The past couple weeks have been eventful for Realm of Chaos! On Memorial Day, I met up with the cover artist, and we finalized the front cover! The colors are washed-out in pictures, but I’ll reveal the final cover art by the end of the month, because … we expect the full cover to be completed by Father’s Day!
For now, here’s a peek of part of the back cover progress:
Realm of Chaos came back after the first review this week as well! After some reviewing and discussion, I made another round of revisions, and now we’re at the near-final draft!! Yesterday, I sent it out for the second round of reviews. One is another writer who also beta read Ranger’s Odyssey, and she “beast mode” powered through the entire book in five hours last night! We were able to discuss the book this morning—well, 2:00am when she finished reading, before she fell into bed.
I am so beyond excited at this feedback! I’ve been so worried about Realm of Chaos. Part of this is because that fear of setting too high an expectation with Ranger’s Odyssey and just disappointing the readers with further books has not gone away. It’s also a legitimate worry that the middle book in a series will be the worst one. There’s a forced timeline to stick to, in order to maintain the structure that will be completed in the last book, and the middle book typically is just the least interesting because it’s the bridge to the last book. I put a lot of time into making sure this wasn’t / didn’t feel like filler just as a stepping stone to the end.
It is such a relief to learn that this was successful! From this review, it seems like all the emotions and reactions I was trying to achieve throughout the book have hit the mark! I cannot wait for it to be out and available for you all to read!
I expect the other reviewers to have it back by the end of next weekend, and then I will make my second-to-last revisions and post Realm of Chaos to Booksprout for ARC reading! Around the start of August, I’ll have a final round of revisions for any necessary small changes, read aloud to check for any remaining typos or awkward phrasing, and then it’s ready for submission time in September! The final review of the cover art will be Father’s Day weekend in a couple weeks, and then Realm of Chaos is ready to go!
For now, I’ll leave you with this: the chapter titles for Realm of Chaos. We’re in the home stretch now!
Until next time, adventurers!
Tales of Ambergrove 