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!