I hope I don’t have to draw you a map. I don’t draw terribly well. But Kristen Lang has drawn a map for the second book.
Let me recap a moment. I’ve already shared a little about Book Two, Karia’s Path. So let me gather that stuff together for you:
This is the map that Karia finds in The House in the Old Wood, the one that helps her figure out where to go from there, and therefore plays an important role in Karia’s Path.
Karia’s Path, the second book of the series, The Day Magic Died, is now available for Kindle.
The print edition should be available in a few days.
With all the news about The House in the Old Wood and Karia’s Path (books one and two of the series, The Day Magic Died), you might think nothing is happening with the rest of the series.
And you would be wrong.
The Hall of the Prophetess (Book 3): On track for November. All four of my critical readers have finished reading the final draft, and my designer is already at work on the cover, so as soon as the final review of Karia’s Path (Book 2) is done, I plan to:
If all goes well, it could even be released in October. I’ll keep you posted, and I’ll share more about this book soon too.
The Dwarf’s Legacy (Book 4): Ugh. Stupid dwarf. This one is giving me fits. I spotted two serious problems with the draft: One key character came back after a betrayal, and there’s no way he would have been so trusted; and another character conveniently showed up just as he was needed and died when he was no longer needed. Ugh. Who writes this stuff? Oh, yeah, me.
So I am moving through a complete rewrite, but I’m just not feeling the magic, if you know what I mean. The primary reason is that I’ve been trying to do the rewrite while:
Soon, however, I’ll be done with the first two. Once I have completed the semifinal text for The Hall of the Prophetess and turned that over to my wife for proofreading, I can really focus on The Dwarf’s Legacy (Book 4), starting with a list of everything I need the replacement characters to do. So, looking at that timing, I’m hoping for a January 2014 release.
The Day Magic Died (Book 5): I think this book needs only minor revisions, which makes an early spring 2014 release likely.
By the way, the book titles The Dwarf’s Legacy (Book 4) and The Day Magic Died (Book 5) are still working titles and subject to change. Especially if the dwarf keeps giving me grief.
Probably the most significant one is the replacement of the word “Zounds.” That word, it turns out, means either God’s hounds or God’s wounds, and is considered by some a curse word. In addition, one of my critical readers pointed out, it just didn’t make sense. There is no “God” per se in these books.
But there is a remnant of worship of the First Ones, so I’ve replaced “Zounds” with words based on references to the First Ones. That continues through the rest of the books, so for those of you who bought the first edition, I’ll share a passage from the second edition that explains things a bit.
Spoiler alert: If you have not read The House in the Old Wood, you will not want to read the rest of this post!
This takes place in Chapter Thirteen, when Karia is hiding under the porch as the adults talk:
“She masters fire,” her mom said.
“Nym’chin!” Avar shouted.
“Avar, watch your language!” Nana scolded. Karia jumped. She had heard the term only once or twice before – it was short for “Nymph on a chain” and was a strong curse word. She never could figure out how that could be a curse word, but then again, there were expressions she used a lot – Nymph’s Wake, Meadowstars and Fires and Ashes – that didn’t make a lot of sense to her either.
She knew how to use them, of course. Meadowstars was a way of saying something was ridiculous; Nym’chin was a much cruder way of saying much the same thing. Nymph’s Wake was something you said when you found yourself in a bad spot. Fire and ashes? she thought. I guess it’s just something you say.
“And keep your voice down,” Nana continued, “or should we just invite Narek, Timbal and Karia to join us?”
The other changes were mostly fixing typos – in part because Word doesn’t like to spellcheck when you have 90,000 words in a document and dozens are in made-up languages and therefore look like misspellings – and adding words I dropped while writing. That’s bad habit I have. I mean, that’s a bad habit I have.
And those two things are why I, and my wife, Julie, and my critical readers, have all been paying a lot closer attention to these things for Karia’s Path and beyond. I’ve even added someone to my critical readers team who is very good at spotting typos.
Spoiler alert: If you have not read The House in the Old Wood, you will not want to read this post!
I’d better finish telling you what’s different in the second edition of the first book, The House in the Old Wood, before the second book, Karia’s Path, gets here!
In addition to including a map and the first chapter of Karia’s Path, the second edition of The House in the Old Wood has a minor change to the ending of Chapter 5 so you can actually see some Inamali writing. Here is how it reads in the first edition:
Bending down to pick up the quill, her shoulder brushed against the writing stand, nudging it. When she stood again, she saw that on the stand, under the dust, was a piece of paper with some writing on it.
She put the pen back in the inkwell, picked up the paper and blew the dust off.
The writing was Inamali. She recognized the slender, fine characters. And at the top, she saw the only word she could read in Inamali:
“Karia.”
In the second edition, it’s a bit longer and has … well, take a look:
Bending down to pick up the quill, her shoulder brushed against the writing stand, nudging it. When she stood again, she saw that on the stand, under the dust, was a piece of paper with some writing on it.
She put the pen back in the inkwell, picked up the paper and blew the dust off.
The writing was Inamali. She recognized the slender, fine characters. At the top, she saw a familiar word:
It was the only word she could read in Inamali:
“Karia.”
by Ian Fallis 
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