Ethra Born 2, Strengthening Spirit, has been a long time in creation. I did the first draft of the cover art over a year ago and there's been numerous versions between that and the final cover art that was finally revealed last Friday. There were a few frustrating times along the way where I'd been sat staring at it for hours, where I'd tried lots of different colours and layouts, and it still didn't look right. Perseverance, though, paid off and I'm super happy with the final result.
The story, too, has been a while in development. I found an old notebook the other day with an early draft of Strengthening Spirit in it from 2012. Parts of that first draft remain, other parts have been added or removed or changed through the various revisions. It takes time to craft something worthwhile.
As chef Marco Pierre White said, 'perfection is lots of little things done well'. Not that I'm claiming anything close to perfection, but I like the concept of 'lots of little things done well'. It helps keep me focussed on each word and sentence and paragraph and chapter. All those small steps adding together to create something larger. All those days stringing together to culminate in publishing a novel
I'm nearly there. The cover art is complete. The final draft is complete. I still need to do the formatting for ebook and paperback, plus a few other tweaks but I'm steadily ticking items off the 'to do' list.
Pre-orders will be available from Amazon from Tuesday 15th December and the release date is Friday 15th January.
I'm so excited that Strengthening Spirit is nearly ready for publishing. I can't wait to get working on Ethra Born 3, Seeking Truth.
