An Orc City Second Edition

The Black Crown 1.2

Things change. And now, so have my books.

I’ll explain why in a moment, but I’ll get right to the point: the second edition of the Black Crown is now live. What changed is pretty simple:

>Removed the vulgarity

>Shortened the prologue

>Fixed a few lines

>Removed or trimmed some scenes

Art by Jcaleb Designs

What changed? A lot of things, actually. When initially writing The Black Crown, I wrote at what i was most used to writing, watching, and reading. I felt at the time that doing so would perhaps show I was not writing a YA novel and didn’t really want to be lumped into that genre. Not that I have anything against it or authors who do, but it wasn’t something for me. I wasn’t going to litter the whole book with profanity, because that’s obnoxious for me. But a smattering of rough language to demonstrate dramatic moments was something I felt was not beyond the pale.

Since the book was published, I rarely had much negative feedback for the inclusion of any of the content. An occasional dad would tell me in comments he would have let his kids read it if not for the profanity. When I read the book to my daughter, I did end up self-censoring many scenes and that was about when doubt began to take hold.

But in the two years, something else began to surface: articles about how men didn’t seem to read as much. How kids read a lot less–young boys especially. While others argue why, I know one big reason is that very little is written FOR them. Male centric stories written and accessible for younger male readers are in short supply and the biggest examples are often pulled from decades in the past. They certainly don’t hand them out in school. I’d have much rather done my 5th grade book report on A Princess of Mars than the holocaust trauma book Number the Stars like I was actually given.

When I was writing The Lionheart, I made the conscious decision to write the book so that it could be handed to a younger reader. Not a YA book, but simply one that was accessible to them without feeling simplified. After all, Lord of the Rings and Dragonlance are books accessible to younger readers and you can hardly call those made for children. This left me in a spot where I had one book accessible to young readers and one that was not.

The decision was easy. I went back through the Black Crown and removed what I felt was objectionable material to parents or those of Chrisitan faith. In questioning some readers, most of them admitted they found Cort’s rural colloquialisms to be far more effective than dropping an actual F-bomb. Several said they felt the cursing wasn’t needed at all and I concurred. The vulgarity was taken out–even the instances referring to Rags as a bastard prince.

(MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE BLACK CROWN )

Also taken out was a few risqué scenes with Cort and Savia. While its still implied they slept together, the scene of her arriving at his room and spilling flesh out wasn’t necessary. Ditto the scene in the Matron’s Hut where Rags is humiliated by the Orc women for accidentally entering their domain.

The biggest change, however, was the prologue.

The prologue is easily the most critiqued part of the book--both from good and bad faith critics. I wrote it when I was still thinking this would be a much more straight forward series and it served to introduce major antagonists like Sothren and his son Valkor. Plans changed, but I was bringing in characters, names, and threats that wouldn’t pay off until later books. So the opening scenes with Sothren’s inclusion were nixed and the Orcs part became the entirety of the prologue.

But what about Orc City, you say? Specifically the opening passages that were so widely meme’d. The Orc City part had to stay. Orc City is the meme and memes are forever. I couldn’t just take that part out, so I left it in because Orc City never dies, kid.

Lastly, although I did change a few inconsequential lines that bugged me, there was one line that I wrote that never sat right with me, but I didn’t figure it out until later after it was published.

Ragoth’s line late in the book “No more tricks,” was changed to “No more lies.”

IYKYK

The Black Crown is now inlight content-wise with The Lionheart. Going forward, all Age of Adventures books will be accessible to younger readers and christian readers who wants good fantasy adventure fiction without worrying they might cross material they find objectionable. In retrospect, I should have done it from the start, but live and learn.

If you have a physical first edition, you’ve got the spicier version that is now no longer available, for whatever that is worth. With the Lionheart coming out, I know some renewed interest in the first book would be incoming, so I timed the release to go live before the cover reveal.

And hey, if you’re looking for some good fantasy fiction, I’ve got you coverer.

Buy The Black Crown on Amazon in ebook, paper back, or hard cover.

Pre-order The Lionheart: Icon of Justice