If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
Newsletter - April 1, 2025
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We took a family vacation to Colorado for the kids’ Spring Break. Probably the best story was that my wife, who tore her ACL on our last ski trip and only planned to ski one day, finished her practice run on the bunny slope and accidentally got on the lift that only leads to blue and black slopes. On the day with bitter winds and snow. She cried her way down, but made it in one piece, turning in her skis as soon as she reached the bottom. Done! My kids are all teenagers and don’t really “flock” together the way they did when younger. My poor oldest was too banged up from basketball and early crashes to enjoy herself. My youngest ran off with friends for much of the time. But my middle girl stuck with me for a lot of the slopes. On my own, I did one black and one blue that had a warning/hazard sign, and I’m old enough that those were enough. With my oldest going off to college, maybe we will have one more trip in the summer where we all travel together, but after that, the dynamics will get complicated, and that’s kinda sad. With Secrets in the hands of the structural editor, and either family vacation or work taking the bulk of my time, I’ve limited my writing efforts to “advertising”. Okay, I received edits at the end of March--so I'm back to writing on Secrets. Very good input from the editor, and I think I'll make changes and be done with structural edits on this book. For our anniversary, my wife booked a place in Wimberly to stay next weekend. What I didn't understand until a couple days ago was that she booked it for ME to go ALONE and WRITE. Isn't that cool! I've never done a "writing retreat." Now I'm trying to decide whether to spend it wrapping up Secrets, or scribbling out Shepherds. Probably a little of both. All books by Steven J. Morris Indie Author ShowcaseSomehow I ended up with a week that had no swaps materialize. 🤷♂️ Previous Newsletters
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Steven J Morris
If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
Yesterday I needed to remember exactly how a character destroyed a dragon artifact three books ago. I didn't dig through my own novels to find it—I asked an AI I built to search them for me. It's called the Grimoire: a mini-AI system I put together with Pinecone that I can ask questions about my own books—hair color in a different epoch, a side character I want to bring back, a detail I'd otherwise lose momentum digging for. It keeps me writing instead of hunting. That's the quiet way AI has...
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Hey Reader, Quick fun bit before today's update: the polls from my last email are in. I'd asked how many of you had actually read the three portal fantasy books that made me want to write the genre: Mordant's Need: 14.3% have read it The Darwath Trilogy: 0% have read it War of the Flowers: 14.3% have read it Almost nobody has read them, which tracks. They're buried treasure. If any of them ended up on your list because of that email, I'd love to hear how it goes. Okay, the actual update. I...