♪♫♪ Do you remember, the si-ii-ixth night of September? ♫♪♫
I sure hope so, because on September 6, An Ocean of Others celebrates its third birthday! Can you believe it? They grow up so fast. 🥹
Sometimes I feel bad about not releasing a book in 2025. I tell myself I'm a slow writer, or inconsistent, or give in to the imposter syndrome of seeing everyone post their hundreds of sales in "transparency posts" on X. It's easy to forget that I've published three books in the past three years! So, there shall be no pity party.
Instead, behold the opposite of self-pity—shamelessness!—as I frontload all the self-promotion in this month's newsletter.
Have you read An Ocean of Others? If so, please leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon with your honest thoughts!
On Goodreads, we're just one rating away from 100! I can practically smell that fourth star. And over on Amazon, I've been spiffing up the store page so that everything looks good ahead of the Sibling Suns 3 release. Check it out!
Any review, even just a simple star rating, helps an indie author immensely. Word of mouth drives book sales more than anything else, so if you've left a review, I thank you, sincerely. Every time a new one comes in, whether critical or kind, it truly makes my day.
With that out of the way, let's get to the meat of this newsletter!
Last Dance of the Sibling Suns
I'm a bit shocked to see this word count, frankly. I don't keep track of the book's overall word count until I update this graphic as I'm putting together the newsletter—so I had no idea I wrote almost 23,000 words this month! That makes it my most productive month on the novel so far, which is surprising because I took an unanticipated five-day break, dealt with a crawling covid-infested baby, and missed my target by one chapter. Not bad! (Only 5000 words to go, and it'll surpass the length of the outline.)
A few of the chapters this month ended up being longer than planned, especially those wrapping up Part I of the planned four parts. I've been aiming for around 2500- to 3000-word chapters, but I ended up with several closer to 4000 words. Not a huge difference, but they roughly account for the one chapter I missed my goal by. Luckily, after 3 months, I'm now at 26%. Right on target to finish by June 2026.
I'm now hacking away at Part II and realizing that each of the book's four parts would work well as a standalone novella. They're all interconnected, of course, but they might be interesting to read on their own. And since Benefactors have been promised "early looks at chapters and art" as one of the membership perks...why not?
I'll send you an .epub of Part I - Landfall to read at your leisure, no need to give any feedback (though of course it is welcome!) — just leave a comment below so I know you're interested! Everyone who's a Benefactor is eligible, and many of you are probably Benefactors without realizing it! 😉
To the Fediverse... and beyond!
This month's website upgrade should be fairly invisible — I had to fix a bunch of issues with the theme to make it eligible for upgrading to the newly-released Ghost 6.0. But in addition to that, I've not got an account on the Fediverse.
Do you know what the Fediverse is? I sure didn't, until Ghost integrated it directly into my site's backend and wisely rebranded it "the social web." In practice, that means when I visit my site's dashboard, I have a portal into Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, and more. If you're on any of those sites, please reach out so we can connect!
I really don't know much about how this works, but hey, I'm always down to try something new.
Fairy-stories aren't just for kids
My latest essay is about On-Fairy Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien. It's a fascinating read that provides a perspective on fantasy that is sorely missing from today's culture. Here's a preview:
What are Fairy-stories?
"Fairy-stories are not, in normal English usage, stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted."
One of the things that struck me about this book is just how deeply Tolkien believes in this realm of Faërie, which he calls the Perilous Realm. The way he talks about it, it seems like a real place, almost like one he's visited. Yet even as he expends many words beautifully describing it and its effects, he admits that even he cannot fully capture it.
"Faërie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible."
For that reason, he spends a lot of the beginning of the essay giving negative examples, or things that are marketed as fairy-stories which he doesn't agree are fairy-stories, or giving definitions to other types of tales like "Beast-fables" (think Aesop's fables). But he does pin down some positive characteristics of fairy-stories.
This one's for El
Friend and fellow author E.L. Lyons just published her new novel, Austringer's Wrath! This is a sequel to her debut, Starlight Jewel, and while I haven't read it yet, I loved the original and simply had to shout it out in this month's newsletter.
Because you see, this is secretly the Nazgul section.
gasp
Instead of shamelessly self-promoting her new release—which you should absolutely do, El; I know you're reading this 👀—she spent the majority of her newsletter talking about other authors. Including moi!
Joshua Scott Edwards writes DnD style fantasy, it’s very fun and there’s lots of death and stuff. His newsletter is better than mine. It’s the only one I open. Mostly cause he always shows off his doggo, Nazgul.
So El, these Nazgulies are for you, and they are aplenty because I wanted to test out my new phone's camera. Enjoy!
Oh and Uncle Bradley came to visit too.
The doggos say to go and buy Starlight Jewel and Austringer's Wrath! If you enjoy my books, I'm confident you'll like El's. She's a fantastic author, and her memes ain't half bad either.
That's it for this month! Will September be as productive as August? Certainl—wait a moment. I'm getting reports of something big coming our way.
It's true. After 8 years, Silksong is out. All hope of productivity is lost. An entire month shall be squandered—if we're lucky. Alas. See you in October, if I can overcome my crippling addiction to banger Metroidvanias.
As always, thanks for reading!
— Josh