Another year down as a professional writer. This one seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. Like last year, my plan moving forward is to keep doing this end of the year wrap ups. Mainly to give myself an excuse to reflect on how the year went writing wise and what I wish I had done differently. And, in a way, these posts serve as a small-time capsule of who I was and what I thought which I like the idea of. Hopefully everyone enjoys reading them!
So, 2021 started with the release of THE TWO-FACED QUEEN back in March—which, look, I’m biased but I think it’s utterly incredible. It’s a book I’m very proud of and truly think was better than my debut. Go read it if you haven’t yet! And if you haven’t seen what Kirkus said about it—you can below:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nick-martell/two-faced-queen/
Moving on, I spent the first half of 2021 finishing up THE VOYAGE OF THE FORGOTTEN, the third book in the Mercenary King series. I found it more challenging to write than the TFQ for various reasons. The start gave me a lot of trouble. There were too many different paths to take, so I’d end up writing a huge section, scrap it, and then restart. Eventually I got to a start that let me advance in the novel, but I wasted too much time in the beginning than I would have liked. I think…by my best guess I probably scrapped somewhere between 300k to 400k of words in all of writing, rewriting, and editing process. One thing I hope to fix moving forward is to be more efficient. I shouldn’t have to write the equivalent of three books just to publish one.
But luckily, I think the start of THE VOYAGE OF THE FORGOTTEN is fantastic. Might be my best one yet. There’s a few lines and scenes that I can reread over and over again which is quite rare for me. Besides for when I listen to the audiobook or dramatic version, I usually don’t read my own books again once they’ve been published. And, like all the other books, I’ve put my all into the ending of the third book. It was wonderful and heartbreaking to write. I won’t speak much about it except for a single line that I think encompasses the entire novel very well.
“To taunt death, one must not seek immortality, but instead—to truly spite the unwavering hunter—it is best to leave something behind they can never claim.”
Ok, I lied. One more line.
“This was not how our fathers waged war. With their tidy lines of shields and spears advancing cautiously, honorable duels between knights in plate, or even tactical nautical battles. This was chaos, a magical conflict of the kind that only existed during the Wolven Kings reign.”
I’m really excited to see what everyone thinks about it. It’s probably my best yet.
THE VOYAGE OF THE FORGOTTEN will be releasing November 2022. As always, I’m sorry for the delay, but some things are out of control. It’ll be worth the wait.
I’ll have to write another post soon about the future of the Mercenary King series, but that’s something for another day.
After finishing up book 3, I’ve spent a lot of time working on new things. For awhile I was writing two books concurrently—nicknamed my Fear and Death books respectively. Eventually, after getting about 50k-60k into both, I decided to focus on the Fear one. It’s fun to write something new, and honestly is my love letter to the things I grew up on. But not in the fantasy genre, but anime and video games. I wanted to create something that gave me the same feelings as when I watched Digimon and One Piece and played the Legend of Zelda and Kingdom Hearts—the grand sense of adventure, the weird world, the loss of innocence in the face of growing up, and unique companions that have bound themselves to the characters—and I think I’ve recreated those feelings well. But we’ll see.
Ironically, I’ve got titles I really like for both Fear and Death, but I won’t test my luck by putting them out in the world until ink has dried on paper.
And that’s about it for 2021.
Ok, Ok, I lied again. One last line from THE VOYAGE OF THE FORGOTTEN:
“The world needs a villain to reset it, so I am here to play the role with a smile and a bow.”
My thanks to everyone that has supported me and the Mercenary King series this year! And here’s looking forward to 2022.