REMINDER :) THE REIGN OF A QUEEN IS COMING SOON!!!!!! Just a couple of weeks now (March. 11, 2020) and Reign of a Queen will be live on Amazon :) I am so excited about this first series of three books being completed and Rayelynn, Farrow and Drayden's stories told.
After that, the next book will be a stand-alone, Desdemona due out in the summer of 2020...more on that later.
So...as I have started writing books under Azriel Hope, I've been learning a lot about self-publishing. As I learn, I adjust. I am so grateful that people are enjoying The Fall of Arcades and The Rise of a King and I'm so excited to publish the Reign of a Queen which I think is the best of all three books. However, with that said, I have gotten a few bad reviews for The Fall of Arcades to accompany the many good ones.
It was the first book in the series and I wrote it with so much passion, my beta readers loved it, my editor loved it and well...I thought the world would love it. But after some very well thought out and lightly scathing reviews from two reviewers, I decided to look at the Fall of Arcades again and address some of their concerns.
While I think reviews are often a matter of taste, and to those reviewers, the book and therefore the series was perhaps not to their taste, they had made some wise observations. One is that the Fall of Arcades was a little overwritten and two had some minor errors and formatting challenges. There was also mention that Rayelynn was too weak in the beginning, but I think she is where she needs to be considering who she becomes in the Reign of a Queen. She was an abused daughter who lived a lifetime of verbal and physical abuse, she wouldn't come out with her dukes up, she'd be who she was to survive the abuse at first until she knew herself better, so that note, I didn't see as being necessary to change.
I did go back into the book and I have made some minor adjustments. I don't think it changed the story at all, but it did make it a little tighter, cleaner and hopefully more accessible to people who are sensitive to minor errors. I can't guarantee they are all gone and I thought my editor got most of them, but there are fewer errors, better formating and not so many words to describe things.
What I learned is you won't please everyone, but you can make compromises and continue to whittle, hone and polish until your masterpiece shines. While The Fall of Arcaders isn't a masterpiece, it sure is a fun, angsty, dark romance that gets your blood pumping....so out with the old and in with the newer. :) Enjoy, the new draft will be up on Amazon this weekend. (January 26)
AND.....HERE COMES THE QUEEN!!!! March. 11 2020 :) I can't wait...I hope you can.
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