Category: Journey to Wudang

Thanks very much, Coughing Guy On the Plane
May Update
Sincerest apologies for not providing either an April newsletter or a Patreon update, I was knocked completely flat by COVID after coming home from Perth. Nobody who was close by caught it, which is a relief.
I am definitely wearing a mask on future plane trips – because I have two Comic-Con weekends back-to-back coming up, and I can’t afford to catch anything with so much happening!
Thank you so much Adelaide, and this young woman absolutely made my day:

Hello Kitty tee-shirt and ‘get lost demons’ attitude and everything! Arielle is the first time I’ve seen a ‘Simone as an adult’ cosplay and I love it! She’s asked for the images of Simone’s swords to 3D print replicas, and the cover designer, Ashton, was happy to oblige. The bar has been set!
Oz Comic-Con Adelaide and Melbourne

 
I will be in Adelaide May31 and June 1 (at the showground) and in Melbourne June 7 and 8 (at the convention centre). I will have plenty of copies of ‘Serpent Princess’ – paperback, hardcover, and foiled special edition – at both shows, so come up, say hello, and check out my new ‘Dark Heavens’ novel!
Possible Game/Animation
It’s complicated, but a local company has purchased the game and animation (just the game and animation rights, not the film rights, Hollywood have the film rights and aren’t letting them go) to ‘Dark Heavens’. They are planning to create a proof-of-concept with perhaps a trailer and some concept art that they can present to possible financing partners – along with plenty of evidence that there a great many of you who love the series.
What they need from us (well, you) is an idea of how many of you there are, and what you want. Would you prefer a game? What sort of game? Animation? They want the final product to be fan-driven, and they need to be able to demonstrate interest from my fanbase so they can approach funding partners.
If you’d like to help out, here’s the link to the survey:
The Survey!
And if you have a friend who loves the series but doesn’t receive the newsletter, they can fill it in too. I’ve been made aware that the newsletter signup broke on my website with no notification to me (and I’ve been so busy with other stuff that I never noticed that subscriptions had stalled), so the more people who do the survey the better.
If we have lots of responses to the survey, we have evidence that I have a fanbase and we have an established audience who are ready to dive into a visual version of the Dark Heavens universe.
See you all in Melbourne and Adelaide! I’ll have a whole album full of cosplay photos for my next newsletter.

It was a tough few days but we came through the other side. These stairs were usually under sand to the first landing…
March Update
It’s remarkable how much disruption one storm can cause.
Hong Kong is hit by cyclones (typhoons) at least once and up to three times every season, but it’s rare to see the level of disruption that we had here in South East Queensland: here, most of the  beach is now gone and people are still without power, a week later.
If you look at a photo of Hong Kong, you’ll see that most of the high-rises there aren’t ‘glass curtain-wall’ construction – although some of the newer and more trendy office buildings are. Hong Kong’s buildings have concrete surrounds to stop the windows from being blown out by typhoons.

Some of them have really tiny windows because they know the damage that glass can cause when it falls.
Just before I returned to Australia, there was a massive typhoon that broke many windows in Wan Chai and everybody was sharing opinions on the stupidity of glass curtain walls on these new buildings.
Most of the power cables are underground in HK as well (and constantly being dug up in Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui!). I lived there for ten years and we never lost power once. Here in SEQ many of the powerlines are above-ground and they led to massive power outages when they went down.
I’m not criticising South East Queensland, as a cyclone here is such a rare event – and the infrastructure so spread out – that it’s probably not economically feasible to have underground power lines everywhere.
But having lived in Hong Kong and experienced only minor inconvenience from typhoons did make me a little more blasé about cyclones here. I did charge everything up but I walked right past the little gas steamboat stoves in the Chinese grocery without buying one because I thought I wouldn’t need one (when I absolutely did).
I did have a workshop booked for Saturday the 8th at Helensvale, and power was out everywhere, and the government asked us to stay home. That was completely cancelled, which was unfortunate.
We came through other side, however, and now I’m preparing for Oz Comic-Con Perth in April.

I’ll be at Perth Convention Centre April 5 and 6, and I will have many hardcover and special collector’s edition copies of ‘Serpent Princess’! If you’d like to order a foiled copy to collect at the show, that’s an option on my store. Isobelle Carmody, Katie Lowe and Amanda Bridgeman will be there so come and say hello!
You can order the special foiled edition, standard hardcover, and paperback copies of ‘Serpent Princess’ on my store. My theme updated and broke everything on my site and I had to rush to sort it out and when I find time I’ll redo my site to make the store easier to use.

The foiled edition is just gorgeous!
Patrons are already reading the sequel to ‘Serpent Princess’ and once I’ve sent out all of their gift copies for being Patrons, I will definitely be adding to the story. Hm… maybe a love <ahem> scene between Simone and Michael? My job is the best in the world.
 
 
 

Unenhanced cover on the left, boosted saturation on the right. I’m sorely tempted to boost it just a tiny bit more – I’ll keep you updated.
February Newsletter
Wouldn’t you know it – this morning I came into my office to work on the newsletter, and the C drive on my desktop computer had failed. I spent a frustrating few hours narrowing it down to whether it was just the hard drive (an easy but fiddly fix) or the entire motherboard (a big, expensive, out-of-action-for-a-few-days fix).
Fortunately it was the disk, but of course my backups aren’t working correctly so there’s a good chance I’ll have to re-install everything.
It’s not possible for me to lose writing files, however, because everything important is on the cloud.
So I’m doing the newsletter on my trusty laptop, and we have a lot of news!
‘The Serpent Princess’ is Out!
My little book is out in the world. Digital sales have been good, and the lowest star rating I’ve received is three stars, which is a relief. New readers don’t seem to be having many issues with joining the Dark Heavens universe with this one, so yay!
Muddy Colours on the Print Covers
As you can see from the image above, the printed covers by IngramSpark (both paperback and hardcover) had muddy, unsaturated colours that really didn’t do Ashton’s lovely design justice. I spoke to an expert who reassured me that printers often have this problem with blues, so I boosted the vibrance and saturation of the cover and the result is the much brighter version on the right. I have an order for the hardcover with this enhancement so those who have ordered the standard (non-foiled) hardcover from the shop will be receiving it soon.
I’ve warned the print shop who are doing the special edition about this issue, and they’ve assured me that they’ll be able to fix it. Half of the foiled covers are already sold – not including the ones reserved for high-level patrons!
My Goodreads Author Account
Update: Many thanks to Tez Miller who fixed this! She’s a librarian on Goodreads and updated the blurb for me. Thanks so much Tez!
It’s been an infuriating week for tech letting me down. I have an author account on Goodreads that I created forever ago, and that broke spectacularly when Goodreads was purchased by Amazon. I was immediately locked out (this was about three-four years ago.) I contacted their help and they insisted – despite the fact that I sent them screenshot of me being locked out – that I wasn’t locked out. After two weeks of frustrating nothing, I gave up, because the books were up and I didn’t use Goodreads as an author anyway.
Then Serpent Princess came out, and Goodreads scraped the blurb from another site and mangled it. Words are missing, and because I can’t access the account, I can’t go in and fix it.
I contacted Goodreads again, and they said very sorry, has been escalated, looking into it, will find what is wrong.
They said that two weeks ago and keep saying the same thing.
So yes, the blurb on Goodreads is incorrect and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it.
World-Building in Helensvale

As part of the program for the Queensland Writers Centre’s Genrecon event, I will be presenting a workshop on ‘Fantasy Worldbuilding’ at Helensvale Library on March 8 at 10.30 am. Click on the link to reserve your place!
Oz Comic-Con
Quick note: I will be doing all Oz Comic-Con cities this year except Canberra. If you would like me to bring you a foiled hardcover of ‘The Serpent Princess’, let me know through my website so I can reserve you one! My carrying capacity is limited when I’m travelling – books are expensive to ship – and there’s a chance they may sell out quickly.
But I’ll be very happy to reserve one for you!
Patrons are already reading the sequel, with much John and Emma.
 

The yellow parts will be gold foil on the special edition hardcover.
January Update
I have final cover for both digital and print, and a blurb, and an edited manuscript – now it’s time to put it all together and actually publish this!
The tentative release date is January 29 (Chinese New Year – the Year of the Snake), and I’ll let you know as soon as it’s up on a separate email, so you can pre-order if you like.
Here’s the full hardcover design, as it looks with the guides for the printer:

There are some minor typesetting errors here, but this is what the final hardcover dust jacket will look like. I love Ashton’s idea of putting the tagline: ‘So she saved the world. Now what?’ in big letters on the back. As I noted above, on the special edition hardcover, the yellow parts will be gold foiled. It will also have sprayed page edges, and again Ashton has outdone herself:

As well as a digital and paperback version, there will be two hardcover versions: I will have one without the foils and sprayed edges, published on Ingram, that will be available in all bookstores (and my online store when I add it. I’m planning to refresh my website so it has a full online store). The other hardcover will be foils and sprayed edges, and I’ll have that printed specially, and it will only be available for purchase from me at a con or from my website. It will be really expensive to print with all those additional features. Either way, it’ll be up for sale in digital and print probably at the end of the month.
I’ve created a new series for this title, it’s book one of ‘House of the North’. I’m already full of ideas to expand this storyline to include what other members of the family are up to, pulling the threads all together with the main John/Emma arc. Now that I have complete editorial control, I can do that!
Here’s the back cover blurb:
So she saved the world. Now what?
Only one warrior is capable of defeating Princess Simone in single combat: her father, the God of Martial Arts, who has been training her since she was a child.
The great war between the Heavens and Hell is over, and the Asian Celestial realm is free. Simone led the Resistance against the demons that led to their defeat, but at a great personal cost – she’s contaminated by demon essence, no longer an Immortal and exiled from the Heavenly realm. She’s revered by grateful Celestial residents, but all she wants is a normal life on the Earthly plane, where she can study to be a marine biologist, and spend time with her loving family and supportive boyfriend.
Fate has other plans for her, and she will be unwillingly drawn into a global conflict between the gods of the Asian Heavens and the demons of European Hell.
‘Serpent Princess’ is a fresh new entry point into the fan favourite ‘Dark Heavens’ universe. Join the Asian Gods of the Celestial House of the North for this lovingly crafted homage to Hong Kong’s iconic martial arts dramas, and the captivating world of Wuxia fantasy.
I am fully expecting MANY people to ask me if this is ‘standalone’. At this stage: yes it is. It will be a new ‘entry point’ to the Dark Heavens universe, kind of a (heh) ‘Dark Heavens, Next Generation’. (I nearly inserted a Picard facepalm here.)
So feel free to recommend it to your friends if they want a taster of the ‘Dark Heavens’ series: they can read it without reading any of the other books (but I don’t mind if they do, of course).
Here’s what the full paperback will look like:

Ashton’s done a fabulous job.
Anyway, keep an eye out for my social media posts with a release date if you’d like to pre-order.

I was privileged to help Isobelle Carmody to talk about her new novel, ‘Comes the Night’. She had a post-talk signing and there were some die-hard fans there!

 
December Update
Well that’s the year done – I started out with the fabulous opportunity of helping HavenXR build their ‘The Keeper’ interactive project, and now I’m helping fellow authors to see their books in print with my self-publishing service at essentialselfpub.com.au.
‘Serpent Princess’
I’m about 80% of the way through revising Katie’s edits of ‘Serpent Princess’. So far she hasn’t found any of the story hard to follow, so it does work as a new entry point (I still need to find a better way of saying that, all suggestions welcome) to the Dark Heavens universe.
Here’s some of her comments:
On Genbu being a recurring character in Final Fantasy:

The first time Simone teleports (sometimes I feel this way as well):

When Simone says ‘I don’t want you at my prospectus presentation’ and Emma says ‘sure I’ll stay away’:

(Obviously I am making the conscious choice to model supportive relationships throughout my works, and Katie’s picked up on it!)
This happens again when John tells Simone where to find the really good alcohol as she’s having an emotional time of things:

Here’s something, that nine full-length novels, three novellas, and a hybrid graphic novel later, that someone has never asked before:

An obvious reference (and an in-joke between me and Katie):

And finally, yes there is an info dump. Yes, it is the summarised content of nine books. I think it is needed. It’s still there. I hope new readers will bear with me through it. I promise that the visuals are very pretty:

Options for ‘Serpent Princess’
I’m still debating whether I should create an additional paperback of ‘Serpent Princess’ that’s a ‘director’s cut’ that has all the Emma stuff that I’ve removed – back in. I still have yet to decide. Of course, I can always include it in the new John/Emma book that I’m writing (spoiler alert: they visit Rooster Village!). I’ll decide later.
All the best for the end of the year, and I hope we all have a wonderful 2025!