WELP. In an effort to try and better prioritize certain goals to eventually realize the actual publishing of my upcoming cosmic horror debut, Ferrum Perpetua: The North Iron Star, I made the (easy and wise) decision to postpone the sample excerpt, Ferrum Perpetua: Iron Ursa. I mean, that was probably a given, seeing as how the ‘cOmInG tHiS mOnTh’ banner has been present on my front page for almost a year now (oopz).
The main reason is that I’m reconstructing my second draft in a document that better resembles the format of the official book, and in doing so, it became pretty apparent that I really needed to reevaluate how efficiently I was writing and pacing the story. That said, I’m leaning toward eventually still releasing Ferrum Perpetua: Iron Ursa as a free-to-read ‘sample’, likely framed as also containing additional bonus content. But since I don’t yet know how closely it’s going to resemble the final product, I figured it’s better to wait than to present something that’s potentially misleading.
So, the silver lining is that I can say that I’ve resumed actively building the first volume of what I hope to be a healthy and exciting series. The past year, I actually ended up focusing more on improving my illustrative capabilities, so perhaps I’ll pivot to updating the site with a working gallery in the meantime, paired with blurbs that explain how these images tie into the plot of the story.
Truth is, I’m not sure how badly any of this actually needs to be said, as my marketing thus far has been pretty casual. I’m only one gal, after all. And I figure I need to get closer to finishing the first book before I actually do a full court press into spreading the word. But on the off-chance that anyone was waiting on Iron Ursa, I figured being transparent is still the right way to be, in terms of explaining why the release has been so delayed (as well as why the banner has mysteriously disappeared from the home page). So, my apologies to anyone who was actually looking forward to that lol. Once I get to that point in the second draft, I’ll definitely be revisiting how to share it on the site, but again, it’s more important to actually write the ding-dang book versus aggressively marketing something that’s still well in the developmental stages.
Even so, I think I’m going to try and be more active with the site by way of sharing art and using that as an opportunity to better flesh out the concept of Ferrum Perpetua. I suspect that will be a more engaging and digestible way of kindling intrigue anyway versus overwhelming curious readers with large excerpts (although I do intend to include some for those who do end up wanting more!). That said, the free-to-read side story, Ferrum Perpetua: You Could Live Forever, is still available (and probably will be for some time <3).
But in the meantime, here are some WIPs in varying stages of completion that will likely find their way into the new gallery once that’s live! Thanks again for your patience as I cobble this insanity together~
