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Follow me on Bookbub!

January 15, 2023 by Edie Skye Leave a Comment

Hey, everyone!

A bunch of readers have told me that you didn’t receive notifications from Amazon when Titan Mage Dragon came out, which is to say:

All the more reason to follow me on BookBub! 😄

I’ve personally found that BookBub is most reliable when it comes to getting timely notifications about book releases, but if you’d like to follow me elsewhere just in case, I’m also on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, and (occasionally) TikTok.

(Though, of course, if you want to be extra-sure to receive the next book on release day, you can always preorder! 😁)

Stay spicy, and as always, thanks for reading!

What’s next for Titan Mage?

December 18, 2022 by Edie Skye 1 Comment

I get universally panicked reactions every time I say Titan Mage will end at Book 5, so here’s a little look into what I actually have planned for the future of Locke and company—and the world of Haven in general. 😄

First, don’t panic! There’s definitely more of the Titan Mage universe in your future.

When I say “Titan Mage will end at Book 5,” what I mean is “That particular arc will end with Book 5,” and the next arc will start with a new series. I prefer to write in multiple short series rather than single long series because it helps me organize my writing process more efficiently—and because it gives my stories concrete stopping points so readers aren’t left hanging for months while I work on novels for my other pen name.

After Titan Mage 5, I’ll be switching back to my H.P. Holo name to write the final (mega-)book of my Monster Punk Horizon series, and then after that I’ll be returning to the world of Haven to write a series I’m calling Airship for now (the official title will be determined closer to release).

The events of Airship take place at the same time as Titan Mage and follow Ray and Erudicia Q’Van and the crew of the Indigo Gryphon as they go on archaeological adventures and uncover their own dangerous mysteries about the world of Haven.

Following that, I have plans for a variety of series that are still very much in the “throwing ideas around” stage:

Potential Series 3 unites the casts of both Titan Mage and Airship as they [do some stuff that’s slightly spoilery for both series] and face an emerging threat to Haven’s peace.

Potential Series 4 jumps twenty-ish years into the future and follows the children of both casts as they get up to big stompy robot action.

And given that the world of Haven is so expansive, there’s plenty of potential for other stories, too—an academy series set at the Arcane Index, for example, or a series that follows a rig-and-titan mercenary band, or heck, even a slice-of-life series. With a world like Haven, the possibilities are nearly infinite.

Outside the Titan Mage universe, I’m also playing around with the idea of writing a monster girl series set in the Monster Punk Horizon world under my H.P. Holo pen name. If you’re unfamiliar with this series, it takes a lot of cues from monster hunting/collecting games like … well, Monster Hunter, Pokemon, and Digimon, but it also has fun with a lot of standard fantasy/RPG tropes. Which is to say, there’s a lot of potential for fun in that universe that is slightly different from the fun that I get up to in the Titan Mage universe. (And, of course, since this series would be written under this pen name, it would be just as spicy as Titan Mage.)

So there you have it! A tiny look into the future of Haven (and other worlds).

But that said—readers, are there any particular types of stories you’d like to see? 😀

The Story of Edie Skye

July 22, 2022 by Edie Skye 4 Comments

*Modified from an original post on the Holo Writing blog.

OK y’all, it’s time for the epic story of how this whole Titan Mage thing happened, so buckle up and grab some popcorn:

It begins in 2020.

When I’m not writing spicy mecha steampunk as Edie Skye, I’m writing non-spicy fantasy as H.P. Holo. My husband also writes, as Jacob Holo.

One of my jobs as writer/author wife/handler/marketer/general awesome person is to research keywords for our books’ Amazon ads. One of the places I look for keyword ideas is the also-boughts on our books, and for some reason, the also-boughts of Jacob’s anime-inspired giant mech series, Seraphim Revival, were loaded with … harem books.

The Seraphim Revival is perhaps the least spicy thing either of us has ever written, so naturally I was curious and started looking into the featured titles.

Which is when Jacob walked into my office and saw my computer screen full of booby book covers.

I joked, “We’re writing the wrong books, Jacob.”

Jacob joked, “You should write a harem novel.”

I joked, “You write the outline and design the babes and I’ll do it.”

I neglected to realize that Jacob was between projects at the time.

It was also the beginning of lockdown. Which meant he was at home. With free time.

And Jacob’s brain is not one to sit idle.

Which is why he came to me later with 5 outlines for a complete series of harem novels, complete with a sci-fi-inspired elemental magic system, a mech upgrade system, character details for the main cast, and the first few chapters, just because.

***

There’s slightly more to it than that, though. I struggle with OCD (and it’s the primary reason why my writing/writing process is often so chaotic).

We didn’t know it was OCD in early 2020, but we did know there was a problem – manifesting heavily in my inability to write consistently, among other more practical problems – and one of Jacob’s suggested solutions to help me over this hump was for him to outline a project and oversee details of the world, and me to do the actual writing.

One of my greatest challenges pre-OCD diagnosis was simply managing the complex details/consistency of my own world in The Wizard’s Circus (the sequel to The Wizard’s Way, still in progress). This way – with Jacob in charge of the basic foundation – if I had a question about the world, I could just ask him for the answer instead of trying to make up one and thus accidentally overcomplicate things.

I resisted the idea, partly because it felt like admitting defeat – that I couldn’t write a book on my own – and partly because we didn’t really have a concept that we wanted to collaborate on at the time.

Until I was formally diagnosed with OCD in late 2020.

Being able to put a name to the monster I faced changed how I approached the monster. I now had a specific lens through which to analyse my problem and as a result could pinpoint how it was manifesting in my writing, and how to fix it.

At the time, The Wizard’s Circus was a hot mess and I didn’t have the skills to address all its flaws. So I decided to rebuild my writing techniques and style from the ground up, keeping my OCD tendencies in mind and playing to my strengths. The result was Monster Punk Horizon.

However, around that time, Jacob and I also remembered his earlier suggestion – that he outline something for me to write. MPH was already well on its way by that point – and my confidence in my own writing back up, since it was wholly of my own imagination – and so I was more open to writing something that had already been laid out by someone else.

Plus there was something totally hilarious about collaborating with my husband on a harem novel.

And the sheer ridiculousness of that situation unlocked something inside my brain while I was writing it. The first draft of Titan Mage was done in less than a month, and it required very little editing from Jacob.

It showed me that, despite my years of struggling to finish a book, I had it in me to write quickly, and well.

Titan Mage, then, sure, started as a joke.

But it – and Jacob’s help through it – also played a pivotal role in helping me wrangle the monster that is my OCD.

So in a way, it’s also a strange little love letter.

Welcome to my blog!

July 17, 2022 by Edie Skye Leave a Comment

Welcome, everyone, to my first blog post! 😄

And wow, what a ride it’s already been. Titan Mage released a month ago today, and while I knew it would be a success, I did not anticipate how much of a success. It’s spent much of June and July at #1 in Steampunk Fiction on Amazon, hovered variously around the Top 10 of Steampunk Science Fiction (Kindle Store) and Men’s Adventure Fiction, and is still going strong.

That said, I wanted to give a special thanks to all of my readers – and especially those of you who liked the book enough to stop by and visit this blog. An author’s nothing without people who read and enjoy her work, and y’all have made this an amazing launch. ☺️