Masterpiece!

June Update

It’s been hard for me to watch everyone enjoying Oz Comic-Con Adelaide and Melbourne and being unable to go myself. I am slowly revising all of the old Dark Heavens books because…

  1. All of the formatting for early books is so broken and
  2. It’s 2026 and some of the stuff that was normal back then … will no longer fly.

Things I’ve changed:

  • I explain things that people have, over the years, had difficulty with. Why did the Tiger only give Emma a token amount in a lai see at Chinese New Year? Because he’s respecting her boundary after she told him no to dating him, and he’s not attempting to ‘buy’ her.

  • I’ve clarified Leo’s illness. At the time I was writing the books, AIDS was a death sentence. During the 1980’s the Reagan administration knew about preventative measures and didn’t share them with the gay community. Thousands died. Leo was one of the casualties. In the novels he is now at the final stages and no amount of treatment can save him. I still have to go back to books 4-6 and work out what to do with Emma’s infection.

    (This was a major sticking point with media people. AIDS can be cured now! Why is this such an issue??)

  • The ‘Western Palace’ <ahem> scene in book 2 is now much more consensual. It was edgy back then but it no longer works. I’m planning to have some fun jazzing up some other scenes in later parts of the series. I have ideas.

  • I’ve graphically described what Emma’s ‘halfway to snake’ form looks like at the end of book 2, and I hope it’s worse than you ever imagined.

It’s slow going because my small business assisting people to self-publish – I need the extra income with all the upcoming expenses, including legal expenses – is keeping me busy during office hours. I’m working on reformatting and revising ‘Dark Heavens’ in the evening and weekends.

Covers!

The most fun part must be having new covers made – but this is so nerve-wracking. Covers cost hundreds of dollars and have to be right first time. The mockup at the top of the email is my design for book 1. What do you think? Won’t that look great on Amazon?

I kid. That’s what I’ll be providing to the cover designer, with a written description.

As well as new ‘cultivation-style’ covers, I’m planning to do special editions with added illustrations inside the front and back covers. Here’s my high-art suggestions for those illustrations:

Fireworks on Hong Kong Harbour (I just realised this is a flyleaf illustration and I don’t need blurb space. Ooops. Time to redo)

Leo, Emma and Simone inside the training room, and a Snake Mother visible in the mirror behind them. This one may not work. Also Mothers are really complicated.

For Book 2, I’m thinking Emma and John on the balcony of their suite overlooking the desert in the Western Palace. I have a few ideas for the flyleaf illustrations but I’m concentrating on having the books reformatted as I go.

What I’d really like to do is a sprayed edge across the entire series. One huge illustration to go across the pages of all the books as they sit on the shelf. I think Kaligraphic can do it for me if we have the book sizes finalised. That would be marvellous.

So: what are your ideas for cover designs for the series? Provide stick figures if you like! All suggestions most welcome! I need major illustrations for the covers, and then more minor illustration for two flyleaf illustrations for each book.

And nine books altogether. I am such a nut doing this.

Legal Matters

Update on legal matters: I have a high-powered copyright lawyer trying to get me the world rights back for books 4-9. I have the rights to books 1-3 worldwide, so let’s start there. 4-9 I have the Australian rights, but not the rest of the world.

I can’t do any conventions until I have books to sell – I can’t order author copies as Harper-Collins are no longer printing them – so it may not be until next year that I will have Dark Heavens to sell again.

Bodies of Stone and Water

Katie is editing ‘Bodies’ right now and that will be published soon as well. I’ll have so many new books for you next year – including a new Dark Heavens novella that the Patrons on Patreon have been reading!