Kingdoms of Magic: A new Fantasy epic series

 

Kingdoms of Magic:

I am returning to my roots.  I began my writing career when I typed a four novel epic fantasy series called Cathexis (here is a link where you can the Cathexis series, including the first one in the series for free!  Cathexis).  Now, after writing 21 novels, I am returning to traditional fantasy with my new epic series, Kingdoms of Magic.

However, this time I am tackling a much larger story, over many more novels.  All total, I plan (at least) sixteen novels in this epic.  However, there are some interesting facets to how I am approaching this monster series.  Frist off, I know how annoying it can be as a reader when a story is many books long and it is not finished.   You have no idea how long the author will take between books, or when it will be concluded.  For that very reason, I tend to wait to read a series until all of the books are completed.

With Kingdoms of Magic, this will not be an issue!  Each book is a self-contained story with a climax.  That means, no cliff hanger endings or stores that just stop in the middle, waiting to continue in the next book.  You may safely read each book when it comes out.   Now, I will tell you that all the books tell a much larger story in the end, but that should not get in the way of each book having a clear ending to that piece of the story. 

Let me give you some examples.  Let’s use J.R.R. Tolkien.  He wrote The Hobbit, which is a stand-alone book with a conclusion. Now, that story led to the Lord of the Rings, but that was a separate story, even though it added to the bigger story of both.  Now, in Lord of the Rings, the three novels in that series were connected without a climax for each one.  You could have just glued them together into one big book.  That is what I do not want to do with Kingdoms of Magic.  Each book in this series will be more like the difference between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.  Each has its ending, all work together for a larger story.

However, it gets a little more complicated.

Unlike The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, where Bilbo’s story and Frodo’s story were at different periods of time, some of the Kingdoms of Magic stories will take place simultaneously!  Now, not all novels in the series will do that.  So, I had to come up with a way for readers to know which books happen at the same time, and which in different periods of the world.  My solution was to group them by a ‘Cycle and Age’.  A Cycle is ten years, and an Age is a major change to the world.  Therefore, an Age could have any number of Cycles in it, but each Cycle is always ten years long.

So, for example, in the 10^th cycle of the 6^th Age, I plan to write four novels that all take place at the same time.  In fact, certain characters may show up between the novels, and certain scenes could be in more than one, though they will be seen from a different perspective.   Therefore, you may read the four novels that take place in the same time period in any order you choose! 

The only real rule is that you read all the novels in the earlier Cycle before moving onto the next Cycle, which will always be later along the timeline.

It may sound complex, but it is easy.  Just read all the novels marked in the title as taking place in the 10^th Cycle of the 6^th Age before reading any novels from the 11^th Cycle of the 6^th Age.  And, once you are done with those, read any novels in the 1^st Cycle of the 7^th Age, in any order.

Each novel, regardless of which Cycle or Age it is in will still be a standalone story, with a unique climax, yet they will also all work together to tell a much larger story in the end.

OK, so now all I have to do is write this beast.   To that end, I have already finished the first novel, Wizard's Weapon, which takes place in the 10^th Cycle of the 6^th Age.  I am currently working on the second novel from that same period, called Baneful Wizardry.   Once I finish that one, I will move on to the other two novels from this same period, which are Doomed Crusade and The Witch’s Curse.

Only when all four of these novels set in the 10^th Cycle of the 6^th Age are complete will I publish all four.  Readers may then read them, in any order, while I work on the next set of novels from the 11^th Cycle of the 6^th Age.  I am waiting to publish them all at once because as I write one, it may affect one or more of the others since there are crossover events in the stories.

For more info on this new series , click this link: Kingdoms of Magic

Meanwhile, here is the map of Cratera (click on the map to go to a larger version with some zoom capability)

I hope to have the first four novels in Kingdoms of Magic available for readers by the end of 2021.  Wish me luck!

 

 

 

 

The Archimage Wars is finished! Sibyl of Terra has been published!

 

The Archimage Wars is finished!

Well, I did it at last!  After five long years (and over two million typed words) I have completed The Archimage Wars by finishing Sibyl of Terra, the tenth and final novel in the series!  Whew!

Of course, you may find all 21 of my novels by going to my personal website, here:

http://www.PhilipBlood.com

Now that the entire series is complete, here is a little description:

The Archimage Wars is an urban fantasy series comprised of 10 novels. The story follows the adventures of Nicholas, a wizard who has lost his memory and with it the way to use magic.  He must discover his past, his powers, and why everyone is out to do him in!  To survive, Nicholas must go on a journey of redemption and growth as he evolves from an angry and obtuse man, with no memory or magic, into a powerful wizard and, more importantly, a good person.  He must travel to each of the ten worlds to uncover what is behind The Archimage Wars.  Join my wizard as he journeys with a group of wizard and sorceress friends. They go on amazing and often quite crazy adventures as they attempt to uncover truths that will surprise, amuse, and astound them... and you!

If you are new to The Archimage Wars series, go there on my website and then look for Wizard of Abal (it is ‘Book 1’).  The ebook download link from that page will take you to where you may download a free copy of the book.

As for Sibyl of Terra…

In diabolical book 10, you join our hero for the conclusion of his epic tale.  At long last, he must face his past and then prepare the Houses to try and survive a dastardly attempt to kill their whole race off with a mage plague.  Should that fail, the enemy has a million-mage army, ready to wipe any survivors in the final Archimage war.  Finally, our wizard must return to where it all started and face his most difficult challenge of all, the architect of all his woes. Join our wizard on his final diabolical journey where he will conclude this twisted tale and wild adventures.  He must navigate through deep plots and shocking twists if he is to succeed!  Do you dare find out the truth?

So, what is next for me to write?

Now, after five years and well over two million words written, I have finally finished both my zONE series and my The Archimage Wars series.  Therefore, I am moving into the initial stages of world planning and writing backstory for a new, more traditional, epic fantasy.  First, though, I have to create the entire world and get the history, religions, politics, etc. up and running.  All that, and more, has to be done before I put down any words in the first novel of the real story. 

The preparation stage will take me a few months, so, you won’t be seeing any posts for new novels from me for a while.  Just to put this in perspective, I expect to write over 1000 pages of backstory, which will never be read by anyone except me, before I start the first book.  Expect the first novel, Weapon of Destiny, part of the Red Band Tales in the Kingdoms of Magic series, sometime later in 2021.

Book 9, Warlock of Sheol, of The Archimage Wars series published!

I've been working very diligently to try and finish The Archimage Wars series in 2020.

With the publishing of book 9, Warlock of Sheol, I'm close to achieving my goal.  I finished book 8 early in 2020, then wrote the end of the zONE series, Brethren of the Ark, at which point I got back to working on The Archimage Wars.  After Warlock of Sheol, there is only one book to go and the series is finished!  I should have that final book done by December 2020, at the latest.

Appropriately, for 2020 (which has been the year of hell around the world) Warlock of Sheol mostly takes place in Hell.  My group of adventurers must go there to stop the other Houses from obtaining the cure to the mage plague and then using it to make themselves immune, thus allowing them to wipe out the other Houses by releasing this deadly plague.

There is a lot more to this story, I just don't want to add any spoilers here ;)

Anyway, since this is book nine in the series, if you are interested in joining my lead wizard on his crazy adventures in hell, you need to go back and start with book 1, Wizard of Abal, which you may read for free by going here.   That will get you started on this tale of redemption on the ten magical worlds.  Each book in the series takes place (mostly) on one of those ten mage worlds.

Of course, if you are already reading the series, then go straight here to get the ebook or to Amazon for the print version.

Either way, have fun reading them, I sure did while writing this wild tale.

Without wax,

Philip Blood

The final book in the zONE series published!

zONE: Brethren of the Ark finished!

OK, so zONE was supposed to be a standalone book and then I went and had an epiphany (while asleep one night) and woke up with a sequel all stuffed into my head.  However, when I finished that monster of a book (about 1,000 pages).  A third story came drifting into my brain while I was writing that second installment of the zONE saga.  I couldn't possibly include this in the second book, which was already very large!  So, I wrote an outline and stuck it in my 'get to you later' book folder.

Well, after I finished writing Magnus of Niburu, I decided to take a break from the ten novel, The Archimage Wars, series and write something else... so I opened that folder and took a look at book 3, for zONE.  Now, about 600 pages later, I finished writing Brethern of the Ark.

It is now available at ebook sellers everywhere, here: Brethren of the Ark

The paperback version should be out in about a day as well, on Amazon.

This novel concludes the zONE trilogy (no, really, it does).

Cathexis Rewrite Completed and paperbacks published!

Finally, I finished rewriting Cathexis!

I am happy to report that my first Fantasy series, Cathexis, has been completely rewritten (I am a better writer now, or so I hope).  And, in celebration, I have published all four novels now in paperback (they have been available only as ebooks previously). Of course, I updated the ebook copies, as well.

If you haven't read Cathexis, give the first book a try; the ebook version is free, here: Necromancer's Dagger.

Cathexis is a fantasy epic, with a unique form of magic, multiple countries at war, plots galore, strange monsters, and a whole host of evil bad guys!  But, it is traditional fantasy, so you will find that the heroes are good while you cheer for the demise of the villains.  There is a simple to discover plotline that keeps you focused on that thread, but don't let that fool you!  There is a deeper and more surprising story hidden beneath which will unfold as the story progresses.  I wrote it this way so that you are eased into the larger story while following the simpler and more obvious one.

Give it a try; in the end, the main characters (and there are a lot of them) will become your friends.  Come join the adventures of the Ardellen family in a magical world, where there is a special metal called Cathexis that has some very strange properties, not to mention, it is so rare that a single object made of it is worth an entire kingdom.

New book in The Archimage Wars finished

Magnus of Nibiru, published!

This is the eighth novel in The Archimage Wars series.  Frankly, it was the one I was dreading writing the most of all ten in the series, right after worrying about Divinity of Elysium.  This was for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, both Divinity of Elysium and Magnus of Nibiru were in that 70-80% of the overall story area.  This is always the hardest part of a story for me.  The early parts always flow easily, and once I get into the last 20%, I can really fly.  But, that other part, well, it can be a slog.  Secondly, Divinity of Elysium took place in a religious world, I thought that wild adventures might be hard to pen.  I was wrong, things went very well in that book.  Then I was facing a world based on hedonists, Nibiru.  How was I going to handle a bunch of booze-drinking, drug-consuming, furry animals and make it into an engaging part of the adventure?  It worried me.  However, I had no choice, since (due to my sister and her damn ideas) I am basing each novel in The Archimage Series on one of the ten worlds... so ten worlds, ten novels.  Note that, originally, I thought this was going to be a trilogy until my sister heard there were ten worlds in the story.  Now, I didn't just stretch the story from three to ten books, I revamped it, adding a lot more so that there was material for ten books, not to mention, that in the three-book version, each novel would have been much larger (example, my zONE trilogy, where the books are 500, 1000, and 600 pages, respectively).  Books in The Archimage Wars are just over 300 in each case.

But I digress.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Nibirians are a hoot, and there was plenty of intrigue and fun to be had on Nibiru.  It went much better than I hoped and I am pleased with the finished product.  Hopefully, you readers are as well.

Necromancer's Dagger rewritten

2019 Writing update

Just an update on what I have been writing in 2019.  First off, I decided to go back in time and do a new edition of my very first fantasy series, Cathexis.  As a young writer, I had a lot to learn, and though I love the story of Cathexis, I have become a better writer over the years (when it comes to grammar and word flow).  Can I get better, of course!  Writing is a never ending journey.  However, I am significantly better now than I was when I wrote Cathexis, so I thought I'd update the series to make it easier to read.  After all, the Ardellen family and their epic adventures deserve some writing love!

So, I have republished Book One, Necromancer's Dagger, in the Third Edition.  I also published a print version at the same time.
Here is a link to the new edition, ebook: Necromancer's Dagger
Here is a link to the new print copy: Necormancer's Dagger

Over the next year (or two) I will take the time to re-write the other three novels in the Cathexis series as well.  However, I don't want to hold up my new novels so I will space out the time between novels.


Which means, now that Necromancer's Dagger has been updated, I'm currently working on a new novel in The Archimage Wars series, which will be Book 8, Magnus of Nibiru.  I will post again when the novel is finished (give me a couple months or so)  :)