So, first off, good news! The audiobook of Ancient Ruins is finally complete, after being delayed by the narrator getting sick. It’s currently in the process of being checked by Audible, and should go live in 8-12 more days. I’ll announce it when it’s done.
Secondly, apparently I just needed a change of pace, because I completed the Sistina Constella novella (hey, it rhymed!), Into the Eternal Wood, last night, with approximately 20,000 words. This makes it about 1/6th of the length of Ancient Ruins or Spells of Old. I’m waiting for my wife to read it, then I’m going to listen to it via text-to-speech, and send it off to an editor. This is a different editor than I’ve worked with before, in part to see who works best for my purposes, but I’m going to continue using the same one through the entire Ancient Dreams trilogy.
So you’re aware, I will be sharing the novella via my mailing list one chapter at a time over the next few months. This gives you a steady trickle of content from me while I try to finish Halls of Power. However, you’re going to be getting the un-edited version of the story. This is because to put a book in Kindle Select, where it’s in Kindle Unlimited, the book in question has to be available solely in the Kindle Store in electronic format. A few people have sidestepped this by only making their rough drafts available, which is why I’m doing what I am.
Once Halls of Power is complete, I’m going to write a novella about the original Marin as well, though this one might cross into the novel range, depending on things. I’ve been trying to come up with other pre-Godsrage stories as well, but nothing has occurred to me yet, so it may just be those two stories in my anthology.
There’s your update! As always, feel free to ask questions.
Ancient Dreams 
Book 3 when?!? j/k.
At the end of book 2, Sistina says she retracts her influence to just the palace and the dungeon. Didn’t she have to keep her influence in a sphere shape? Is the city large enough that her influence is still a sphere but only catches the palace in a dome? Or does the sphere rule only apply when expanding she is attempting to expand her influence? So, if she wanted to extend her influence again, she would first need to “reclaim” influence over the city and then expand.
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Halls of Power… I’m guessing about 15 weeks. I don’t know for sure, mind, but I’m taking your question seriously. ^^
As to retracting her influence, she’s essentially turning the city portion of her domain into a ‘safe zone’. When she expands her domain, that area will remain ignored, while it expands in a sphere ‘beyond’ that area. I will state, ignoring that area gives her no advantages whatsoever, save that people aren’t a drain on her mana collection.
The reason for the sphere is me using the inverse square law of expanding Sistina’s domain. As a non-expert explanation of such, let’s just spitball some numbers out here. So let’s say that it took 1 mana to get her domain out to 15 feet. To increase it to 30 feet would take 4 mana. to increase it to 45 would be 9, up to 150 feet would be 100 mana. Now, for her full domain of 2.5 miles, we’re looking at 13,800 feet, or 880 times the radius, yet this would cost 774,400 mana at that rate. This is simply to demonstrate how incredibly difficult it is for Sistina to keep expanding her domain at this point.
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