The Orphic Duology

I have a bit of a confession to make. Last year, I said I’d be writing The Voided Promises of Noble Songs as the last book without the solid-first-draft method going forward, and that Crown of the Orphic Queen would be finished with that method. Theoretically, this would lead to easier editing and less time in the final polish.

But the editing time is the same and not much time has been saved, because I must walk the line between lyrical writing and purple prose. No matter how solid the first draft was, the amalgamation of lyricism and sentences that almost have meter makes it take a long time.

There’s also something else that cropped up that I will reveal now.

Taking inspiration from Meyer’s Midnight Sun (hmm…got to admit the idea came from her retelling), I’m releasing Crown of the Orphic Queen as the Orphic Duology along with The Man Who Paints Fire.

This is going to be a nerdy statement from my childhood, but think of it as Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue, only in a steamy romance story and retelling of Persephone from the perspective of Orpheus’s Orphic followers. Remember, no surviving manuscripts exist (at least to my knowledge) of Orpheus’s writings. We only have secondhand accounts from ancient history.

Duologies have been done before, and I thought I’d try my hand at it.

It will be the same story from two perspectives. The books will be companions to each other, and there will be clues hidden in the text of each that point to the other.

This will take me around three months to finish, so I’d like to hold off on the release of Crown and release both books at the end of September or so.

Also, I’m switching distributors to allow Target, Wal-Mart, and physical bookstores as options. I don’t mind the distribution I currently have, but it needs to expand. This means I will delist titles, switch to another distribution network, and redo all my books with the new distribution network.

I tried to make this leap back in 2024, and it didn’t work as easily as I’d thought it would.

Delisting will take around four weeks, followed by learning the new method for printing books. The print books are of far higher quality than my current print books.

It’s a bit of front-end work to start, but then I have the freedom that sticking with Amazon for print simply does not provide creators. Also, Amazon can pull your book for any reason at any time, and that irks me, if I’m being frank.

But please look forward to the Orphic Duology at the end of the next quarter. I’m challenging myself to write The Man Who Paints Fire in the same lyrical style as Crown of the Orphic Queen within three months.

I don’t have the original version of this text anymore, but this type of writing takes meticulous care. Even the dialogue is poetic in some ways (this is from one of my favorite scenes):

This type of writing takes forever….

I promise the novels working in tandem will be awesome, and finding clues in each book will be fun!

Happy writing!