The Sellsword Saga
Dueling Wizards cover art by Beniamino Bradi.
My big ambitious project is the Sellsword Saga. It’s intended to be seven novels, all following a single thread of a story in the world of Galhadria. I always intended the seven novels to each visit an important region of the continent of Nova Eian, as well as tell a rousing story.
Dueling Wizards was released in October 2023. How quickly the year has gone! It’s a fast paced fantasy action story - but you can go read the blurb here on the site to learn more about it. It is the ‘Gazea-Gozon’ story; set on the border of that country. Gazea is a pretty repressive theocracy, which was a challenge to write in, which is why I did it first. This story started out it’s first concept in a more generic ‘western European fantasy’ environment, and it changed completely when I relocated it to Gazea. Suddenly there were no friendly healers publicly available to just any traveler, and foreigners were unwelcome outsiders. Settling into the location’s worldbuilding deepened and enriched the story - and to my surprise, I found myself liking Gazea-Gozon a whole lot more than I ever thought I would.
I’m working on the edit of Mercenary Measures, the second book in the series. I was aiming for October of 2024, but it’ll take a little while longer. (There’s no great hurry, yet) It’s slightly different in tone, set in a busy colonial port city of the Pileusian Empire. Pileus struggles with corruption and an unwieldy bureaucracy. I never really loved the Pileusians when I was world-building them; but they filled a niche I wanted for Nova Eian. Now that I’m finishing up a novel there, I’ve grown fond of the tottering old Empire, for all its challenges. I credit Erhan, Trento, and Kavio for that.
Book 3 is in concept - meaning I have an idea what happens, but I’m not quite at the outline stage yet (I want to finish up 2 before really committing to 3). It will be set in Drialadon, specifically in Caladel, the busiest port on the continent - in part at least. Caladel has an unfair advantage in worldbuilding because we’ve paid it quite a lot of attention for an upcoming Tiffani project - but you’ll learn more about that later. Meanwhile, I couldn’t resist a stopover there for my little band of mercenaries. After Caladel, we’ll get to visit Cas’ home country of Aruthien for a little while - partly to resolve this story, but also as a setup for book 4!
The fourth adventure treks north into the wilds of the Vigabrock, a chaotic northern country dominated by the strongest. This is a land of chaos; where might makes right. And it’ll be very interesting to explore here compared to the lands we’ve known before - and I can’t wait to tell more stories in Vigabrock. It’s a wild and wooly place. We get some glimpses of it with existing adventure products like the Temple of Grimbog and the upcoming Dartak’s Gambit!
Beyond that, book 5 should be set in the dystopian Tyranny of Tigraen, which we’ve seen a bit of already in A Songbird’s Tale, and book 6 will go nearly full circle to wealthy Sarmatti, which we’ll have explored a bit in Phil’s Mind Thief Murders. It also happens to occur very near the locations of Dueling Wizards and all the events that occur before book 1 even begins.
Book 7 is intended to be a return home for my protagonist; back to Aruthien - and I hope if I’ve built all my setups properly, it’ll have some huge payoffs for readers who have gotten through the whole Saga with me. I’m very excited for this story … if only it wasn’t so many novels away! No help for it but it write on I suppose.
All this to say - there’s nothing wrong with an ambitious project. Set high goals and work towards them - because in the end, the process is fun, and you’ll enjoy the accomplishment when it’s done. That, and I can’t not tell these stories. They’re too fun!