The Orcusinian (Box Set 1-4 Age of Magic)

So, I’ve been working diligently on rereads of the entire series (Books 1-4 of the Age of Magic) in anticipation of the release of the official box set for the Orcusinian (the final editions of Books 1-4 in the Age of Magic). These editions have some typo fixes, some stylistic changes for consistency across the set (e.g., capitalization), and some updates to author information (e.g., I’m in Vegas now).

There’s a lot of update in this post. Let’s start with the cover reveal for the Orcusinian Box Set, which covers the rise of Orcus on Nirendia from the Void and his attempts to take over the planet.

Orcusinian Release Date

This is expected to take place as early as October, and if you’ve been waiting to purchase the set in its individual tomes, then you may be in for a treat, as I’ll be submitting the set to places like BookBub and other advertisers in an attempt to get a wider audience to take a look at the series. As part of these submissions, there is often a required price cut. If BookBub shows interest, then I may even be able to have a special, very inexpensive discount on the box set to as low as 99 cents. Again, no promises. We’ll see what happens after release.

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Reminder on Audiobook Release of Book 4

Unfortunately, Adam Gold is still booked until late 2023. As much as I’d love to get this into everyone’s hands (and ears), there is nothing I can do to fast track this without changing narrators. And I believe that would be detrimental. So, please have patience with us as we wait for Adam to become available, and then I have him booked for not only Book 4 (The Red Poet) but also the box set (The Orcusinian), and Book 5 (The Queen’s Consort).

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Text Reviews for The Red Poet (Help!)

Read the Red Poet? Have an opinion on it? Want to share that with readers? Help them understand what they’re getting into.

The Red Poet has been out for almost two months, and many have downloaded and presumably read the book. However, the reviews are a bit scarce and there are no text reviews for the book on Amazon or Good Reads. This is a bit problematic because most books do have text reviews, summaries of how readers felt, what they went through emotionally while reading a book, and how they felt about it / whether they would recommend it.

So, have an opinion on the book? Leave a review. It’s helpful. If you’re a fan, I’ll also need you guys to leave some reviews when the Orcusinian is released. I know that there are hundreds of reviews on the audiobooks and The People’s Necromancer also has over 100 reviews on Amazon and over 200 on Goodreads for all formats. But for advertising and word-of-mouth to work, I think most readers would need some context to understand what they’re getting into.

Please help other readers out, and leave reviews (not just on my books but any book you read and feel comfortable sharing your thoughts about).

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Status of The Queen’s Consort

One of the reasons I wanted to take a break from writing Book 5 was to try to read through the rest of the series and understand if the scope and really the starting point of Book 5 was going to make sense. As we end Book 4, multiple long-referred-to, legendary characters make appearances. One of these is so central to the genesis of The Queen’s Consort (Prince Jayden Etyria) that I feel like there’s no way to start Book 5 without walking through what this character did and what she went through to give us Prince Jayden Etyria. This is a serious departure from the storytelling template that the rest of the books has done, which could be a problem.

In every other book, the focus of the book’s backstory character (i.e., Ashton, Cedric, Prince Jandhar, and Nessamela) have been the focus of the early chapters. Even though there are many people who influenced them, they are the subjects and each story starts with their perspectives that really launch them into the Age of Magic. In Book 5, because Jayden’s true genesis and reason for existing began almost 100,000 years before he was born, the current story in Book 5 starts significantly before he is born. I was so worried about this as I got to the chapter of his birth, that I felt it was necessary to completely stop drafting Book 5 and to instead re-read the series.

The good news is that after re-reading and really because of the compendium and the end of the story arc of Lord Orcus in Book 4, I feel like this new compendium and the final leg of the Age of Magic series (the last 3 books) shouldn’t really be under the templating and flow rules of the previous books. I still believe, after rereading the series, that the decision to delay the start of Jayden’s story until after the 4-6 chapters that describe the setting and major events of the dark elves and their interactions with Mekadesh and its consequences are going to be the right decision for this book and for the final compendium. It will hopefully be more gripping, feel less random, and setup the struggle of the dark elven empires (the newer Etyrian Empire and the ancient Harenyadae) as well as how Jayden and all of the surviving dark elves influence the rest of the series.

Stay tuned. I’ll dive more into this in the coming month.