Questions for you at the bottom…
The Situation:
So, sometimes I can be prone to distraction by shiny new ideas. Recently, I’ve had one stuck in my brain, and I have the above three listed pieces of fiction to blame.
First, Galindel.
I had a lot of fun writing A Tale of Cloak and Shadow, which, for those who have not jumped over to my newsletter, is a free short story tie-in from Galindel’s perspective. If you haven’t read it yet, stop reading this and click the link below. Follow the instructions, and you’ll get it for free. I’ll wait.
A Tale of Cloak and Shadow–Free Download
Done? Fantastic. So, it was great diving into another character’s mind, especially one as important to the events of Taeurn as Galindel’s. More enjoyable, however, was the feedback from all of you, who seemed to love taking that small adventure as much as I enjoyed writing it, leading me to consider (very strongly) writing more about the living winged legend.
Next, The Mandalorian.
Has anyone here plunged into the series? I liked it very much. And yes, it has flaws, most of which seem intrinsic to all the new Star Wars content coming out since the originals. I’m not going to go into all of its problems or what I believe are its saving graces, but I do want to touch on one point. It has done a fantastic job of delivering a compact story in a very episodic/serialized format. Each installment is just the right length, tells a mostly encapsulated plot with only a few threads being teased through to the next, and has a general feeling of adventure that I believe a lot of Fantasy and Sci-Fi has gone away from in recent decades in favor of more romance and drama driven formats. That got me thinking, if I am going to write a Galindel origin story, perhaps I should consider doing it in smaller more bite-sized pieces; Seasons, with Episodes.
And finally, Harry Potter.
More specifically, Harry Potter alternate movie covers. One dirty little secret about writing Epic Fantasy Fiction is that the covers are the most expensive part of the launch of a new book, at least, covers that I like are–highly artistic, standing out from the milieu of rinse-and-repeat, off-the-shelf covers we see so often. But that presents a problem. If I were to release a lot of story about Galindel in an episodic format, I would need a lot of covers. Enter, the simple graphic style. I saw the attached Harry Potter cover while doing a browse of simple clean covers, and really liked it. It met all of my criteria, while being much more easy to develop. Easy enough, in fact, that I could create one, myself.
So, I dusted off my old photoshop skills (from my time as a landscape architect) and whipped up a quick Galindel Season One: Episode One cover mock-up.
My questions for you.
1) Do you currently read any short/serial/episodic fantasy, and what do you expect from it? Length, story nature, price, etc.
2) Would you be interested in reading more from Galindel’s perspective, and if so, would you rather it be full-length novels spaced out about the same as the main series, or shorter episodes that come out more regularly?
3) Does the simple cover style grab you? If you saw it on Amazon, would it make you pause and check out the book, or would you just pass over it? Obviously, there are things to work out with the details of the graphic, but does the visual of it resonate?
That’s it for today, folks.
P.S. And Galindel origin story would be an indeterminate ways off, as I have a full plate. Just gauging interest at this time.