When is 'Darkest Destiny' coming out?

Veiled Innocence was my very first book. Okay, so it wasn't my first book. I've had my fair share of fan fiction, journal-books, and stapled-together paper books. But it was the first ever book in which I created my own world, with its own rules, characters, and storyline. I wasn't borrowing from anything else. Which is probably why it took so long to get it right.

I went through four complete rewrites of this book, and scores of revisions after that before I arrived at what I felt the story "should" be. Is it perfect? No. None of my stories will ever be. If I kept striving for perfection, I'd never publish anything. Sometimes, you just have to know when "enough is enough," and let it go so you can move on to the next book. But at the same time, therein lies the danger of pumping stuff out too quickly, before your ideas have had time to reach creative fruition.

And that is precisely what's held me up in getting Darkest Destiny done.

I'm going to go ahead and flat-out say I don't have an exact publication date yet, though I am going to try really hard to finish The Soul Cycle next year. I'm shooting for a summer and winter release on the remaining two books of the trilogy, with the prequel following in 2014.

The main reason why this story has taken me so long to just get started on is its outline. I have a lot of open plot lines from VI, and I'm introducing one more viewpoint character because I felt it was absolutely necessary to the central storyline. In DD, you'll have not only Lian, Vishka, and Rowan, but Ana-Elise's viewpoint as well.

Some of you might be gagging right now. I know, I know. She's a "royal bitch," quite literally. But I think you'll like the direction her character is going to take, and I promise you won't be miserable being stuck inside her head for a few scenes.

My biggest dilemma came from trying to decide how to present the different subplots. Should I keep the scenes grouped together by viewpoint, or should I jumble them all up like I did in VI? Ultimately, I decided things would play out best if it was all jumbled together. My outline is almost completely finished, and I want to start seriously writing DD in January so I can get it out in June. We'll see how things go. If there's one thing I've learned since I began publishing, it's that things usually take twice as long as you think they will. Sometimes not, but most of the time, I've found that's the case.

So in a nutshell, that's where The Soul Cycle is at right now. I'll post more updates as I go, including info about some upcoming giveaways for VI. I should finally have a print edition of it soon, too. That makes me really excited, because its cover is by far my favorite. Don't get me wrong - I love all the beautiful covers Robin does for me. But VI's is just so dark and girly and pretty. I love it to pieces.

That's all for now. I'll be back soon with giveaway info, and a special holiday promo starting in December!

Much love to all of you who stop by here and support my work.

Krystle

Rebranding

This is basically a regurgitation of what I said over at my urban fantasy site, but in case you're seeing it for the first time, I thought I'd post it here as well.

When I first started publishing, I didn't know anything about branding. Now, it makes sense. I mean, if Nora Roberts all of a sudden started publishing hardcore sci-fi, I'd probably question it. I might try it because I like her writing, but it might not necessarily be what I was expecting. Since her name would be slapped on the cover, I'd go into it thinking "this is going to be a romance... with aliens". If it didn't meet those expectations, I'd probably rate the book lower because I wouldn't enjoy it as much.

Essentially, this type of scenario is the sole reason I decided to finally split up my genres. Epic fantasy and urban fantasy just don't mix well. They draw in different types of readers, with different sets of expectations from the stories. When they don't deliver as promised based on their experiences with a different title of mine in a different genre, then they'll naturally rate the book lower.

It's not all about ratings, but let's be honest - ratings can totally make a book sink or swim. My epic titles aren't big enough to draw in that many readers yet, but I could see how someday the cross-branding of epic/urban could become problematic. Readers of my urban fantasy will be expecting something more thrilling and fast-paced while my epic readers want something a bit slower with more details.

I'm in the business of pleasing my readers. I won't ever put out a book I think is crap, or that you guys won't enjoy. But I also have to consider what type of readers I'm drawing in. And with the more books I write, I definitely know my urban titles have a very different flair from my epic. That left me with two decisions: Stop writing one genre and focus solely on one, or rebrand them.

I've always loved epic fantasy. Hell, I'll read anything - horror, epic, contemporary, erotica - as long as it entertains me. If it gets boring, I'm out. Veiled Innocence and A White So Red have been the most difficult stories for me to write. Epic is harder for me. It can be draining at times because there are so many things you have to be careful about when writing (mostly, the danger of sounding too contemporary for the time period). There were a lot of bumps in the road to getting both of them to publication, and I considered giving up on epic altogether more than once, thinking maybe I just wasn't cut out for it. But then I'd read a great book like Graceling or Throne of Glass, and I'd fall in love with epic all over again. I love it too much to quit.

So here we are.

Ideally, I would have had the business savvy to do this from the get-go. But this isn't a perfect world, and there is a LOT of info on publishing. You don't always know what to listen to until you've actually gotten your feet wet.

I hope the decision to rebrand doesn't throw too many people off. I'm in the process of switching all my epic titles over to my pen name "K. D. Jones" on the retail sites and on Goodreads. I even have separate Facebook and Goodreads pages dedicated to just my epic now. (By the way, they could really use some love. So if you liked either of my epic titles, please consider "liking" or "adding" me.)

I also have a separate newsletter subscription list for my epic titles. So if you'd like a heads-up on when I publish something new or am running a big giveaway, please consider adding your name to the list. You can sign-up by entering your email in the little box at the top right corner of the sidebar.

That about covers it. If you have any other questions, feel free to drop me a line, comment here, or message me. I try to respond as quickly as I can. =)

Take care, and thanks for your support.

Welcome

Welcome to the website for YA epic fantasy author K. D. Jones! The site is still under construction, but please take a look around and contact me if you have any questions. Thanks for visiting!