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 - January 1, 2025
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Happy New Year! I should probably wait until the 2nd to send this out, shouldn't I? Everybody sleeping off New Year's Eve. I hope all your dogs survived the scary fireworks. I have lots of polls this newsletter. All really important, world-changing stuff. To get started:
(For the record, my wife disqualified herself in a Godzilla-like fit of rage when her roof slid off.) I sent an out-of-cycle newsletter about finishing the first draft of Secrets of Deara. Since then, I've gone back and written a couple of chapters that I thought tied a few specifics together a little more cleanly, and cut a few sections, but I've mostly worked on other things to take a little break from Secrets. The story is at about 70k words right now, so a bit on the short side. But there's still one character whose story isn't fleshed out, and weaving that in will probably get me at around 80k. Maybe. I'd intended to start my second pass this morning, but instead I'm working on this newsletter. 🙃 Anyway, what else have I done instead of working on Secrets? One, I updated the covers for Guardian League. I also updated the backmatter on Mother of Trees, and somehow managed to push the update to the wrong book... I pushed the changes to Bones. So I received a rather disgruntled review. I'm glad someone told me though... it had already sat there for twelve days with the wrong content! Meh. I also created new ads for Guardian League and Mother of Trees. I'll share here and, heck, I'll put some links if you want to go upvote ("like") the ones you like--I don't think I need you to, but feel free. I'm using something on FB called a DCT (Dynamic Creative Template). It mixes up those three images with two headlines and two descriptions, so 12 combinations of ads. Since I'm only providing three links, those are just three of the variants (one for each pic). Heh, I guess that means it might actually hurt me for you to "like" an ad... it will bias the FB algorithm toward thinking that ad is the best combo and start sending it more. How about this--I'll set up a poll. You can just vote. But I'll leave the FB links there in case you want to tell FB that you'd like more fantasy ads in your feed.
Oh, I didn't want Grundle blue. As soon as I push midjourney toward the style I want, it turns Grundle blue. I haven't figured out how to get past that yet. Moving on to Mother of Trees:
I can tell you, the "Elliah on the run" pic hasn't done well at all, but the "MoT Face" is getting clicks. But I may try more variants of the "Elliah on the run" pic. All books by Steven J. Morris Indie Author ShowcasePrevious 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...
In this one: an old friend from way back, 20k words of progress, and a new reel from Thaumatropic Fractures. Last newsletter I asked for some accountability help. A few people reached out. One was someone I think of as an old friend from high school. But I've got to tell a little story about him. Way back before high school, in 5th grade, I transferred into a new school roughly mid-year. In one of my classes, the teacher insisted I do a placement test. But the placement test was this set of...
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...