Tomorrow is the day! Battle of Illaria will be out in the world!

It’s a pretty great feeling when you launch a new work into the world. Especially when you finish it early and get to bump your release date up by nearly two weeks! Of course, there’s the fear that you missed something, the questioning of yourself as an artist, and all the doubt that goes into letting strangers read and evaluate your work, but let’s face it, it’s mostly a celebration. This book is even more of a celebration than my others in some ways, because it is my favorite (so far). This was the second book I ever wrote…remember how I took that random detour and decided I needed a book in the middle? Yeah, I don’t recommend that, but I wouldn’t change it because I was able to set up a lot of things in book 2 that I wanted to cover in book 3.

Here’s a few random facts about Battle of Illaria:

1. The first draft was 112,000 words – yikes!
2. I cut around 30,000 words
3. It was originally the second book of the Illaria Series and got moved back for Oracle
4. I wrote the first draft in about six weeks
5. The first draft was finished during National Novel Writing Month in 2016
6. It went through six round of editing by me, 2 rounds of editing by my editor, and 2 proof-readers
7. The cover has been ready since October 2016. (The cover for book 4 is already done)
8. One of the characters died in the original first draft and when I made cuts during editing, I changed the structure and that character ended up getting to live
9. This is the first book I’m releasing that doesn’t have the next one already written
10. All of the Max chapters were written after the second draft – and they were my favorite scenes to write.

And, because you still have one more day to wait and you might not want to wait that long, I’ve included the first chapter of Battle of Illaria below. Please note – the first chapter for this book contains spoilers. If you have not yet read the first two books, you may want to skip this part. (more…)