I came up with the idea of “A Dark Horizon” in 2023 shortly after watching season one of House of the Dragon. I had been thinking about how there were things I would have done differently regarding the dragons. Then, after rewatching The Hobbit movies (And no, I don’t agree that they’re terrible. I love them as much as the LOTR movies.), I suddenly wondered if there were any books about dwarf dragon riders. My search didn’t turn up anything.
The concept began with thinking about how dwarves and dragons like gold, and I threw goblins in there, as well. There were two original concepts for what the book was going to be. One was a story about a dwarf finding a dragon egg and keeping it secret, but it sounded too much like Eragon. The other was a dwarf making friends with a dragon he found. Well, that’s basically the plot of How to Train Your Dragon, so the story evolved into a team of dragon riders that are already established. How they began will be its own story.
I didn’t start working on the book until 2024. Early in the year, I began to write it, but then I got sick and had to stop. Then I wasn’t sure if I wanted to publish “A Dark Horizon” yet or work on book 4 of Sparks Shall Rise. I ended up starting to work on that book but then it occurred to me that dragons are popular right now and it would be smart to start publishing this series now rather than waiting.
So, I began writing again in September. After spending three previous books in the same world, I forgot all the work it takes to create a new one, so that took extra time to figure out. I finished the book in about two months, which was pretty good time. The editing also went smoothly, despite getting sick again in December. I’ll tell you what. When I was a child, I would get a cold and be able to bounce back from it within four or five days. Now, getting a cold feels like being hit by a truck and takes me two weeks to recover from.
Anyway, as I closed in on finishing my edits, I had a big decision to make. As you may see in older books, this site was originally sparksshallrise.com. I had no plans to write any other series, and having the site under my name just felt awkward at the time. But it didn’t make sense to keep that domain name when I was going to be working on two series and wanted to give them equal attention and marketing. I also felt like I had trapped myself in a box.
A few weeks before publication, I worked on changing everything to a new name. I had tried to change the Facebook page name before and was always denied. This time, I went to the name change setting and was prepared to be rejected and have to start a new page. I was pleasantly surprised that Facebook accepted the change immediately with no fuss. Instagram and X were also a breeze to change the names.
I thought I would have to start a new website, but then I found out that the domain name could be changed. I’m very grateful that Bluehost support was able to take care of that for me because I would have crashed the website if I tried to do it myself. I gave the site and the social media pages a little refresh to reflect the rebrand, and they were good to go.
Sometime that year, I had also put my eBooks on a retailer named DriveThruFiction. I’m not being sponsored to say this, but this is one of the easiest sites to set my eBooks up on and to update manuscripts.
Then it came time for publication. Oh, boy. Forget the hailstorms from last year; this release was utter chaos.
I’ve never had to contact support on so many sites, both retailers and self-publishing services, to resolve glitches and technical difficulties. I eventually got everything working, but there was more stress than necessary. Especially because I wasn’t just publishing this book, I was also updating my other three.
All in all, I’m happy that I got “A Dark Horizon” out this year. It took a lot of work to finish it on time. And now that I have broken free from just using Sparks Shall Rise for my branding, I’m excited to see what other books I come up with in the future.
Part 8 Coming Soon!
