The conclusion to the Legends of Cirena series is here! 🥳
I had one major goal for book publishing this year… and that was to get at least two full-length novels out, even if they were on the shorter side. The first was Fae. The second, I’m happy to say, is The Dark Forest of Aneth! (And there have even been two short stories released this year! “The Singing Coil,” and the recent release of “What Once Was Silent,” which is part of the Bone Hollow anthology!)
With the release of The Dark Forest of Aneth, we’ve wrapped up the Legends of Cirena series.
((Though, calling it the ‘conclusion’ may be a bit misleading because there are more stories coming from that era, but those are going to be part of a different series.))
This tale brings together elements from the previous books… the obvious regional connections, but also more details on the Oracle’s involvement throughout, more magical connections that have previously only been mentioned and, of course, the character crossover.
But it’s also exciting because, while it does set up some of the stuff that’s coming in a different series, The Dark Forest of Aneth gives us some details we didn’t previously have about the shadows in The Wishing Blade series… and references to Ralendacin.
(Oops, was that a spoiler? 🫢 Can’t say more. You’ll have to read it yourself. 😉 )
Okay, so the cover design process for The Dark Forest of Aneth has been through two major designs and two computers… since I actually started the original design a while back, but shelved it when I put revisions for Dark Forest on hold.
I use Daz Studio 3D, a program which allows me to place figures in a scene, change how they look, pose them, change the environment around them, light the scene, set the camera angles… all that good stuff.
The downside is that rendering the scene can take either a doozy of a graphics card (specifically NVidia, because that’s what Iray, the render engine, uses) OR it takes a doozy of a CPU.
Or it just takes a very long, long time and a very loud, loud computer fan.
Or both.
In the case of my unfortunate (now mostly dead) laptop, I had to render some of these scenes overnight… in the other room, because that fan was loud.
Then Isaac got Jade, a desktop computer we set up to handle work smoothly, gaming, and rendering. Which means that these scenes, which took forever on my old laptop, might take an hour or two to render at full size. And quietly.
(My ears greatly appreciate this… and so does my sleep cycle).
Now… on to the progress renders!
For the first render, I’d focused on setting… I wanted the black gate of the village deep in the forest, lit by turquoise light crystals.
Already we’ve got the issue of it being too dark, but it’s a work in progress.
While there were some intermediate steps here, I changed the lighting and focused on adding characters. I added a unicorn (chesnathé) framed by the gate, and pulled in Ro’nor and Zynia from their previous covers.
Still too dark.
Also, they’re kind of buried in the ferns. (They are supposed to be hiding, though…)
In the next render, we have light!
Still dark and mysterious, but we can see the figures better.
Sort of.
The low contrast on this would make a poor cover thumbnail, but I digress.
I changed the lighting, played with angle and cover dimensions, adjusted poses, fought a lot with keeping trees from appearing in the middle of characters, and brought them just a bit out of hiding.
But…
I wasn’t happy with it.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still think the concept is cool. But it wasn’t working to match the other covers, visibility was a fight, and, making matters worse, Ro’nor is no longer in this scene. (Tndrec is, but I wanted the two main characters on the cover).
Maybe I’ll redo this specific version of the cover to include Tndrec as art for the next Legends of Cirena volume. Hmm. *Mental note to work on that.*
Many months later I tried again.
This time I brainstormed with Claude AI about what had gone wrong with the previous cover, what I liked, and what I hoped to have different. After some back and forth, it produced a spec sheet for me to reference.
I went back to Daz (on Jade this time… so much faster…) kept the two characters and the forest, but nixed the unicorn and village, changed the lighting, played more with mist, and…
VOILA!
Already so much happier! 😃
I was already pretty happy with this, but I took the rendered image back into Claude and compared it against the comp and asked for suggested improvements. Made some changes, and came up with this for the raw render. (Technically I had one with depth of field applied, one without).
All the images so far have been what came out of Daz Studio, no Photoshop yet.
Now that I was happy with the base images, I took those into Photoshop CS6, touched up the illustration to fix little areas where the clothes weren’t sitting right or overlaying each other correctly, added the effects and title treatment for the series, and here’s the final!
So there you have it! The cover design process for The Dark Forest of Aneth! 🦄
Don’t forget that pre-orders are live! The Dark Forest of Aneth will arrive on October 23rd, 2026!
Pre-Order The Dark Forest of Aneth from your favorite retailer:
Today I have something special for you… a cover reveal (and the blurb)! 😁
Specifically, the cover for The Dark Forest of Aneth. It’s the final story in my Legends of Cirena series (though there is a spin-off series in the works), which brings together Ro’nor from The Restless Sands of Neel and Zynia from The Dragons of the Mist.
After several failed attempts to get the original idea for the cover’s design working (along with the story going a different direction and the scene the first cover was referencing no longer existing), I finally finished a cover that has the mood I was aiming for and references a scene from the story.
Here it is!
The Dark Forest of Aneth Cover
I’m super excited!
Pre-orders will be going up soon (right after I finish inputting my proofreading notes and make sure the ebook file is still intact), and I plan to release this on October 23rd!
And, unlike the other Legends of Cirena stories, which were mostly short stories and novellas, this is a novel… 70,000 words! I do recommend reading The Restless Sands of Neel and The Dragons of the Mist first, but you don’t have to have read the other stories to follow this one. Though, if you do, you might spot some of the underlying plot hints that eventually show up in this one.
Also… if you’ve read Magic’s Stealing… there are some Easter eggs in here for ya. 😉
I promised you the cover and the blurb, so here’s the latter!
The Dark Forest of Aneth Blurb
A mortal dragon forced to face his own past, a hopelessly lost priestess of travel, and a judge who no longer trusts his own judgement…
Ro’nor is a dragon, at least by heritage. No wings, no shapeshifting, no fancy powers to make him special. He’s merely a seer, taking odd jobs to dig himself out of debt. Scry the weather. Find missing children. Simple things.
But his latest job leads him to a village of immortals, who need him to find their mortal child, a child with unprecedented power. She’s both a string mage and a creation mage, able to shape the world through sheer force of will. To help Ro’nor, the village grants him a relic more powerful than most gods dare wield—one that can cross both realms and time, with no promise of return.
Zynia is a devoted priestess to the god of land travel. She’ll help anyone who’s lost, which is fine, except right now she’s the one who’s lost, turned about in Aneth’s haunting forest. But when she finally tracks down the missing child, “lost” stops being her biggest problem.
The child’s captors are rigid isolationists who worship the goddess of the dead. One of them, Reyonvindrat, has lived his whole life under the shadows of his priestly brother. His tyrant brother… if he allows himself to consider the blasphemous truth.
The petulant child has magic only Reyonvindrat’s gracious goddess should wield. But his brother’s plans for her could ruin the world’s only chance for surviving a devastating future. Now Reyonvindrat must decide whether to remain faithful to the priest… or faithful to himself.
Rescue the child, and their world may yet survive.
Fail, and their world may unravel before any prophecy comes to pass.
Anyway, there’s going to be a cover design process post coming later this month. And keep an eye out for the pre-order links, coming soon!
* * *
Before The Dark Forest of Aneth… a hapless seer deals with an unexpected adventure in the desert, while a priestess travels farther than she or her god of travel expects when she lands in the realm of dragons…
