Design update! The series name of my epic fantasy tetralogy has changed from “Seed of Glory Sown in Sorrow” to something much simpler and more concrete: “The Heir and the Herald.”
Don’t worry: no one forced this change on me. I actually came up with this new series title myself, and I like it. It’s punchy, visualizable, and representative of the series as a whole. And it works much better on the book covers (yes, the covers are currently being designed, and yes, they’re awesome, and yes, “Seed of Glory Sown in Sorrow: A Sea Sought in Song” was too much of a mouthful even for me).
As a phrase, seed of glory sown in sorrow is still near and dear to my heart, and it’s still the first line of text you’ll see upon cracking open Book One.
Which is an event you’ll get to experience very, very soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’VE SIGNED WITH A TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER.
Creative Texts will publish the ENTIRE “Seed of Glory Sown in Sorrow” saga.
Seventeen years’ worth of creative labor—half my lifetime—is about to go before the reading public. Hugh Conrad and Ilina Lightkeeper are about to conquer your library.
The first three novels in my epic fantasy tetralogy will be released relatively soon, and the fourth will follow as soon as it’s completed.
All the waiting … all the hoping … all the dreaming … all the imagining … all worth it. So worth it.
So if you yearn for fresh epic fantasy with depth, ambition, and flair … if you’ve been itching to find out what’s going on inside a 1,100-pages-and-counting series that wins Honorable Mentions from the Writers of the Future contest every time a chapter gets submitted … now’s the time to get really excited.
Look what arrived in the mail! The 4th quarter ‘22 certificate ain’t as flashy as the 1st quarter ‘19 one, but they both carry the same weight.
Thus far, only two chapters in the “Seed of Glory Sown in Sorrow” saga—Book 1’s Overture (Ilina’s signature flashback) and Book 2’s Overture (Hugh’s signature flashback)—can survive extraction from their narrative context. I submitted both of them to the Writers of the Future contest, and am batting 1.00 for WOTF Honorable Mentions.
In the event I write another submittable chapter and my series still hasn’t been published (WOTF excludes professional authors), I’ll submit again. Till then, I’m sitting pretty at 100% honorability.
And remember: neither of these honorably-mentioned chapters were written with a contest in mind. Aside from their self-contained structure, there’s nothing unique about them. They’re simply representative excerpts from a much larger narrative with proportionately-vaster thrills, pathos, and payoffs.
The third novel in the “Seed of Glory Sown in Sorrow” saga stands completed. A five-year journey has reached its end, and that end is spectacular.
I’m very proud of this installment. With the plot of a spy thriller, the vistas of a travelogue, the action of an Arabian-Nights-meets-Cold-War swashbuckler, and a climax as frenetically involved and emotionally wrenching as anything Sanderson has ever written, Loose the Sealed Tongue takes its place as a unique and crucial volume in the tale of Hugh Conrad and Ilina Lightkeeper’s struggle to reconquer Arlam.
Here’s the story so far:
Book 1, A Sea Sought in Song — 116,559 words (~389 pages)
Book 2, Wrath and Crimson Rime — 101,753 words (~339 pages)
Book 3, Loose the Sealed Tongue — 121,434 words (~405 pages)
The fourth novel—Bind the Tree of Time—will be the last. As of this moment, the epic saga is 3/4 finished with a running total of 339,746 words, or approximately 1,132 pages.
The outline I made on September 13th—103 days ago—encompassed six chapters: the bulk of the novel’s second half (aside from the entr’acte Cadenza and the ending Epilogue, which I’d already written). I largely adhered to this structure, although I ended up eliding/combining some scenes and adding additional ones as the need arose. It’s interesting to review the analytics:
Chapter 11 — 9 scenes outlined — 11,141 actual words
Chapter 12 — 11 scenes outlined — 8,940 actual words
Chapter 13 — 8 scenes outlined — 3,520 actual words
Chapter 14 — 10 scenes outlined — 3,571 actual words
Chapter 15 — 26 scenes outlined — 7,105 actual words
Chapter 16 — 5 scenes outlined — 1,405 actual words
The final installment will take a while to arrive. In the meantime, I’ll be doing everything in my power to get the dang series published, God willing.
I can’t wait for you to sink your teeth into this thing.
Arlam Online 