A curse of optical haptics, an upcoming Sci-Fi story

 I went ahead and commed the cover of a Science Fiction story I have been starting to work on, and the artist known as TheStreetDog23 went far beyond my vision and produced the most gorgeous cover ever. I still need to get a full-fledged typography for the cover. That is going to be tricky, which is why I don't have an official goodreads profile for the book yet.

I am still tinkering with the blurb, so that isn't ready either. Someone online commented ACOOH might be a bit similar in a few aspects to a book called Murderbot Diaries. I have not read this series, so I have no idea. Usually my books can't be comped with other work. Half of the time, readers have no idea what to comp them with and mention they are a teeny tiny little bit like The hobbit or LOTR because there are fantasy elements. Which is true, but so vague that I always return to square 1 and have no idea how to market my stories.

As for A curse of optical haptics, I was taking a course on computer science and that word popped out. And I instantly knew I NEED A BOOK WITH THAT WORD IN THE TITLE. So everything surrounds the concept of tactical technology that is vague Sci-Fi material, but the story is so wild since I am going pretty unhinged with it that I am unsure what genre it really fits into. The only thing certain is that Leenx takes no bullshit from anyone.

I have written around 18,000 words of the story. More elements of the worldbuilding are cooking in my mind. There will be weird alien races in them and other random stuff. I think one of the few normal scenes is seeing a net appear from a ceiling and taking someone away.

Quite frankly, I would be shocked readers will not find the book to be absolutely weird, wild and scratch their heads after reading it. I already know how it ends (no, I will not spoil it), it's now the voyage where I need to get. I tend to be an overwriter, but I will hope this book stays at 80,000 words tops. I will go nuts if it suddenly balloons into 100,000 word territory. Oh please don't be so long, pleaaaase!

Anyways, even though I probably spoiled things a bit because I didn't do a fancy book cover reveal (I am working on a shoestring budget and feel too shy asking for blogs for those fancy showcases). But here is a cut-up low resolution version of the cover. I might print it and paste it on the wall to inspire me to cook up those chapters quicker and finish writing it. With some luck, it will be available in 2024.

Savior on the zenith, the sequel book is FINALLY finished

 Bit of a late announcement, but at approximately 94,000 words (including a long ass glossary and brief story recap), I finished writing the sequel and finale of the Fragmented Fates duology a few days ago. It is being read right now by a trusted beta reader.

Now, why did I end up dividing this book into two halves?

1) I didn't want to release a 160,000 word book. I am an overwriter and new information about characters pops up as I chaotically write the story. 160,000 word books are a very hard sell, but 80,000 word stories are easy bite-sized treats. The final chapter of Talgel's monologue was written after I sliced the books in half to make it feel like an actual ending of act 1, which is why it is so short.

After finishing the sequel that without other filler is around the same length, it would have been a titanic feat to have churned the entire story in 120,000 words. I would have had to skip too many scenes. Both books expanded as they are barely offer time for downtime at all. The extra 40,000 words gave the sequel plenty of extra time to expand some connecting scenes that makes the time skips far less jarring.

2) I just wanted to get A book published in 2023 and was not writing sufficiently fast enough to get the job done.

Savior on the zenith follows a much darker path from its more cheerful 1st half (a titanic feat given readers all agree it is a very dark story). Tioja starts living among harlequins in an underground city and interacts with his rambuctious younger half brother Gulraj.

Book 1 spends an inordinate amount of time having Talgel move the chess pieces in position and now she gives the reins of the story to Tioja. As part of my plan for the cover, it will be a mirror of book 1 in a way with a darker pallette to exemplify the more serious tone of the story.

Will there be more action?

Yes, certainly. Readers hurting to experience harlequin society firsthand will get their chance here. And yes, we get fights, quite a few of them, in fact. Tioja will grow a lot in this story.

Now that I have finished the book, I feel a sense that every protagonist has made their trip and returned home. There is still plenty of potential canonical story left between the finale of the duology and the begining of the Ominous Book series, but chances are I will never write it because I want to focus on other projects. It was still a fun story to write, challenging at times because I had to envision a totally different and youthful Tioja.

Until next time!