Kia ora, all – hope you've all been well! I know it's been a while, so here's a little update on the status of things with NO MORE HEROES 2, aka HELL OR HIGH WATER.

You probably don't need me to tell you that the life of a freelance creative can be a thoroughly unpredictable one. As much as I'd hoped (and I did hope!) that I'd be well on the publishing process for HELL OR HIGH WATER by now, my progress has been delayed some by work life and personal life.

As such, the new release date for NO MORE HEROES: HELL OR HIGH WATER will now be 2020.

Believe me, no one is more disappointed about this than I! But to have the book be as good as it can possibly be, I really just need more time. I'm hoping this will be the only time I have to delay the release date, so fingers crossed that next time I have a blog update on the book it will be happier news.

But just as one last update, I'm gearing up for massive website overhaul soon. With this recent expansion in my creative landscape, it makes more sense to have one place for all my writing content to be in once place – hence, I'll be making this website a more general central hub for both NO MORE HEROES, TALES OF THE THREAD and any other writing ventures I may embark on. 

You can expect: new sections, a shuffle in navigation, and a rebrand of the site for "Michelle Kan – Independent Writer". I've delved back into my art this year and it's possible that I'll be refreshing the character art for NO MORE HEROES as well, but that can be a surprise for the both of us.

That's all I have for now, so I'll leave you folks to your evenings. In the meantime, as always, if you'd like more frequent updates from me, you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram. Mā te wā, and I'll be in touch again soon!

Kia ora koutou katoa, e hoa ma! After two+ years of simply being called 'NO MORE HEROES 2', I'm very happy to be finally bringing you both the title and cover of the second instalment to the Vigverse! So without further ado, as a reverse birthday present from me to you, may I present...

So far, the Kraken Collective Anniversary Event has been proving itself a great way for people to learn about some of the awesome independent queer writers out there! My experience has been no different, and recently I had the pleasure of being able to chat with the lovely B.R. Sanders, about their latest instalment in the Aerdhverse series, Extraction.

Check out the interview below, have a watch of the book trailer at the bottom of the post, and make sure to get yourself a copy of Extraction​! Excellent queer high fantasy awaits you...

Hi BR! It's great to have you here today. Tell us about yourself and your work!

  Hi! Thanks for having me! My name is B R Sanders, and I’m a genderqueer fantasy writer. I write sci-fi sometimes, too, but mostly fantasy. I live in Denver with my family and two cats. My stories and books tend to be very character focused. In my work, I try to create the kind of stories that I wish I’d had when I was coming to know myself—stories where being queer and trans is normal and ok, or if oppression still exists along those lines, stories where queer and trans people are surviving and thriving anyway.

Can you tell us a little bit about Extraction and where it fits into the Resistance universe?  

  Yes! I have three novels out in the Aerdh universe, and I have a handy reading guide up on my website here. The three novels are Extraction, Resistance, and Ariah. Chronologically, Resistance happens first, and Extraction broadens some of the threads that started in that book. A couple of the characters readers meet in Resistance get their own story in Extraction. Ariah takes place several decades after Extraction, and closes some of the loops in that story, but really Ariah is a completely different narrative.

What was it like working with a new cast of characters in a familiar world and setting?  

  By now, they don’t feel like a new cast. They feel like old friends. But it is something that I really love doing, because as much as I really enjoy worldbuilding, I find that it doesn’t really crystallize until you throw characters in the mix. They also help me find new corners of a familiar landscape.

You’ve chosen to highlight Rethnali for this event, but Extraction deals with a number of primary characters. Which character in the Extraction cast do you identify with the most?  

  Rethnali carries the main narrative thread in Extraction, and she is the POV character who stays consistent throughout the subsequent books. But you’re right that there are multiple POV characters in Extraction! The other two POV characters are also queer. There’s Sellior, the group’s medic, and there’s Vathorem, Rethnali’s second in command who learns some really important things about himself over the course of the book. I identify most with Vathorem. His struggles around others and his constant feelings of overwhelm are very much my own.

On the flipside, which character do you identify with the least/is the hardest to write?  

  That’s a hard one! I think Sellior might be the character who is least like me. He is just a very different person than me. My characters usually have a core element to their personalities that I can connect to. For Rethnali, who is way more of a go-getter than I am, its her righteous anger. For Vathorem, its his deep knowledge that something about the way his brain works is different than other people. For Sellior…it was not easy to establish that with Sellior. But he has a deep, if brittle, well of kindness I can relate to.

What are some of your strongest influences when it comes to writing epic fantasy?  

  RIP, Ursula K. Le Guin! She was a massive influence on me. Herman Melville is another really big influence on my writing—the way he created microcosms, like on ships, to really zero in on the dynamics od a small group of people shows up over and over again in my own writing. I also really love the fierce quietness of Sofia Samatar’s writing, and how her stories give voice to the voiceless.

Can you give us an idea of what’s in store for fans and future readers of your work?  

  Extraction is the first volume in the A Tale of Rebellion series. I’ve scoped out three more books after this one, and I’m really excited about them! Pirates are going to show up. A teaser chapter of the second book in the series, The Incoming Tide, will be available to my Patreon subscribers for those who are interested! Folks can check that out here.

​Thank you for joining us, B.R.! If this has piqued your interest (and I'm sure it has!) make sure you nab yourself a copy of Extraction off Kindle or Gumroad, which is just 99c until 1 Feb 2018!

Ka mau te wehi – the #KrakenFriends2018 event is finally here! Independent publishing alliance The Kraken Collective is nearly a year old – and to celebrate they're holding a weeklong festival on Twitter celebrating some queer books by indie authors! There'll be author and book features, excerpts galore, and even an online personality quiz!

As part of the event, I have the pleasure to announce that No More Heroes has been invited to join the likes of 18 other superb indie SFF titles, and will be on sale for 99c on Kindle and Gumroad. Brave new characters and bright new worlds  await you, so make sure to nab yourself a title while you can!

Many of the characters I write tend to be ace/aro by unconscious default. This was true even before asexual and aromantic were words in my vocabulary! Although not yet explicitly stated in-text, No More Heroes follows in this same vein, with many of the cast being somewhere on the ace/aro spectrums – so for #AsexualAwarenessWeek I released a tweet+graphic each day specifying some of the orientations of the Ace VIgilantes amongst the crew. Check it out! 

Clare, aka AURAE. Asexual/aromantic.
​Quick wits & fast feet. bright & bubbly, Has a lot of love in her heart.

Linus, aka EIDOLON. Grey ace maybe/bi???romantic (a questioning boy).
​Proud Samoan. Compassionate, sweet & intuitive.

​Fang, aka RESONANCE. Asexual/greyromantic.
​Cool & confident. Small but strong, a capable & adaptable Vigilante.

​Joshua, aka REHUA. Grey ace/grey+panromantic.
​Has a heart of gold. Gentle & warm, a strong & dependable guardian.

Shaan, aka ARTIFICE. Asexual/demi+homoromantic.
​Calm & collected. Charismatic & intelligent, but difficult to read.

Faye, aka FARADAY. Demisexual/biromantic.
​Sharp tongue & sweet laughter. Quick wit & charm, but deadly to oppose.

For Māori Language Week this year, I decided to do something a little different and translate some of the key aspects of No More Heroes into Te Reo Māori. I shared one for every day of the week, focusing on some of the unique concepts, characters and locales of my little universe.

Big thanks to Kia and Indya for looking over my translations for me and generally being awesome human beings. Koia kei a kātoa!

It was a cool night of a warm day in the heart of the City.
 
The breeze was light, the ever-present night fog swirling thinly along the footpath, carrying a diffused echo of the streetlamps and shop neons above in its ghostly cotton curls. The sky above was clear and cloudless, the Milky Way and its denizens bright and beautiful, and the sweet sound of crickets could be heard in the air.
 
In other words, it was a Perfect Night – but on this night of all nights it was especially perfect.

For a limited time, the NO MORE HEROES eBook is available on Kindle for only $0.99USD! If you've been waiting for an opportunity to get it, now's your chance! Come on and join the fray!

First three chapters of NO MORE HEROES: 12,905 words
​First three chapters of NO MORE HEROES 2 draft v1 (so far): 17,239 words

Pretty exciting! NO MORE HEROES is technically classified as a short novel, but who knows, maybe I'll hit novel-novel length this time. I'm feeling so much better about the story since I took the time to rework everything, and I'm actually looking forward to everything I've got planned, which makes a nice change from the dread and despair I often experienced during my first attempt. I'm especially looking forward to introducing some new characters in this next instalment of the NO MORE HEROES saga, all of who will help make my character cast even more diverse!

NO MORE HEROES is the first long-form story that I've actually committed to, and the Vigilante universe is a place which I'm hoping I can make as colourful and inclusive as possible. Half of the cast in NO MORE HEROES are characters of colour and/or on the rainbow spectrum in some way*, and additionally (although, I admit, not all explicitly – I'm working on that part) several of the cast have disabilities such as ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety disorder or depression.

One character in particular holds an especially important place in my heart for many reasons. Fang (aka Resonance) is one of the secondary cast members of NO MORE HEROES – a quick-thinking, quick-footed Vigilante who is adept at parkour and more than skilled at holding her own in a fight. She also happens to be a character of Cantonese Chinese descent, is quite comfortably genderfluid, sits on the asexual/aromantic spectrums, and suffers from an anxiety disorder.

​
The fact that she exists as a real character in a real book now – even if she was my creation – makes me incredibly happy. She's the kind of character I wish I could have seen in books when I was growing up – I was a voracious reader as a kid, but I could count the number of books I read with Chinese characters in them on one hand. ​Fortunately, with the rise of indie authors and structures such as #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #OwnVoices, it's possible for me now to see such characters in fiction, and that's rad!

With the writing of NO MORE HEROES 2 now well on its way, I'm very much looking forward to introducing a few more cool cats into the Vigilante family, some of whom have disabilities of either the auditory, visual or physical variety. Plans for the third instalment include the re-introduction of a character with depression, as well as the formal introduction of another non-binary character, and a hijabi Vigilante! As in NO MORE HEROES, many of these new cast members will be either characters of colour and/or sit on the rainbow spectrum in some way – but that goes without saying, really!

As always, all will have their time in the fighty spotlight, and I'm really looking forward to being able to write for these new characters. One of my absolute favourite parts of character creation (at least, for this series) is deciding how each character speaks, moves and/or fights, and how their background and/or physicality influences their style. Call it Diversity in Motion – it's an important concept to me, and something I'd love to see more of in visual martial-arts or action-based media, to be honest! Is the character defensive, offensive or deflective? Are they swift, tank or adaptive?

​So far I've included characters who practice parkour and/or freerunning (each with their own flavours of flow), kickboxing, Muay Thai, capoeira and rope dart – as well as some good ol' fashioned street fighting and fake-it-'til-you-make-it ​gusto. Movement disciplines are a big part of what influences me in the continued creation of the Vigilante universe and its inhabitants (as well as music, graphic novels and video games), and the prospect of being able to expand on this is super exciting and rewarding for me.

Commitments pending, I'm hoping to be able to publish NO MORE HEROES 2 sometime later this year, or the beginning of next. Life as an independent/freelance filmmaker and videographer can be pretty wild though, so who knows! Stay tuned for more as it comes, folks.

If you haven't read NO MORE HEROES yet but would like to dive into the Vigilante universe before the next instalment is released, you can get physical or eBook editions either via the Gumroad or on Amazon. For those of you who have enjoyed my work so far and would like to help support me, I recently set up a Ko-Fi page where you can show your appreciation by buying me a coffee!

​Now, it's back to writing for me. I'll chat to you all later! : )