I'm very pleased and excited to announce that Urdaisunia is now available in Kindle format from Amazon! You can get it here. Epub format (for Nook, Sony, iPad, and all other readers) and the paperback edition will follow shortly. I'm formatting the paperback right now, and waiting to hear back from one of the epub vendors I'm going to use about some formatting. If what I want to try to do with them doesn't work, I still have a working, valid epub format file I can use. Stay tuned; I'll add buy links as Urdaisunia becomes available at different retailers.
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When I first started writing Urdaisunia back in the early 90s, I was interested in really really ancient civilizations. I also wanted to write something that wasn't in the usual medieval-European-influenced fantasy setting. Ancient Sumeria fit the bill perfectly. It's so old it makes Ancient Greece and Rome look like whippersnappers, and had a rich and influential culture and level of development. The physical setting (read about my fascination with desert settings here) offered a lot of possibiities for conflict, and I also found the Sumerian pantheon and mythology fascinating. And then there was the idea of a great and ancient civilization falling into ruin, which is also full of possible stories. We didn't have the internet back then, or at least not in its current form, where you can find out anything about anything with just a few clicks, but we do have it now, so here are some links to things that have inspired Urdaisunia. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has a long-term exhibit called Iraq's Ancient Past with a lot of pictures and information about Sumeria and the archaeological work that has been done on the sites there. The headress of Queen Puabi, which inspired the headdress of Shairu-Az in Urdaisunia, is the third picture down. Here is more about Queen Puabi, including a video of some museum workers dressing a mannequin in the headdress and jeweled cloak that were found on Puabi's remains in her tomb. Also on the Penn Museum site is a feature where you can make your name in cuneiform. The picture on this post is my last name the way the Sumerians would have written it. You can see more of Queen Puabi's headdress and jewelry at Sumerian Shakespeare. The site also has images and translations of Sumerian writings. The International World History Project has an extensive section devoted to Sumeria. You can read a rundown of the gods and goddesses, a summary of Sumerian history and culture, and a section of the creation myth which gives a sampling of the divine soap opera the gods and goddesses had going on (a major influence on Urdaisunia!). And, of course, we have to have ziggurats. The first and third pictures were particularly influential in how I envisioned the Royal Palace and the Temple of Ar at Zir. A few more odds and ends: some ancient ships, and some Bronze Age swords. In Urdaisunia, these are the swords the Urdai used before the Conquest; the Sazars' swords are a new model and were inspired by Japanese katana. Urdaisunia was only loosely inspired by Sumeria, so don't look to the novel for any kind of historical accuracy. But it was a fun world to play in, and I'll probably go back to it someday. Finally, let me leave you with a musical tribute to the ancient world: The Spotify playlist for Urdaisunia is now posted on the book page. You don't have to listen to the playlist to enjoy the book, but I always like to have some songs that set the mood for what I'm writing or that have lyrics that go along with it, and thought it would be fun to share this. Most of the songs are pretty self-explanatory as to why they go with the book, but one, "Brothers on Diamir," doesn't seem so closely related. It's about a tragic mountain-climbing incident in the Himalayas, which doesn't really have anything to do with the story of Urdaisunia, but the epic, tragic scope of it goes well with the battle scene and the aftermath, plus the theme of brothers is important to the story.
Also, for "The Secret's In the Keeping," you have to just ignore the last two lines because they don't go with the story at all. I do have a fondness for female-fronted European symphonic metal bands, but there's a variety of music on the playlist and I hope you'll find something you like and that will give you a taste of what Urdaisunia is like. This playlist thing is an experiment, and I'd like feedback on how it works. I'm especially interested in knowing how/if it works if you don't have Spotify; I was having trouble testing this because every time I started the playlist, my Spotify would start up automatically. Spotify is awesome, though, and it's free, so if it's available in your country you might consider getting it. If anyone is totally unable to use either the link or the embedded playlist or even see them, let me know and I'll also just post the song titles and artists. After looking at the calendar and where I am and how things are going, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about a Feb. 18 release date for Urdaisunia. There's a part of me that firmly believes that making plans and setting deadlines is just a way of saying to the cosmos, "Oh yeah? You and what army?" So, just to be safe, I'll say that barring any unforeseen circumstances, difficulties, zombie apocalypses (apocalypsi?), etc., I expect to have Urdaisunia uploaded to various online ebook retailers by Feb. 18. It takes a little while--from 24-48 hours to a couple of weeks--for new books to actually go live on the sites, so I will put up buy links to the various retailers as that happens. The first of the Urdaisunia book extras is now posted, the Cast of Characters. (This list will also be included in the ebook and print editions.)
In books with more than a few characters, I always appreciated having a who's who to refer to, especially if there are complicated family relationships, which Urdaisunia has. Also lots of gods - you'll notice on the list, I've separated out the gods who actually make an appearance or are mentioned by name from all the others. There are a lot more from the list I could have mentioned by name in the novel, but I figure the twenty or so I already have are enough to keep track of. The rest are included because you can tell a lot about a culture by the gods it worships, plus I put a lot of work into making up this list. A lot of the names and gods are either taken more or less directly from Sumerian mythology, or heavily inspired by it. (The Sumerian influences on Urdaisunia are another topic for another blog post.) Enjoy this extra sneak peek into the world and people of Urdaisunia! I'm pleased to report that I finished the copyedits of Urdaisunia today, a whole week ahead of schedule! I'm feeling a little more confident about a mid-February release date, though it might be a little optimistic to think I can do the proofread and the ebook building by then. This week I'll work on the map and the Who's Who; watch for those to be posted here on my site too.
The big revision pass on The Lost Book of Anggird is nearly done, too. I'm shooting for Thursday or Friday of next week, and in the meantime I'll be rounding up some test readers for it. What else is going on? I mentioned the Daughter of the Wildings series as being a future project. It actually isn't all that future--Book 1 is already a complete first draft, and I'm planning Book 2 and just about ready to write it. Since I hate it when the next book in a series takes forever to come out and also when the author seems to lose their way in the middle of the series, my plan with Daughter of the Wildings is to have all five books in first draft before I get into revisions and start releasing them. That way I can keep the whole storyline and continuity under control, and readers can begin reading the series knowing that it's complete. Also, I forgot to mention last time that I'm also planning paperback editions of my books. So if you prefer paper over ebooks, you won't be left out. Finally, I signed up on Spotify, and learned they have a feature where you can put a Spotify playlist on your blog or website. So, yay, playlists! I get a lot of inspiration from music as I write, and thought it would be fun to share some of the music that goes with my stories. You can enjoy them without listening to the playlists, of course, but if you want some mood music to go with the reading, or to get a feel for the mood of the book, you can check out the playlist. So watch for that, too. OK, so I have an author website, an author Facebook page, and pictures and descriptions of my books. So where are the books?
Right now, here's where things are on my writing/production schedule: Urdaisunia is the first book scheduled for release. Right now I'm typing in copyedits. When this is done (early next week), I'll let the manuscript rest for a few days while I work on the book extras--the Who's Who and the map. After that comes the final proofreading, and then the formatting and conversion into ebooks. There are a number of ways this can be done, from running a Word file through a converter (results not guaranteed to be of good quality) to paying a conversion service to convert your file (better results but costs money). Being an independent author with zero production budget (what budget I did have, I used to license that wonderful cover illustration from Dreamstime) and the desire to give my readers the best ebook possible, plus also being slightly out of my mind, my plan is to do the coding and conversion by hand, as per The eBook Design and Development Guide by Paul Salvette. The book's author provides copy-and-paste code on his website, which (hopefully) will make the process faster and easier. I'm planning a couple of days to get the whole thing done; it should go faster on subsequent books, once I know what I'm doing and have my boilerplate all set up. Once the book is ready, I'll get my accounts set up at the various stores (if I haven't done so earlier), then hit the upload button. And, ta-da! Books for sale! Though it may take a few days for them to start to actually appear as buyable items on the sites. So, all told, I'm looking at about mid-February for the release of Urdaisunia. The next book up for release is Chosen of Azara. I had this posted on my old website for years, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm still going to run it through Holly LIsle's How To Revise Your Novel process, just as a quality check, but it shouldn't need too much work. This will be followed by the copyedit, proofreading, getting the map ready, formatting, conversion, and upload. I'm hoping for a May release. The third book in the lineup is The Lost Book of Anggird. I thought this one wouldn't need much work, because I've already revised it about elebenty-seven times, but I started taking it through one last revision, using the How To Revise Your Novel process, and found a number of serious problems. So it needs a lot of work, plus it's a much longer book than the others. I'm almost done with the major revision pass, then it'll go out to test readers for six weeks, then another revision pass based on the feedback from the test readers, followed by line editing, copy editing, proofreading, etc. I want to say about a September release, but that might be a bit optimistic. I'd also love to get Sarya's Song out this year, but I'll have to see how it goes with these first three books. There's a big learning curve to this whole self-publishing thing, especially if you aim to put out the highest-quality product possible, and I'm learning as I go. Both my writing work schedule and my publishing work schedule are still in flux as I learn how to distribute my time and do all the different tasks involved. I don't want to over-promise and leave whatever readers I may have disappointed, but I also don't want to allow myself too much slack, or else I'll just lollygag along and never get anything done. Once these four books are out, I'll focus on the Daughter of the Wildings series, which is a very cool project that I'm very excited about. And you should see my inventory list of finished drafts, partially-finished drafts, story fragments I want to write, and ideas, all lined up and waiting to be written and released into the world! |
AuthorI am Kyra Halland, author of tales of fantasy, heroism, and romance. Sign up for my email list
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