The sequel to Siana’s War (published in 2022 through Amazon) is now published and available for purchase!

View or purchase the sequel Princess of Time on Amazon

Like Siana’s War, Princess of Time was written some time ago. My feelings about publishing the remainder of the series changed instantly when book one went live in 2022. I immediately felt (before I’d even sold the first copy of book 1) a responsibility to readers that I hadn’t felt before. I wanted to make sure book 2 was out there as soon as possible. Even if there was just one person who bought Siana’s War and loved it, I wanted the sequel to be there for them as soon as they wanted it. I knew that publishing Siana’s War would make it feel like a “real” book. But I didn’t anticipate this additional dynamic–and it was instantaneous.

I’m sure my sense of responsibility is heightened by my own experiences of frustration as a reader–and a TV series watcher. With TV series, I always hate getting invested in a story (and immersed in all its details) then forgetting too many of those details by the time season 2 is released. And as a reader, the most powerful example is waiting forever for Patrick Rothfuss to write the follow-up to Wise Man’s Fear. (Don’t get me started on that one . . . it’s gone from frustration to an angry sense of betrayal.) If people take the time to be invested in the world I’ve created, I want to honor that investment.

Despite that urgency, it took 19 months to publish Princess of Time. The rough draft was written when I published Siana’s War, but whereas I took about 5 years to polish up the rough draft of Siana’s War, I got Princess done in less than 2 years. I felt two competing responsibilities . . . get the book out fast, but make sure it was ready to get out there.

With Siana’s War I was still aiming to interest an agent or traditional publisher, so I pushed a lot harder for brevity. In other words to satisfy evolving standards of shorter first novels. That took more plot restructuring and thinning, and all the accompanying continuity checks. Largely with Princess I was just tightening up sentences and clearing out clunky phrasing. I felt the plot was solid, as I outlined extensively in writing both books. 

A majority of nights for those 19 months, I ended my day by working on a small piece of the rough draft for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. I completed my revision by May 2023, and then spent a couple months searching in Microsoft Word for “junk” words and phrases. The last couple months last Fall were just formatting chapter headings and other pre-publication pickiness.

I’ve already dug into the yet-untitled third book in the same fashion, and that should be out by early 2025!  

If you check out Siana’s War or both books, please let me know what you think, leave a review on Amazon, and drop me a note.  I really appreciate your spending time with my creation.