Legends of Windemere

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

We’re getting into another round of book hyping, which will revolve around the upcoming release of Legends of Windemere: Charms of the Feykin.  First, I feel like I have a confession to make.  Not that one or . . . I’ve never been to Texas, so I know you’re thinking of someone else.  This is about the challenge and, quiet honestly, headache that comes from promoting a series.  Maybe I talked about this last time, but I still need to say this:

Promoting later books of a series is hard!

This will be volume #11 of Legends of Windemere and it continues from what happened to Delvin and Sari in the last book (linked to the cover at the end).  Oh dear, even saying that could pose a problem.  Come to think of it, simply having another book reveals information about the last one.  Not to mention things I casually mention in the blurbs.  That title can be rather telling as well.  Oh no, what have I done?  Have I ruined everything?

See where I’m going with this?  It’s been a struggle to keep some information off the blog, but things slip out.  Maybe I really want to talk about the concept and get an opinion, so I try it in a roundabout way.  Yet, eagle-eyed readers who are up on the series will figure it out.  Those who don’t want even the risk of a spoiler will steer clear, which hurts my promotional attempts.  You also have people mentioning big events in comments, which is something I have no control over.  Sure, I can delete or alter those comments after writing a ‘I need to do this for this reason’.  Yet, that feels like a bastard move.  It really pushes me into a terrible corner that is tough to get out of without causing some type of damage.

A big obstacle here is that a long series has readers at different volumes at the same time, so you have a scattered audience.  A person who read Tribe of the Snow Tiger will have no problem with information that a person on The Compass Key will freak out.  Don’t even get me started on choosing teasers at this point.  I try my best to dance around those hoops, but slips happen.  In fact, they’re really inevitable and it drives me nuts.  I don’t want to upset readers with saying too much or talking about the books with such vagueness that my words are empty.  Nothing I can do here since this is the nature of the beast that I’ve decided to wrestle for 15 volumes.  Heck, there are people who have messaged me to say they won’t touch my series or continue it until all of the books are published. I fully understand this and have done it myself since there are authors who will disappear for years in the middle of a series.

So, I’m going to be trying my best with the hyping.  The volume-specific information will be there and I’ll try to avoid spoilers.  The tough thing is that I need to make these posts last throughout September.  I will really have to depend on humor and whatever else I can do that reveals just enough information to make people curious.  Fingers crossed on all of this and I hope people enjoy what’s coming.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen