If you’ve been following my posts on the World Spectrum series for any length of time, you’ve probably heard the name “Human Again” come up. Human Again is my tentative title for the third (and final?) book of the series.
I’ve finished writing it, though it still needs a few passes of editing and proofreading. So when is it going to be released? That really depends on you, the readers.
Unfortunately, self-publishing a novel tends to be very costly in terms of both time and money, and freelancers tend to live on fairly tight budgets. Before I can release Human Again, I need to know that it will be worth the expense. That means it all depends on how well the first two books do.
Now, I’m not requiring that the World Spectrum make it onto the bestseller list. The level of success needed to justify releasing book three is fairly modest. I’m not looking for massive profits; I just want to know I can break even. But self-publishing is always an uphill battle, so I’ll need all the help I can get.
If you enjoy the series and want to see the next installment, I encourage you to support the books any way you can. Recommend them to friends. Review them on your blogs, on Amazon and other retailers, and on your social media profiles. Give them to friends and family as gifts, or just buy extra copies as a way of showing your support.
One little way you can help is to make sure to buy directly from Smashwords. This ensures the highest percentage of the price you pay goes to me, the author.
I don’t say this to manipulate you (well, okay, maybe a little), but simply to make you aware that there are practical considerations to this as well as artistic ones.
But enough dry discussions of the economics. You want to know what’s next for the world spectrum.
“I just want to feel human again.”
I don’t want to give away too much about Human Again — especially since it’s hard to talk about the plot with massively spoiling the first two books — but I can tell you it’s a different kind of story than Rage of the Old Gods or Children of the Gods.
Human Again still has the level of action and adventure you’d expect from something I wrote, but ultimately, it’s a more personal and intimate story. It’s about Leha dealing with the psychological scars of the events of the previous books.
It reaches into the sci-fi toolbox and uses one of the genre’s more popular tropes to analyze Leha’s past choices and the consequences thereof. The end result is a story that feels a little smaller and less epic, but is also more character-driven and emotionally rich.
The way I like to put it is that the first two books were about Leha trying to save the world, whereas Human Again is about the world trying to save Leha.
It’s also significantly shorter than the first two books.
I won’t say that Human Again is the best book in the series — that’s for readers to decide — but I think it may be the most emotionally powerful, and I will say it’s the only book I’ve written that I also enjoy reading. I sometimes bring up the file and read a few pages just because I like the story. I don’t do that with any of the other books I’ve written.
Other features of the story include new revelations on the First Ones and the true origins of humanity and the Old Gods, a sci-fi reimagining of Yggdrasil, a glimpse of the spectrum above Tyzu, and Drogin doing an awesome thing.
It is my sincere hope that you’ll get to read it someday.
Superior Realities 