Armida

Throne of Blood: Chapters Six and Seven

/ Elena May / Leave a comment

Throne of Blood comes out tomorrow! Those of you who have preordered will receive it directly to your ebook reader. In case you want to start reading a day early, I’ve already uploaded the first five chapters, and here are two more.

I will do the raffle draw for the Throne of Book sighed paperback on Thursday, July 24th to give everyone preordering last minute a chance to enter. I will start mailing your character cards and the book to the winner the following Friday, July 25th. There will be more fun gifts and surprises for those of you who have preordered; you’ll see them soon 🌻

Important: I have responded to everyone who has forwarded me their preorder confirmation and requested postcards. If you have done so but haven’t received a response from me, it means I haven’t received and registered your details. If that’s the case, please contact me, so that I can add you to the raffle and the list for character cards. Good luck to everyone participating!

Okay, time to stop talking and start posting chapters…

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Throne of Blood: Chapters Four and Five

/ Elena May / Leave a comment

Throne of Blood comes out on June 21st! Why am I releasing such a wintry book at the peak of summer? Let’s not forget that about 12% of all people live in the Southern Hemisphere where June 21st is the winter solstice ❄ ❄ ❄ I myself spent a semester in New Zealand and have nice wintry memories from June.

Okay, I initially wanted to release the book on Dec 21st last year but got delayed, and now I’m trying to come up with a deep and profound explanation. 😳

The book is almost here, but while we wait, here are the next two chapters:

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Nightfall Art: Armida and Prince Vladimir

/ Elena May / 4 Comments

If you are anything like me, then you:

  1. A) Dream to see your book characters illustrated,

and

  1. B) Cannot draw a believable humanoid if your life depended on it.

Luckily, this is where my personal superhero, TheSwanMaindeN, comes in.

When you get an artist to illustrate your characters, you can take different routes. You could describe in detail what exactly you want to see, you could give them complete freedom, or you could go anywhere in between.

When I asked TheSwanMaideN to illustrate my book cover, I gave her a detailed description of what exactly needed to be there. However, when it came to Armida’s portrait, I decided to try something different and to give her only a vague idea about the character. “You are great at drawing hair,” I said, “and even better at drawing dresses. Go for it.”

This was one of my better decisions because – surprise, surprise! – it turns out her imagination is way better than mine. What I got was this:

Armida - PNG

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Nightfall Art: Tristan

/ Elena May / 2 Comments

I’m happy to present this beautiful character portrait by the talented Nadica Boshkovska (aka TheSwanMaideN on DeviantArt):

Nightfall Kingdom of Ashes Tristan character portrait

If you’ve read the free sample, you have already met Tristan. He is the vampire who first finds Myra in the dungeons and accidentally saves her from interrogation and torture. Arrogant and vain, he is viciously disliked by mostly everyone at court. At a first glance, his loyalty to the Prince is his only redeeming quality, but Myra discovers further bits and pieces of his past, secrets and motivations as the story goes along.

I think the portrait does a great job capturing his personality, or at least the face he shows to most of the world. Once again, I’m very grateful to be working with this skilled artist.