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The doors exploded with wooden shrapnel. Mortemir floated through the entrance, an inky curtain rising, a gloomy blade extending from his fist. “You’ve nowhere to run.” Crimson lightning danced with shadows. “Hold still while I carve you up.”

With Trickster Trysting, Bane War Vol. II in beta reading stage, I wanted to share updates.

First, Fury Feeding got great feedback from a Netgalley promotion I did a few months ago. Readers liked the book overall, but shared two common concerns:

• Pacing, too slow in parts with too much dialog.
• Confusing. What’s the plot? What is Saffa thinking, what is her goal? Get inside her head, please, please, please!

I did a poor job getting the reader inside Saffa’s head, so I’m doing a second edition pass on this book, adding a few scenes I had wanted in the original edition but didn’t have the time/stamina to add. Soren also needs an upgrade–he can still be a shy nerd but also change to his sinister persona, hot as Hells and dark. It will take several months, but I want to get the story right. Once this edition is done, I’ll have Allison, my editor, comb through the book and then get it republished hopefully by end of year.

When I need a break from this, I’ll be working on the third book, Mercy Maiming, starring Zelene. If you haven’t noticed, the background of the website shows Zelene and a potential love interest … who could it be? She’ll be fighting in two wars and playing in a mixed-gender brutal basketball league with no foul calls. Imagine putting the NBA, WNBA, Slamball, and Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball into a blender. What do you get? The CBL, or Combat Basketball League, where losing has more implications than just heartbreak.

And don’t worry. The B plot of Mercy Maiming will continue from the first book as Ishethra leads Nightwind against Bratgon and its horrifying technological evolution, orchestrated by our friend Josnel Soneph. What happens when you combine magic and airplanes? Guess you’ll have to wait and find out. Saffa might become a fighter pilot in this book, but you didn’t hear that from me.

Future looking, book four, Freedom Flaying, stars Demvora and Ishethra. This book will be my first full-on attempt at a proper dark fantasy horror novel as we follow these two mavki as they hunt tyrants mercilessly.

Thanks for visiting and I’d love to hear your comments, like if you’ve read the first book, what you think of it and this series, or anything else random you want to share.

I’m *almost* done with the last chapter of the second book, then the epilogue, and Alonka’s, Puck’s, and Dragan’s tale will be complete. After an editing pass, beta reading, and my editor. Getting a fully finished book released is no small feat!

By the way, this book is now called “Trickster Trysting.” I think it’s an apter title as this is Alonka’s book and fits my newly adopted theme of two-word titles for this series.

With my brain issues flaring up, I’ve had more time to think as I take frequent breaks from doing, well, anything. Given I don’t know how many quality years of writing I have left in me, I decided to make Zelene’s book, Mercy Maiming, book three, and Ishethra’s book, Freedom Flaying, book four. I’d hoped to do a book with Haldra and Maelthra before Ishethra’s story, but it’ll come later now.

These four volumes will give each mavka her own story. Hopefully, many more books follow with my health cooperating.

Mercy Maiming stars Zelene and Chastity as magic and science clash in a terrible mishap, sending her through time and space. She ends up in 1800s USA, 1940s Europe and 1980s USA, where she plays in a brutal, mixed-gender basketball league with no foul calls. Sweet, kind Zelene will get tested like she never has and discover her true worth.

Freedom Flaying stars Ishethra and Demvora and will delve further into the Bane War that was mentioned in the Temple chapter of book one, heavy on flashbacks. Will the mavki four make it to Demvora’s shrine? Only time will tell 🙂

Made this in Flow, by Google which is rapidly taking the lead in AI generated story telling. Keep an eye on this space as we make more videos with Flow.

Music is an integral part of my writing, so I conjured a playlist of some of the songs I’ve listened to while writing the first book. The music roughly aligns with the plot of the book. Please enjoy 🙂

July 3, 1863 (Year 19064, Yava)

Battle of Gettysburg

Major General George Pickett stood at his division’s front, the humid Pennsylvania air thick with pine and black powder. He leveled his brass binoculars down Cemetery Ridge, where blue-clad Yankees skulked among rocky outcrops and churned wheat fields. A hot-air balloon drifted above, spotting for an array of advanced weaponry west of Seminary Ridge, far beyond the Union’s artillery range: M1908 6-inch howitzers. Great blossoms of flame erupted as one-hundred-and-twenty-pound shells launched from four of the guns.

Pickett had given the fire command moments ago to dial in their bombardment. With the ammunition for these behemoths scarce, this was the first test—he didn’t know what to expect—the shells might be duds, or they might overshoot, or worse yet, undershoot into his division’s ranks at the forest’s edge. The South’s victory balanced on the blade’s edge of this moment.

A distant thundercrack. The guns. Whistles overhead. Shells flying. Four massive explosions sundered men, timber, and metal. Panic ensued in the Union ranks as they abandoned their forward positions behind demolished wooden fences.

Pickett’s division raised their hats, cheering.

“By the Lord, what infernal thunder is this?” Pickett draped his binoculars around his neck. It seemed the might of Almighty God had been conjured from above, damning the enemy. Elated but unsure if such divine might should be wielded by mortal men, he gazed at Brigadier General Lewis Armistead, who wore a fine-wool uniform with brass buttons, his well-trimmed black beard flickering in the wind.

Armistead scanned the rising plumes of smoke. “Our Savior Jesus Christ has blessed us with this armament,” he said in a thick southern accent as he removed his hat, stabbing his bayonet through it, lifting it high. “Let’s give them the Lord’s full battery of cold steel!”

At this decree, the rebels hollered their approval.

Armistead’s conviction bolstered Pickett to call in the order. He set the mouthpiece of his field-radio against his jaw. Fingers coaxed a crackle of static as he adjusted a dial for transmission to the balloon, who also held a similar radio to communicate with the battery of guns. “This is General Pickett—do you read me? Over.”

A heartbeat passed.

“Captain Thomas Blackwood here, sir. Loud and clear. We’ve done it! Over.”

Pickett’s grin sharpened as he traced Cemetery Ridge’s silhouette. “Increase angle of attack and fire all guns at that mass of blue behind the stone wall. You may fire when ready. Over.”

“Order received for full bombardment behind the stone wall. It will be relayed. Over.” Static ensued.

Weeks earlier, General Robert E. Lee had confided in his corps commanders that these monstrous guns, along with M1918 assault rifles—and the wireless-telegraphy devices enabling this instant reach—came from a joint effort with a benefactor in Germany: Werner von Siemens, who whispered promises of Southern victory followed by their North American domination. And a long-lasting alliance with the Germans, who planned to conquer all Eurasia.

Like the Second Coming, thunder tore the sky apart; the radio slipped from Pickett’s fingers. Earth quaked beneath his boots as stone and blue uniforms vanished in a mile-long bloom of colossal explosions, the Union line rupturing like parchment torn by steel.

Pickett’s eyes blazed. He rocked back on one heel. “God Almighty—those guns can rend heaven and earth.” He drew his saber and swept his gaze across his division of riflemen. His voice rang out, low and fierce, “Virginians, the Lord fights with us!” Sword held high, his voice boomed, “For home, for your sweethearts and wives, and for old Virginia!” Sword lowered, he cried, “March!”

Drums beat and rebels whooped, drawing their experimental rifles, raising red flags crossed by blue overlaid with thirteen white stars.

A gray sea advanced.

***

Like the cannons, the first test of the new rifles exceeded expectations as the crack of machine-gun fire erupted. Pickett’s division surged forward with Trimble’s men to the north, lead spraying into the fleeing Union ranks, each burst tearing through blue wool and scattering men like grain before the scythe. Bodies pitched into the earth, anguished cries swallowed by the relentless staccato of ruin. In minutes, the Federal line dissolved into a shattered swarm of fugitives fleeing beyond Cemetery Ridge.

Out of ammunition for the new guns, men put them on their backs and drew their muskets, scanning for any Yankees. Only the dead remained.

Pickett halted atop the ridge, the reek of gunpowder and blood heavy on the air. A beep on his radio and he put the mouthpiece to his lips.

Crackling. Then General Lee’s voice, who had stayed at the battery of guns to witness their firepower. “What of their divisions, Pickett? Over.”

Awestruck, Pickett surveyed the field below—a graveyard of mangled Yankees glinting in the afternoon sun. He let the silence stretch before replying, his words cold as the steel in his hand, “General Lee, they have no divisions. Over.”

I cast my corset off, set Soulash down, and jump into the lava-filled pool in the steamy, obsidian rock bathhouse. Pleasure licks my skin with every drop, riding up my tail and wings, as I submerge—just what I need after putting up with the insanity of this Underworld. They need an overlord. I birthed just one year ago, and I already know how to fix everything.

Preview of poker game from Act IV scene from Games of Blood and Shadow, Bane War Vol. II. Not just any poker game mind you. Poker with demons against archdevils.

Have you ever gone through, chapter by chapter, and painstakingly added drop caps to your novel? Well, that ends today. I’m originally a software engineer by trade, turned dark fantasy writer, so here’s a little script I made to create all the drop caps for you. This is especially handy if you are using a tool like Scrivener which exports to word, where you then have to do a bunch of post processing. Plus I’ll share some other scripts I made that are super handy.

My drop cap script finds all the “Heading 1” styled paragraphs (chapter titles), then finds the first full justified paragraph and ensures it has a drop cap (if it already has one, it moves on to the next chapter).

For my script to work, ensure you style your Scrivener chapter title output to use “Heading 1” for the chapter names. If you don’t use Scrivener, ensure you are setting all your chapter title text styled as “Heading 1”.

It might sound scary running scripts, but I promise it’s super easy. To run them, you must enable the developer tab on the ribbon. The Developer tab isn’t displayed by default.

On the File tab, go to Options > Customize Ribbon. Then, under Customize the Ribbon and under Main Tabs, select the Developer check box. Save and close the options.

Now you’re all set to run scripts. Go to the new Developer tab on the ribbon, then select Visual Basic. A new window appears. Click Insert -> Modules, then paste in all the code from here:

https://gist.github.com/jjxtra/5065efe8a0c0def823512afab77fd2e3

Once you do that, back in Word on the Developer tab, click macros, then double click the script to run. Some might take a few seconds or up to a minute, so be patient.

The scripts I use everytime are RemoveFirstBlankLineEachPage (fixes Scrivener adding a blank line at the start of each chapter), ChangeFootnoteNumbersTo10Point (thanks Scrivener for outputting such ginormous footnote numbers), AdjustImagesWithPaddingAndWrapping (my novels have lots of pictures and this makes square images alternate left and right while making other images appear in front of text, all while ensuring padding), and lastly ApplyDropCapToChapters. If you aren’t using Scrivener, you only care about the ApplyDropCapToChapters function.

I use these scripts to format Bane War books when I export from Scrivener to Microsoft Word. By the way, you should always choose RTF format for the output, load that in Word, then export to a docx, without compatibility mode.

Hope this saves you a bunch of time. It sure has for me. I can export from Scrivener for a 210k word novel, run these scripts, due a quick formatting pass and be done in less than fifteen minutes.