A Touch of Confusion

There has been a touch of confusion concerning the status of my dark fantasy novel, Drasmyr. Originally, I intended to publish Drasmyr as the prequel of my upcoming series entitled “From the Ashes of Ruin.” Yes, I know, I wrote the prequel first—my thinking was to shape it after The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: the prequel first, followed by a really cool series (Not that I am anywhere near as good a writer as Tolkien).Anyway, this decision led to some difficulties. How do I list the book for computer searches? I want to make some kind of connection to the series “From the Ashes of Ruin” but still emphasize it is a separate, stand-alone story. Do I call it Book I of the series? My first instinct was to say “No. That honor falls to the next book.” So, perhaps I could call it Book 0. That seemed the most promising, but it would lead to confusion, I’m sure.

 

Anyway, after some thought, I decided that the least confusing thing to do would be to just merge it into the series and call it Book I. So, the series would consist of Book I: Drasmyr; Book II: The Children of Lubrochius, etc… So, I made that change.

 

Unfortunately, that didn’t work well. Upon reflection, the conceptual structure and the characters involved in the story are such that it really needs to be called a prequel. Making it Book I would be a serious mistake. So, I’m back to calling it Book 0. The prequel. Or just by name: “Drasmyr.”

 

So, if perchance, you stumble across a listing on the Internet saying Drasmyr is Book I in the series “From the Ashes of Ruin,” you’ll know why, and you can make the mental correction yourself. Going forward, I intend to list it as either Book 0, or as simply a stand-alone.