Shadow's Ember
- Planned Release: April/May 2025
- Media Format: Paperback & Ebook
- Genre Tags: Fiction, Science-Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Dystopian
- Content Warnings: violence, mild romance
This is the first of two sibling novels that are written to be a single story. Combined, they tell a failed hero's journey about two primitive half-robots who get banished from their village and sent on an adventure across the bizarre island they call home. Masked with shame and wounded for mistakes that weren't theirs to begin with, their "one quick trip" to beg for redemption becomes a battle for their lives. Not just theirs, either. The Maker's ancient nemesis is gathering its power, creeping into each dark corner of the island, and every life is at stake. Will Tirak and his sister Kaleek figure out Maker's masterplan in time to save everyone?
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Synopsis
Tirak is a simple cybri. Sure, sure, he can sculpt the currents of fire itself--as long as someone stronger isn't already conducting them--and, like all cybrii, he's supposed to save the world. But ever since the day it was stolen from him, all Tirak's wanted from life is to enjoy a quiet corner of his people's island surrounded by family.
But when his adopted sister gets beaten up and exiled from the city they grew up in, Tirak finds himself dragged along on a quest to beg their Maker for redemption that might just decide the fate of their island. They hold opposing powers of fire and ice, but the two siblings will have to learn to work together and become something more if they want to succeed. An ancient darkness is coming to strangle them all, and only Tirak and Kaleek stand in its way. The Island's fate is in their hands as they miscommunicate their way through a bungled Hero's Journey. Kaleek keeps talking about going out in a blaze of glory, but all Tirak knows is he will do everything he can to not lose his last remaining connection to family.
A tale of miscommunication as the half-robot Tirak and his adopted sister Kaleek fight their way through an epic hero's journey to save an island. Each step will be more bitter for them than the last. Will they be able to see their Maker's quest to the end, or will their distractions slowly crumble the whole plan to dust?
Since the day it was stolen, Tirak has only wanted one thing from life: a quiet place to call home where the worry of losing his friends isn't racing through his circuits. Instead, he finds himself pulled between the life of either a criminal or a wandering protector to his whirlwind of a sister. Even the fire coursing through his piston-fed veins aren't enough to cancel out wherever Kaleek blows. But, it's either try or watch the last of his world crumble away once his sister launches them on the adventure of a lifetime. Kaleek is dead-set on becoming the heroine sung in every story, so it's up to Tirak remember to stop and ask, "When does the cost become too much?"
Maker's Log drawings
If you have the paperback edition, the drawings attached to each Maker's Log entry before a chapter will be in black&white for you. Since that may distort the clarity of a few of them, you can find the complete set of drawings below, which the paperback will include a link to, plus a QR code you can scan to get there.
Production Status
| % | Milestone | Timeline | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
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Outline | Aug 2024 | Complete. No more large outline changes needed. All planned scenes fit together and have been received well by a couple of test readers. 29 chapters of varying page counts. |
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Rough Draft | Aug 2024 | Complete. Word count is about 96k. |
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Chapter Drawings | Dec 2024 | Chapters start with a sketch and small page of worldbuilding. 4 new drawings are needed, and 1 needs to be redone. |
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Self-edits | Sep 2024 | Complete. Needed a few passes in order to make sure details that I didn't consider until hlafway through fit naturally with the rest of the story while I cleaned up many, many grammar & structural mistakes. |
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Copy Edit | Nov 2024 | Copy editor came back with edits faster than expected. Schedule may stay on track after all as long as there isn't much back and forth needed. |
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Final Layout | Jan 2025 | Last step needed to get the pages in a printable format. We've finalized the interior layout, so I and friends are feverishly proofreading until everything gets sent off to the printers. (thanks a ton, Smolbean!) |
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Cover art | Jan 2025 | Contracted an amazing artist KAdala to create the main cover drawing. Clovercroft's cover designer is now laying out the final design using that and notes about my overall vision for the series. |
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Publication questions | ~Nov 2024 | Done. Clovercroft Publishing is going to handle these details (ISBN Registration, distribution agreements, etc.). |
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Marketing | ??? | This counts as marketing, right? On a serious note, this is the bulk of the work needed from my end still. Looking for recommendations, otherwise I'm considering Amazon and Facebook ads. |
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Digital release | Apr 2025 | No need for an Itch.IO PDF release. This should be coming out the same day that the paperback does. |
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Paperback | Apr 2025 | To be determined once the bulk of the edit work is done and an estimate comes back from Clovercroft's available printers. |
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Audiobook | TBD | I would love to have this in audio format at some point, but I may need to see what the demand is first before I start that effort. |
History
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Decided to break the dozen-odd chapters of Tirak's alternate viewpoint out of Kaleek's book. I'm starting to have too many scenes to keep jumping around like this. Sanderson can pull it off and every chapter could be its own feature length masterpiece. I'm not Brandon Sanderson. I need simple if I'm ever going to get something out the door. Let's see where this goes. Maybe I should find a writers group around Fredericksburg. Something can encourage me to just Shut Up, and... Write... |
| 22 May 2024 | Struggling to get the flow right for several key chapters between the early and mid story. For anyone looking to alpha-read my drafts and provide feedback, I'll have chapters 5-8 bundled to read in the next couple weeks. |
| 15 June 2024 | Chapters 5-8 have been dropped onto some members of my writers group for feedback, and I'm finally looking further into the book again after that rough patch. So far, the next 5+ chapters at most need some editing and a few minor additions. I know there's one or two more of these roadblocks hiding still, but I'd like to think that I know where things all have to go now. |
| 25 July 2024 | Chapters 9-14 are just about prepped for alpha readers. Some of the additions once again turned out far less minor than I thought (shocking, I know). Going back through to catch important details is the slowest part, but I'm now up to 40% of the book's pages needing ZERO more changes! The actual completion is significantly higher, too, and I'm down to only a couple chapters that aren't mostly outlined & drafted. |
| 9 August 2024 | Light at the end of the tunnel, and this time it's NOT just an Umbrium bud. ~6 chapters that need genuine new content to make the story feel complete. Then it'll be on to at least 5 iterations of self-editing to make sure every thread I promise is paid off, and every paid off promise is set up well. |
| 11 August 2024 | Chapters 1 & 4 are up for the public to read, right here on gifthammer.com! 2 more chapters need content, 6 more pre-chapter sketches need to be drawn, and then all I have left to is finish 4 self-edit passes and start talking to editors & publishers. Still deciding where to land on the gradient between traditional publishing, self-publish, self-print, and all that goes into distribution. |
| 26 August 2024 | Well, this is it. No more "new" content left to add. I expect I'll end up adding at least a couple more pages to the story's length before all my editing passes are done, but the book as it is right now, is at least complete. |
| 25 September 2024 | Almost done with the content edits that I can think of after re-reading the book a couple times. By the end of the week, I hope to be ready to start working with an indie publisher. It's time to start paying an editor to poke holes in this thing, cause I can't find any more on my own. |
| 26 September 2024 | Right on schedule. Starting to talk with a Hybrid / Custom publisher, so I'll see where things go from here. I still have a lot of details to do, like chapter drawings and behind the scenes work on the production side, but maybe it's time to start looking at my other projects again. |
| 20 October 2024 | Publisher is decided and we've put a tentative plan together that lands the book in stores around April. I also reached out to KAdala S.R.L. to get a far more professional drawing created for the cover art than I could ever produce. |
| 14 November 2024 | Copy edits came back from Bob Irvin this week, along with KAdala's finished version of the cover drawing. |
| 25 January 2025 | KAdala kindly was willing to work on a second version of the cover after Clovercroft came back with concerns about the first one's design. Last couple of months have been filled with getting that redrawn, the book's interior laid out for printing, and the full cover layout designed (last one is still ongoing). |