March 2022 Newsletter

Looking back at last month's newsletter, I can hardly believe I spent most of January working on An Ocean of Others. Those days feel like the distant past, because in February I've had my hands more-than-full getting ready for the Grave of the Waiting release. If you haven't seen yet, the first two chapters of the sci-fi horror serial have been released and can be found at joshse.com/grave.

I've been really happy with the reception so far and it seems to have attracted several new members to this community – if you're one of them, welcome! Whether you're new or have been here since the beginning, I'd love to hear any feedback you have. Good or bad, it all helps. Once the serial is wrapped up, I'll be compiling it into a book with new cover art and professional editing, so any feedback along the way greatly helps.

Things are still looking good to publish the next two chapters in just less than a month's time. Seeing as last time I only had twelve days to prepare two chapters, having a whole month feels luxurious! Ideally, I'll finish preparations early in the month so I can spend the rest of it writing new material. Keep an eye on those status bars and my weekly update videos to see how it's going.

On the technical issues side, I've heard that Gmail users may have had the Prologue and Chapter 1 sorted into separate folders. If this happened to you, you may have read Chapter 1 before the Prologue, which I imagine would be very confusing.

I also recently noticed that an update to the website's backend has broken my comments integration. I'll try to get that up and running as soon as I can.

Finally, I found that the .mobi download inexplicably changes the font size right near the beginning of Chapter 1. I'll figure that out and make sure it doesn't happen in next month's release.

If you notice any other technical hiccups, please let me know and I'll add them to my ever-lengthening to-do list! If I'm not careful, I'm going to have to set up a Kanban board to keep track of everything. 😉

An Ocean of Others Cover Teaser

Despite the month being focused on Grave of the Waiting, there was in fact some progress on my dark fantasy book, An Ocean of Others. I've been working with Felix Ortiz to finalize the cover art for the book. The man is an absolute wizard. He's taken my hodgepodge of notes and somehow gleaned the exact tone of the book, then translated that into an absolutely stunning cover illustration. I'll reveal the full artwork in all its glory once the cover design and typography are complete. For now, here's a small teaser to hold you over:

Fire, magic, blood – I think he's captured Grim's story perfectly. Oh, and the feature image of this post is a teaser of the back cover! He and I are still going back and forth, so both are subject to change, but I'm incredibly happy with how they're turning out.

With that, it's time to get back to work on the next chapters of Grave of the Waiting. I hope you have an excellent month with some warm spring days. Until next time, thanks for reading!