show yet since she only worked on the chapter header images. But I can tell you that she decided since pieces place such a big role in the story, that the chapter headers will reflect that.
What do I mean by pieces?
Not to get too spoilery, but there are lots of pieces. There are puzzle pieces because I am an awesome son and I decided to find something for my papa to do while he recovers. There are crystal shards that may or may not be cursed and there’s the theme of things coming together and some metaphors about pieces might crop up here and there where appropriate.
The crystal shards obviously play an important role in the plot because why wouldn’t they? My papa loves crystals. He attracts them literally in Curse Breaker Jousts.
So yeah, lots of pieces are on the move in the book!
When you read the story, you’ll see what I mean. There’s also the question of where to put the illustration done by J.D. Arté. They created an illustration of my family in their artistic style.
But the illustration is very wide so it probably needs to span two pages. But which two pages:
Before the book starts?
After it starts?
Somewhere else?
Inquiring characters would like to know. (I am in the inquiring character. It’s me! I’m Ran, from the Curse Breaker Series. But I’m not the problem. Everyone at tea time agrees.)
Melinda has tabled the question for now in favor of laying out the rest of the book and figuring out the map situation. She might be a bit stressed about the map since we have not had any other maps before. So this marks a turning point for us. You’ll probably want more maps after this, and I think that’s what’s stressing her out a bit.
Melinda thought about hiring someone to make the map, but then she’d have to explain to somewhere where stuff is. She worried she might not be able to do that. So that’s why she’s making it herself. I want to tell her no pressure, but even I feel some pressure.
I offered to check her map against the one in Jerlo’s office. But Melinda pointed out that we should probably save that for a future book because you’ll want to be there to see how Jerlo reacts to that. (He will probably not take that well since his map is his prized possession. But we should totally find out in a future book!)
Those are the things we are pondering right now. We had hoped the printer would have resolved the issues with their end papers because this illustration would be great for that, but they haven’t. Although last week they sent some customers an email saying they just ordered a machine to do proper end papers. But there was no timeline included and they didn’t send the email to us.
So that’s good news that at some point in the future can we can have pretty end papers that don’t crack where they are added to the book’s spine. But we don’t know when that will be available. So that’s frustrating.
Wait a moment, I’m getting a message. I can show you a screenshot from inside Curse Breaker Jousts!
Above, is one possible spread that may appear in the book. On the left, Papa wears his serious face. It’s also his default expression and his resting face. But don’t worry. I make him smile sometimes.
On the right, Papa hugs me as he does many times everyday. As you can see, puzzle pieces figure prominently in the book from the plot to the theme and beyond! So that’s why the header images look like puzzle pieces.
Melinda is thinking about full-page black and white drawings not just of Papa, even though he is the main character, but also of many of the members of our cast. Follow the campaign here to get notified when it launches.
That’s all I have for you this week. I hope you have a good week and read some great books! (Bonus points if I star in it.)
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