Hail and well-met, readers!

It's been a while since I've published an update on the Trials themselves. I've been publishing consistently for several months now, and have no plans to stop. Thank you, that is all.

Actually, I want to formally announce that The Trials of the Lion will be published, in full, sometime in August. That does not mean I will discontinue publishing on RoyalRoad. Quite the contrary. RR is my home now, and I have enough content at this point for regular publication through late October, assuming I don't write a single word beyond what is currently in my master folder. The entire collection now stands at 96,003 words. However, the ebook editions will be published before all the stories are made available here on RR. The Trials is the first in a several-volume set I have planned chronicling the adventures of Ulrem, Kinro, and more to come. I'm already at work on the first novella that will be in the second volume. For simplicity here on RR, I will continue to simply publish them all under The Trials fiction banner.

This is a labor of love. When I began writing The Trials of the Lion, I didn't have a specific plan in mind. I was a broken man suffering through the death of a child, wading desperately to keep my head above water so I could support my wife. I desperately needed an outlet, a hero to help lift me up. I sat down at my desk one day and spent hours outlining a novel to get my mind off the pain, to help me breathe. In that outline, a gray-haired old Inheritor named Wilrem the Wolf made a brief but important appearance. He was just a name on the page at that point, but something about an injured old man who had learned that words cut deeper than swords really caught my attention. I decided to begin writing stories from his perspective as "practice runs" for the novel. After tinkering with his character a bit, I decided to rename him Ulrem the Lionborn, and made him younger, more feral. He had things to learn, and a name to earn. Ulrem arrived in the hour of my need.

And then I abandoned him. My focus had always been to write that novel I outlined, Path of Embers, which as I write sits beside me at a respectable 113,000 words. I have not edited it, nor I do not intend to. The more I wrote of the story, the more Ulrem became the star, and the more the final product felt wrong. I realized, far too late, that I had somehow managed to tell the entire novel from the wrong perspective. So I went back to my short stories and novellas and wrote another three of the Trials: MEMORIES IN STONE, THE BLOODY PRICE, and the first draft of SHARDS OF IRON.

Then I took another crack at the novel form with A New Fire. Which also sits beside me, unedited, at a hefty 183,000 words. I have no intention of editing it. I told it from the wrong perspective again. This one takes place a thousand years after Ulrem is supposed to have died, and so surely he couldn't infect it, right? Indeed: another Inheritor came to the fore, and ran ramshod over my characters. The dramatic, sweeping cycle that governs the world simply wouldn't relinquish its hold over me. Torik the Ironwilled, whom you may soon meet, became an ever-more important aspect of that story. By the end, I knew how I'd draft it differently. Unhappy with those, I went back to what did make me happy: more of the Trials. I wrote A STEEL DEBT, and KING OF THE ICES, finishing the latter just a few days before my daughter was born. Once we'd settled in, I wrote what are now the final two in the collection: A BARGAIN OF BLOOD AND FLAME in one dizzying, single sitting, and THE COST OF FURY, which took me several weeks to put together.

What I learned by writing a quarter of a million words I don't intend to ever show anyone but my wife, is that I'm not done with Ulrem. The first volume of The Trials of the Lion will be available, in its entirety, very soon. This past week I reposted a completetly revised and edited version of BENEATH THE BROKEN TOWERS, and next week I'll be reposting the revised chapters for THE STORM AND THE BLADE. Each week, I'll be re-editing one story, until they're all revised and perfected.

What comes after The Trials of the Lion? A novel, of course. But a short one, and sharp, like a long-honed dagger. I have one in mind called A MOUTH FULL OF LIES about Ulrem's return to his home, and I drafted the prologue to something much, much darker. I've learned my lesson. Ulrem and Kinro will be forefront in these adventures. I plan for the novels to run less than 60,000 words, and unless I really miss my mark, I will be editing and publishing them.

The work is not yet done.

There are a myriad ways you can support The Trials of the Lion. Chiefly, leaving a review here on RR is extremely helpful. It gets the story into new reader's feeds, and helps spread the word. Commenting is a great encourager, even if your thoughts are chiefly critical. I have improved directly because of your feedback. If you have the space, you could join my Patreon for the cost of a cup of a coffee a month, and directly support the writing. Funds from the Patreon are being used to hire cover artists, and eventually a book designer for a paperback copy of the collection. Patreon users also get Kindle/PDF versions of the stories for more convenient reading, updates, and more. I also publish on Medium.com now, where you can follow me and use the auto-narrator, a feature I greatly enjoy.

I hope you stick with me. There's a storm brewing, and things long forgotten are climbing back out of the abyss.

Stay fierce,

LR