I‘ve been busy adding quotes from Sapphire’s Flight on Goodreads. Go over to take a look!
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/54098624
The Agartes Epilogues I think falls under the category of a fantasy trilogy that really should just be one big book. It’s not that each book doesn’t have their own conflicts and resolutions, but Book 1 and 2 only builds up to the actual, final resolution in the end. My plan is to release an omnibus once I get my rights back for Jaeth’s Eye, which is not going to be for a few years yet.
Despite being longer, Sapphire’s Flight is a lot faster-paced than Jaeth’s Eye and Aina’s Breath combined. The book is divided into three acts, with each act having a little mini-resolution that brings us to the final act.
I have to admit, I feel a bit frustrated that I can’t market Sapphire’s Flight as THE book and have to put Jaeth’s Eye out there as a sort of gatekeeper. A friend of mine recently said about my writing that she found “…everything is important and it all ties together if you just pay attention and wait for all the pieces to drop into place.” But Goddamit, I’m impatient, so I really don’t know how to express that when I market this series. Jaeth’s Eye ends in such a way that I think many people think the final conflict ends the story, but in fact it’s just a taste of what’s to come–the prologue and that final conflict actually ties in together, and the clues are all there.
It also makes me wonder about trilogies. It’s the most common series format in this genre I think, and writers approach it in different ways. Some have completely different plots for each book, with only the characters and settings as the common elements. Some–like Lord of the Rings–is actually just one book, chopped into pieces. Which makes me wonder about how to approach Annals of the Bitch Queen. The first book has a conflict and resolution on its own and each book will have different themes, but the story, like in The Agartes Epilogues, is one big one.
The Agartes Epilogues is the epic fantasy that thinks it’s a soap opera.
