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It's been a while, but I have actually been writing.
Last week, I published a new Kestrel and Scar story, The Pirate King. This follows on from my previous story, Gentlemen of Fortune (which is available here). The story was published on 19th September for Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I ran a fun Facebook launch on 23rd September.
Anyway, this story picks up where Gentlemen of Fortune left off, in which Kestrel is forced to find a safe port to make repairs, but his previous adventure has attracted other interested parties. The story is going to be the second entry in the "Rosanna Barclay Trilogy" of novelettes in which wandering scoundrels Kestrel and Scar travel with former lady-in-waiting Rosanna Barclay.
While the previous story was published as an e-book and a paperback, I decided to make this one e-book only. This was largely due to KDP's cover formatting, which repeatedly rejected the cover. When I originally published the story for a university assignment, I'd made the front and back covers using Canva, and merged all the files to print using Doxzoo. Unfortunately, Amazon seemed to take issue with that, and I had to make several attempts to merge the covers into one file for the upload before it was finally accepted. With that in mind, you can probably understand why I didn't want that particular headache. Apologies to those who prefer paperbacks, but I have a plan.
I'm going to be working on the third story, The Homecoming, which I aim to publish next year. In this one, Kestrel and Scar take Rosanna back to England, but a storm runs them aground near St Ives; Kestrel's place of birth. After Scar is shot, Kestrel finds himself dredging up memories of his departure ten years earlier. This one is also going to be e-book only, but I hope to release a paperback with all three stories. I already started The Homecoming for a second-year assignment at university, but I'm going to take a short break from the series.
I'm planning to dedicate October to working on one of my other projects; Misadventures in Planaterra. This is a comic fantasy I've been sketching for some time, that I'm hoping to develop as a roleplaying game.
Anyway, the Pirate King is on now available from Amazon here.
Anyway, I'd best get back to work. Happy writing.
