Rhean Available on Amazon!
It's time to pick up the pieces of her fragmented sword
Hey! Have you grabbed your copy of Rhean?
The official release was May 8th and both the paperback and Kindle editions are now available on Amazon!
Rhean is a fantasy adventure across my imagined continent. While the book is a prequel to Maneus, I don’t think you need to have read one before or after the other.
That is especially worth mentioning because I can easily see how Maneus—my tome of an amateur 650 page epic—could be a little difficult for people to get into.
I wouldn’t blame you for skipping it and just starting with Rhean!
For a look behind the curtain, the official release was generally smoother this time around. With more experience under my belt, the chaos of measuring margins and fighting formatting was filled with less surprises.
However, a drama did brew in the final hour. Just as everything went live, a glitch caused the price on the US Amazon store to be more than double what I listed!
Apparently, that is a known problem for self-published books on the platform. Even worse, the higher price point would not affect my royalties. The system would still use my list price to calculate any earnings.
A bug that conveniently only gives Amazon more money!
After a good moment of incredible stress and having some netizens condescendingly try to help on the forums, the problem seemingly sorted itself out—automagically!
That then prompted me to check Goodreads as well, and I was not surprised to see that Rhean was listed under the more famous John Bauer—a Swedish painter from more than 100 years ago.
A few more messages and that was sorted out. I could finally comfortably feel like my book was officially released.
Accessible Readability
I tend to get caught up in a whirlwind while writing. Once I find my muse, my fingers dance across the keyboard at lightning speed, printing out chapter after chapter until a new book spreads across the pages.
With Rhean, I found myself struggling. Everything was much slower even though I felt like I captured the mood and motivation. In fact, I believe I spent too much time in this newsletter making excuses or otherwise justifying the pace at which I was working.
A positive side effect of all this was that I ended up focusing on things I could do differently in Rhean. Not just clarity and confidence that comes with experience—a whole new approach and method.
In Media Res — The book begins somewhere in the middle of the story.
Simple Premise — Finding the sword fragments is a consistent and easy to understand goal.
First Person — Unlike the detached narrator of Maneus, everything in Rhean is from her perspective.
Female Protagonist — Rhean is a demigoddess and breaks the chain of father to son found in Maneus.
And while these are noticeable differences, I haven’t completely departed from my personal style. Rather than transforming into a fake persona, I wanted to add layers to my writing.
In a few words, what I wanted to do was make my story more accessible while not compromising my integrity.
Six Fragments
If there’s something simple I hope you take away from today, it’s that Rhean is a fantasy adventure across a continent.
She stops at several cities and towns to find the fragments of her sword, Nox Aeterna. She then reforges them into something greater than the sum of their parts.
My unusual names and strange destinations may be hard to follow, but the journey itself should be relatively easy to understand.
Merishtun — 1st Fragment
Akmoni Outlands — 2nd Fragment
Krenaiserg — 3rd Fragment
Hrimpantith — 4th Fragment
Arstafas — 5th & 6th Fragments
The unique locations present challenges or trials that ask Rhean to confront her idea of what it means to be human.
Her role as a demigoddess places her outside mortal limits, and yet she still finds herself drawn to humanity.
An outsider who bears the full weight of our history.
My sister Molly (who also created the cover) drew up an image that nicely captures all those emotions and feelings and colors and sounds and sins and virtues.
Courage, Temperance, Prudence, Faith, Justice, Frailty
Copies Sold
On the business side of the book, I have definitely noticed the lack of Buildspace hype.
In the first week since launch, less than 10 copies of Rhean have been sold.
Granted, I haven’t sent this newsletter out to everyone yet, but the graph does show how little my promotional efforts seemed to have affected anything at all.
So as a closing statement, please share my story with others around you!
Leave a comment and a review on Amazon or Goodreads if you can!
Success is never guaranteed, but I’d appreciate all the help I can get to rig the race.
Until next time,
JMB