Greetings and salutations. It is I, Greyson.

As the title says, this post is running a bit late. As this is a projects update post, I can go into detail about what is happening. Effectively, my mental health has been acting up, in no small part due to my writing life. My latest writing project, Ghosting Myself, is a fictionalized autobiography of sorts. Everyone around me, including my therapist, has been warning me that it was going to dig up old feelings. It is dealing with all the anxiety of my family trauma, after all.

Instead, the problem has been more about timing. Work on War of Night and the rest of the Manticore’s Shadow series has been ongoing for nearly five years. Getting my mind out of it and into a new story was easy. Ghosting Myself, in comparison, jumped into my mind fully formed. After four weeks of researching and outlining all the details of my childhood, the rough draft was then written in six weeks. Another four weeks of editing, and it was ready for beta readers. Barely four months and it’s out of my hands until I get beta results back.

I haven’t had time to live with the story. My brain wants to stay with it. Plus, it’s my own life’s story. Sure, I dealt with facing my trauma, but I also lived for a few months in the nostalgia from all the toys and movies I grew up with and miss. My mind has been fighting to let go of those ‘Member Berries. It has made it exceedingly difficult to dig into any of the myriad other writing projects I really need to be working on.

Speaking of other projects, here’s what we have going on here at Sainan Books.

War of Night – Book one of Manticore’s Shadow is in preorder. Clevenger and I are working with local libraries and stores to spread the word, drum up interest, and lay the groundwork for the street release. In fact, Clevenger just submitted our application for a table in Author’s Alley at C2E2 in Chicago in April of next year. Yes, you read that right. You don’t just pay for a table. You actually have to submit an application! The only downside with War of Night at the moment is that we have no access at all to any presale numbers. We will just need to wait for November to find out if anything has been happening there!

Old Bones, Old Ways – The sequel to War of Night is currently in initial edit. We finished the rough draft of book one in July of 2021, on a writing high. We were so thrilled that we jumped straight in and wrote the first draft of book two in about ten weeks. Now it’s time to start cleaning up that rushed experiment, including adding in all the details we discovered while writing books three and four. This is the step that Clevenger seems to love, so he is taking the lead in the developmental editing. The hope is that this book might be ready for beta readers around the time that book one is hitting the streets in November.

Ghosting Myself – This book is out with beta readers currently, which is driving me insane. Is it being read? I don’t know. Will people like it? I don’t know. Will I receive any beta feedback? I. Don’t. Know. Betas aren’t due back until the end of September, so I still have four more weeks to stress over this. Ideally, we are hoping this book can be ready to go on presale in time for Christmas.

Welcome to Avernus – Urban fantasy Gothic horror. I wrote this 120K word story serially online. Now I have plans to go back and edit / rewrite it into an 80K Young Adult story. The editing hasn’t started yet, but it really needs to. Our tentative hope is that this project might be ready for beta readers by the end of 2024.

Queenfall (working title) – Clevenger’s first solo project! A murder mystery and political thriller set in a fantasy realm. Someone attempted to assassinate the king, and in their miss, killed the queen instead. The aggrieved king is now calling in all his resources to find out who is responsible for the death of his queen. The project sounds amazing, and Clevenger is working on it as he is able to find time.

It’s heading into the fall, so Clevenger is about to be busy. He could really use your encouragement! His birthday is the end of this month. In addition, October usually has him busy with trade shows in his full time job, and every year he gets absolutely killed with allergies! Reach out to him and give him a boost. @escottclevenger on Instagram, SainanBooks on Threads, Stories of Sainan on Facebook, and of course, directly at www.sainanbooks.com.

Well, wish us luck, and thanks for reading!

Don’t forget to love one another,

Greyson Black