Inside The Ballad of Alchemy and Steel

This post was requested by a reader who wanted to know more about the writing process for my “sort of” prequel to The Relics of War trilogy.

I wasn’t initially planning to write any other stories beyond the trilogy, but when I was in the middle of rewriting The Talisman of Delucha for its 2022 republication, inspiration struck. And it struck hard.

To preface the story, I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I am not good at multi-tasking, and that extends to my writing projects. I have to focus on one at a time, otherwise nothing will ever be completed. And leaving things unfinished drives me crazy.

When I say I was in the middle of rewriting The Talisman of Delucha, I mean I was about 2/3 of the way through it. Each book in the trilogy had a fairly detailed chapter-by-chapter outline, and Talisman finished up with 51 chapters. At 2/3 done, I still had a long way to go.

But as often happens with my diabolical brain, it woke me up one day around 3am with the complete story of what became The Ballad of Alchemy and Steel playing through my head. I knew I had to write this story. So I got up a little while later and wrote down the entire outline before it could evaporate into the ether. I really liked the premise, and by this time in the rewrites, I had fallen in love with Sal’zar’s character.

I mentioned the idea to my brother, who was immediately intrigued. It prompted me to slate the novella as my next writing project, rather than dive directly into the rewrites for War of the Nameless.

With the outline secured, I finished up Talisman. It was December when I completed the rewrites; I remember this only because I spent quite a bit of time sitting next to the fireplace at our new house while I was working on the final chapters. My usual process after completing a draft is to switch to something else for a time – either an editing project unrelated to the book I’ve just finished, or a completely different writing project.

I edited first, just because I had the draft of Oracle sitting around, and I’d promised to get it my beta readers…months before. I was late with that one, and I needed to get it ready for them. But after I finished that task (which didn’t take too long), I sat down to begin writing The Ballad.

I usually take time off work around the holidays since almost everyone else I work with does too. When the rest of the lab is on vacation, it gets pretty boring. So I spent the last week of December next to the fireplace working on the novella. At just over 20,000 words, it’s my shortest published piece, and it didn’t take long for me to write it. I loved the finished product, but just as I do with the rest of my stuff, I set it aside before editing.

I rewrote War of the Nameless, then returned to The Ballad in late February to complete my edits before sending it off to beta readers. Then came proofreading. In the middle of all of this, I commissioned an artist for the character portrait seen at the end of the story. I love what she came up with, and I think it captured both Jal’den and Sal’zar really well. (For those interested, Eurephora on DeviantArt painted the characters.)

I planned to release the novella as an ebook only, with the option for those who were willing to subscribe to my newsletter to get it for free. (You can still do that, by the way. Click here to sign up.)

But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do a special edition for my brother. A few of the scenes were inspired by him, and I dedicated it to him as well. Before I had the finalized version ready, I learned that Barnes & Noble press has a feature to print “personal copies” of books without requiring me to put it up for sale. I could make a special hardcover just for him.

So that’s what I did. I gave him the very first physical copy for his birthday that year, and I shared the birthday gift story with my newsletter.

What I wasn’t expecting was to have several people ask for those special edition copies. I never intended to put that version up for sale (it still isn’t available – but I try to keep a few on hand for in-person events or special requests.) Unfortunately, a hardcover of only 60 pages has a very high print cost relative to length, which is why I opted not to sell it on retailers. I didn’t think it would be marketable in that format.

Maybe I was wrong to assume that, but I don’t know. So much of indie publishing is a guessing game—what will sell, what won’t, how to price your work, who to hire for artwork or covers or editing… But that’s a topic for another day.

In the end, I released The Ballad of Alchemy and Steel to very little fanfare. As a “sort-of” prequel and a romance, no less, I didn’t know how to market it. Anyway, more than a year later, I have finally started to get a few reviews.

Back to my brother: He was excited for the gift when he got it, but he’s a notoriously slow reader. When he’s busy with work, he usually doesn’t read. Sometimes it will take him months before he finds time to sit down with a book. It was only a couple of months ago that he told me he’d finally had time to read The Ballad, and it meant the world to me when he said he loved the story.

There’s always a risk when you put your heart into a gift. What if the recipient doesn’t like it? In this case, it turned out fine.

Even if it hadn’t, I think I still would have loved this story.