F. James Blair

Hey, if anyone has been wanting to check out Fatedancer but didn’t want to spend the moolah (no judgements, it’s been a crazy year), now is your chance, as the ebook is free through this weekend over at Amazon (and also next weekend, more on that later). Go snag it while you can!

So I know things have been quiet around here since Fatedancer launched. Part of that has just been me trying to catch back up on projects I left hanging to handle all of the aspects of publishing and promotion (like, you know, actually writing the next Bulletproof Witch book), but some of it has also been getting through the pile of books that I picked up on release day, had been planning to read, or stumbled across and sounded interesting. Here’s what my TBR pile looks like at the moment:

1. Beneath a Brass Sky by Eli Steele
2. Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
3. A Star-Reckoner’s Lot by Darrel Drake
4. Blood and Steel by Seymour Zeynalli
5. Six-Gun Tarot by RS Belcher
6. Volsyng by Set Sytes
7. Dispel Illusion by Mark Lawrence
8. Gunmetal Gods by Zamil Akhter
9. The Brightest Shadow by Sarah Lin
10. A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham

Not gonna lie, I’ll probably DNF on a few of those (I’m rather picky about what I read, so if something doesn’t hold my interest I tend to move on) but for the moment I’m optimistic about the pile. Even though I’d like to get through these before 2020 ends (and a whole new slew of books starts coming out) that’s not going to happen unless I quit my day job and become a full-time reader.

Pity. That sounds like the perfect job, actually.

Thought I’d share a preview of one of the maps from Fatedancer today. Most of the story takes place in or around the city of Saint Orak, which is one of the most populated locations on the planet (Equivalent to NYC).

The map itself was quite an undertaking, and took close to seven hours to complete, since most of those building had to be placed in one at a time. Still, I think it was quite worth it—the whole thing really has a real-city feel to it, which hopefully transfers to the book as well.

As you can see in the image below, the city is quite dense right up to the walls, after which there is little in the way of civilization shown. While there are towns and other settlements that lie outside the walls, due to the constantly respawning monsters that are common both inside and outside the walls, most of humanity tends to favor defensiveness in their building choices. Thus, even farms out in the wilderness will usually have fences and armed patrols around their perimeters.

Inside Saint Orak itself, a plethora of guilds work collaboratively (sometimes) to keep the resident monster populations in check. This means that most citizens can live their lives in relative safety, but rarely venture outside the walls. When travel is required, going by sea is typically the preferred method, since monster incursions are usually far less frequent.

The city is divided into seven districts, although their borders and names tend to fluctuate over time. Trenches and Waydowns remain the poorest districts in the city, while Heights exists almost as a city-within-a-city, allowing the wealthier citizens to stay as near to the city’s best protections against monster attacks as possible.

Those of you who have been following me for a while might recall I reviewed a book by author Eli Steele last year, a fantastic multi-perspective epic. Well I’m happy to report that he’s back at it again with a new novel. If you enjoy Viking-inspired fantasy you might want to give it a read.

It’s been a while since I last reviewed a book over on Reddit, so here is my latest: The Isle of Winter’s Night by Adrian Kaas.

And, ah, it’s significantly bigger than my last few books. Not that that is a bad thing! Just, gives the book some real weight to it, I guess.

So I finally bit the bullet and set up a Facebook Page for anyone interested in that sort of thing. You can find it here:

https://www.facebook.com/FJBwriter/

So I thought I would do something a bit different than usual and share some of the in-progress images for the development of Fatedancer. MiblArt was particularly open about each step of the process, and I thought it was rather neat seeing it from concept to final product.

First, I sent them a general idea of what I was looking for (I won’t share the particulars because it contains minor spoilers). They took those ideas and provided a rough B&W sketch:

Next, after a few change suggestions, they provided the first rough color image:

A few more tweaks later, and the more substantial color image was complete:

At that point I was pretty satisfied with the image, so all that was left was adding some text and cover-afying it!

I think the final result came out wonderfully!

There’s a preview of Fatedancer available on the sidebar now for anyone that’s interested, or you can follow this handy-dandy link right here.

Also, check back tomorrow for a post about the development of the Fatedancer cover!

Well, it’s been a long road the last few months, but I finally have something new and shiny to share with all of you. May I present my latest work, a new LitRPG adventure… Fatedancer!

Amazon pre-order link for the interested.

A little bit about this story, it is set on a different world but same universe as my Bulletproof Witch series:

For one hundred and forty-three cycles, humankind has been the playthings of the gods. Monsters spawn in endless swarms across the countryside, dungeons full of treasure lure the unprepared to their doom, and adventurers squabble amongst each other in a constant battle for supremacy. Whoever holds the highest score when the cycle ends is granted immortality, but only if you can live long enough to seize the prize.

Luf Corent doesn’t care about dungeons or immortality, only with ensuring that he and his sister continue to survive for another day. Unfortunately, when you’re the lowest-ranked member of the weakest guild in the city, life isn’t exactly glamorous. Luf’s future doesn’t hold much beyond killing sewer rats and avoiding the attention of the guild’s more elite members.

However, when a twist of fate makes Luf the most sought-after person on the continent, he quickly discovers there is more to being an adventurer than just killing rats. In order to survive to the cycle’s end he’ll need the help of the man who almost won the last ascension tournament, but that help might just be more dangerous than the people who are looking for him. Especially when it seems as if even the divines themselves are taking an interest in this tournament’s results.

After all, when the gods play their games, it’s always humanity that loses…

So for those who might be wondering how this series came about, back in the middle of April I participated in a book sale organized by Bryce O’Connor over on r/Fantasy, which of course meant that I bought far more books than I can possibly read in one lifetime. Among the many other gems I stumbled across was a LitRPG story titled Adventurer Academy. After reading it I fell absolutely in love with the genre and had to try my own hand at it. The book above is the result.

What is LitRPG you might be wondering? It is a relatively new subgenre of fantasy, where worlds either take place inside video games or follow the rules of a video game. This book is one of the second kind, with characters leveling up as they adventure, and having a bit more of a hard-coded magic system than what I put into Bulletproof Witch.

While I probably won’t write any further LitRPG style stories set inside my main universe (called the Amalgam Universe or Amalgamverse), I’d like to keep dabbling in the LitRPG genre a bit. Assuming life every grants me the time to do so, of course.

In other news, progress on book five of BW continues as expected. My goal is to push on with both this and the sequel to Fatedancer (titled Conduit) for release in 2021.