Introducing the New Eternity’s Empire – Available Now!

Back in May, I announced some changes for the Eternity’s Empire series. While I’ve always enjoyed letting the story grow and change according to what feels best, I can’t ignore that its original incarnation was a genre onion. To some extent, perhaps it always will be. But in this case, the inconsistencies in the early chapters felt misleading. I felt I somehow failed to do the story justice.

I live by the philosophy of making my stories the absolute best I can before moving on. Sometimes that means accepting small imperfections that are the result of starting a story when I was a less skilled writer. But in this case, I knew I could do better. I wanted to give Eternity’s Empire a chance to shine, now that I’ve discovered what the story is really about and where it’s ultimately going.

2019 has been a rough year, filled with ups and downs. My husband and I are finally in the late-stages of the house buying process. And I finally have the health problems that plagued the first half of the year under control. But after talking about the Eternity’s Empire series re-vamp back in May, it kind of fell off the radar.

So I’m pleased to announce that not only have I been working steadily on the Eternity’s Empire series for the last several months, the re-vamp of the first three books is finished! And you can get them right now!

What is Eternity’s Empire?

Eternity’s Empire started as a magical girl story. I imagined it as a modern Sailor Moon with goddess themes instead of planetary or elemental themes. I also drew heavy inspiration from things like the Stargate TV series and K.A. Applegate’s long ago Everworld novels.

From the start, I knew the structure of time and reversals were going to play a huge role in the outcome of the story. That, and relationships, around which all of my works center. But the story actually threw my original plan out the window about halfway through the second book.

Rather than fight an uphill battle against a story that simply wasn’t turning out the way I anticipated, I decided to embrace my characters’ whispers and proceed in the new direction. I’m glad I did, because I love where the story is going. But instead of writing an urban fantasy magical girl story, I quickly realized I was writing a space opera.

For those less familiar with the genre, space operas tend to feature a vast and sprawling setting, a story that focuses on the interaction between characters and – you guessed it – some kind of space civilization.

Though Eternity’s Empire starts with a group of college students who discover they possess the power of ancient goddesses, it quickly sheds the modern Earth setting in favor of a galactic empire. Though the story still features the strong bond of friendship between the main characters, it takes place against a backdrop of political intrigue, a ruling family’s sibling rivalry, and space pirates.

I write this series differently

If you click back to my original announcement, you’ll see I hoped to release the new version of Eternity’s Empire in August.

Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Suffice to say, I wanted to make sure I did things right this time.

In total, across all three books, I’ve only added about 3,000 words of extra content. Most of it enhances plot points that already existed. The story hasn’t actually changed. But it’s shocking how big a difference sprinkling a couple extra sentences throughout the book can make. I’ve tried to ensure the earliest portions of the story now hint at later twists. And I hope the new details place the story in its proper context.

For most of my novel series, I write detailed outlines and keep meticulous track of the events I expect to take place. This doesn’t prevent the story from changing track, but it usually allows me to catch ahead of time that events will have to be swapped or plots re-directed.

I also tend to cycle drafts for my bigger series, which means that I go back and edit the first book after I’ve written the second book, and so on. This allows me to pull details from previous books into the new books during the editing stages. But it also allows me to add extra foreshadowing in the early books, since I know what’s coming.

I’m not planning to change how I write Eternity’s Empire. I like having a project that I primarily pants – it keeps things fresh. However, I probably will at least try to trace the various plots through each new installment. That way, I can include proper foreshadowing instead of constantly turning each plot on a dime. And now that I write in five chapter chunks, it’s easier to make sure each plot gets a fair share of development.

Check out the new and improved Eternity’s Empire Series!

Of course the biggest change to the series is that it’s getting brand new covers and brand new interiors for the paperbacks (surprise)! (And if I’m honest, that’s one of the reasons this release has taken so long.)

I’ve learned a lot about cover design since I started this series. Gaining access to higher quality stock-photos and learning how to blend them has certainly helped. But I still feel like the original covers are somewhat childish. Also, outside of the odd font and colored outlines, none of the covers have matching elements.

I really want it to be obvious at a glance that each of these books is part of a series. So I made that a focus of the new covers. I also wanted to give each a unique color scheme and a cleaner over all appearance. I probably still have a lot to learn about cover designs, but I think you’ll agree the new covers are leaps and bounds better! (Special thanks to Beth Alvarez for helping make these a reality!)

Since the paperbacks needed to be updated to accommodate the new font and chapter layouts, I also took this opportunity to update the chapter graphics. My interior designer, Layla, has done a fantastic job – as always – of making the book look spectacular.

If you already own digital copies of the Eternity’s Empire series, you can follow this process to download the updated versions.

New to the series? Now is the perfect time to check it out on Kindle, via Kindle Unlimited or in paperback. (Amazon is taking some time to update the paperback covers, but the look-insides do reflect the new interiors. The system should catch up in the next week or so.)

If you previously purchased the individual chapters (which will be disappearing now that the series releases in novel form), and are thus unable to download the updates – please contact me!

As for the fourth book in the Eternity’s Empire series -, it’s just about ready for beta reading. I expect to have it in your hands in February of 2020.