Earlier in the year, I teased a series of dark fantasy short stories in the vein of The Witcher meets Dark Souls, a series I called Tales of the Veiled Rose. That’s been put on hold, but it is still coming. But it is on hold for two reasons.

The first is dark content burnout. Carmilla’s Gambit and Wolf in the Sanctuary both dealt with dark and serious topics, both contained graphic violence, and both featured dark and somber endings. Don’t get me wrong, I stand by those books, and I love what I wrote, but the continued writing of darkness, and the producing of dark, violent, and somber content on the scale I had planned for the Patreon with Tales of the Veiled Rose, began to wear on my mind. I needed a break from the darkness. So, the dark fantasy is on hold for that reason.

However, the more narrative-driven reason is that I had a world-building idea I wanted to play with, and I’ve started playing with it. Specifically, a runic language that will be the language of creation and the most ancient language of magic. I’ve created the language and the runes; now, I’m in the process of applying it to the Outer Gods/Old Gods (still working on a designation I love), and this will likely require revising and rewriting many of the short stories I’ve already drafted. And I don’t want to release stories and then change the world-building after 3-4 have already gone into the world.

So, for those who are interested, these stories are coming. I want time to decompress, write something whimsical that may be just for myself, and flesh out this new aspect of the world I’ve build for these stories. In short, I moved too quickly, and I refuse to put out fiction I’m not satisfied with. You can expect more updates sometime later this summer.

That said, if you’re in the mood for something dark, I do have Carmilla’s Gambit, which is a dark, urban fantasy that continues my Adventures of Sam Hain series, and Wolf in the Sanctuary, a Lousiana gothic novel about loss, guilt, and the power of truth and confession. Both are available in paperback and eBook across the web, but you can purchase paperbacks directly from my website at $3 below the cover price!

-Robin