It’s wild to me that Pride Before a Fall has been out for over two months now. Part of the reason that it feels like it was so long ago is because *waves hands* a lot has happened this year already, and because I actually completed the book all the way back in October 2024. In today’s fast-paced world, that’s ancient history.
If you haven’t gotten your copy of Pride Before a Fall yet, here’s the blurb:
Orrinir Relickim received an unusual wedding present from his husband, Uileac Korviridi: Bannain, a disobedient horse who seems determined to end his marriage. One explosive kick from the animal leaves Uileac critically injured just days before the Feast of the Horse, a festival celebrating equines and their country’s magic High Poetry system.
Unable to participate in the festival’s archery competition, Uileac lashes out at Orrinir in a series of tense confrontations that challenge their relationship like never before. Orrinir must balance his insecurities with affection for his prideful husband, whose single-minded focus on success causes deep frustration for both men. Between rousing fight scenes and beautiful poetry, the couple shares moments of deep intimacy that leave them emotionally exposed.
Character-driven and deeply heartfelt, Pride Before a Fall offers a greater glimpse into the world of Breme, whose existence hinges upon power-infused poetry. Luscious prose will whisk you away into a realm melding realism and fantasy for a unique reading experience.
With that, let’s get into the retrospective.
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Pride Before a Fall is my love note to horses.
Beyond anything else, this book is really about how awesome horses are. I started riding again last year after many years away, and it’s one of my greatest pleasures. There are few things more special to me than gaining a horse’s trust.
Those who have read the book will notice that it is dedicated to my favorite horse, Truly:
…. who is nothing like Bannain at all. Truly can be a bit sassy, and she’s definitely got some fire in the tank, but she is much more obedient.
That brings me to one of the most important reasons why I made Bannain the way he is: to show off that horses, just like people, all have their own personalities.
In a lot of fantasy books, horses are just window dressing and convenient transportation. They do not seem to have a will of their own; they never shy or disobey unless it is convenient for the plot.
Certainly they don’t express their opinions like real horses would. Spend enough time with these animals and you’ll learn that they are, in fact, incredibly opinionated. If you’re late to feed them by even a few minutes, they’ll throw a damn tantrum like a 1,200-pound toddler.
So I wanted Bannain to reflect some of the horses I’ve met in real life, who are sweet but mischievous. He’s relatively young in the book, probably only three years old, so he’s still got the mindset of a bratty baby; he’s not even saddlebroke yet.
But despite all that, his people love him anyway (yes, even Orrinir does). Uileac especially recognizes that no matter how one tries to anthropomorphize a horse, they are still an animal, and we cannot communicate perfectly with them.
Bannain doesn’t hurt anyone because he’s evil; he doesn’t understand what they want and is reacting instinctively to stimuli that he doesn’t like. Once one moves beyond this, they can see that he is a precious little guy who wants to be loved by his humans.
Funnily enough, reader feedback has shown that Bannain is one of the most popular characters. Someone even told me they named a Chocobo in Final Fantasy after him! There’s something very endearing about his childlike exuberance and mistakes.
He and Erix remain important characters throughout the entire series, and we meet more equines along the way. In fact, Bannain plays the role of the hero in the very last book, rescuing Orrinir during a nasty skirmish. Stay tuned for that!
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Though the story is low stakes and slow-paced, I’m satisfied with the final result.
I did get some critical feedback on my Amazon listing about Pride Before a Fall; namely, that it is very slow-paced. And it is. That is a completely fair assessment.
But it is also what I wanted to do with the book, and I did not falsely advertise it as anything but a low-stakes fantasy romance. In general, low-stakes stories do not have extremely exciting twists and turns because that’s just not what the genre demands. They can be rolicking and fun, but they don’t necessarily need a breakneck pace.
Still, I did my best to have some more interesting, fast-paced scenes in the book, such as Orrinir’s fight with Sagremor and Uileac’s surreptitious entry into the archery competition.
These were not included in the very first draft, which was only 18,000 words. I added them to provide a bit more excitement and ensure that the story wasn’t a melodramatic glurgefest.
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Pride Before a Fall is not the stereotypical fantasy romance.
LGBTQ fantasy romances, though they may not be the standard, are not groundbreaking anymore. You can read thousands of gay or lesbian fantasy romances nowadays, which is wonderful.
However, most of them are about the falling in love rather than staying in love. Of course, I’m not the first person in the world to write an established relationship gay romance, and there are many that are better than mine, but I still think it’s important to provide representation of the “after” in the “happily ever after.”
It’s easy to fall in love; people do it all the time. You can meet someone off the street and get married a day later if you so choose. The more challenging thing is to stay in love, day after day, when you come to understand your partner better and things aren’t so easy anymore.
This is what I love so much about Pride Before a Fall and the energy that I hope to embody throughout the series. Uileac and Orrinir have such incredible chemistry that never fades, even when they face some terrible circumstances in Books 8-10.
No matter how much Uileac pisses Orrinir off, or how much Uileac tries to pretend he’s unaffected by his husband’s presence, their love sizzles in every moment. I adore how much they adore one another, how they work to better understand one another every single day. It is this staying power that I find compelling rather than the fact that they fell in love.
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I still made some significant mistakes with my second book.
While I was able to ameliorate a lot of the sins I perpetrated when marketing 9 Years Yearning, I still had some mistakes that really nuked my progress. The biggest one was the release date: January 1, 2025.
This was a failure of my imagination that has to do with my unconventional life.
See, I only have two close human relatives: my mom and my brother. I haven’t had contact with any other relative for over a decade now due to circumstances we don’t need to discuss here.
My holidays are incredibly quiet and low-key, so I completely forget that for most people, this is one of the most stressful times of the year. I also don’t drink, so I don’t consider things like raucous New Year’s Eve parties and horrible hangovers.
This was abysmally dumb of me; I should have asked someone whether it would be better to push my publishing date back to Valentine’s Day or something. That would have been a far more suitable time to publish a romance story.
But at the same time, I was pretty dumb with ARCs and preorders too. Because of my New Year’s publishing date, I ran my ARC campaign from October to December, which severely reduced my response rate. Everyone else was busy being a normal person, and they completely forgot to review my book. The ARC campaign was also a bit too long, so people signed up for the campaign before the holidays and then didn’t think about it because life was too stressful.
Lastly, I shouldn’t have run preorders, as this screwed me up with Amazon’s algorithm. The first thirty days are when you get the highest boost, but I wasted all of that through my preorder window, meaning that I didn’t get higher visibility on the release date.
For my next book, Funeral of Hopes, I will only be doing preorders for seven days, a plan I continue to follow throughout the rest of the series. This ensures that the book is ready through all Draft2Digital distribution channels by June 23.
You may think that me admitting to my mistakes means I’m an idiot and you shouldn’t trust anything I say, but that’s not true; it’d be more concerning if I wasn’t willing to self reflect. After all, no one is born knowing how to market and self-publish. There’s no shame in doing things wrong.
I have the most important facets of book writing down, which is actually writing the book. The rest of the process will come in time, and I’ve already learned a lot about self-publishing through 9 Years Yearning and Pride Before a Fall. I will be well set up for success with the next eight parts of the series.
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Like 9 Years Yearning, I intend to release a paperback with bonus stories.
Again, I don’t really have a timeline on this yet, but I do plan to get a different artist to do a full book cover and add some new stories. One of them will be showing how Uileac and Orrinir make Sergeant (spoiler alert), but it won’t be necessary to read that before Funeral of Hopes; the story will be alluded to.
I’m not sure whether there will be other bonus stories and what they will include, but I guarantee that I will make the paperback worth your money.
If you haven’t yet purchased Pride Before a Fall, it’s a short, cozy read that you can complete in just a few hours, filled with plenty of sexual tension and a little bit of spice at the end. Be sure to enjoy Uileac’s heartstopping archery performance – and Orrinir’s begrudging love of Bannain!
Please remember to leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you decide to pick up a copy. I’d be so appreciative, especially for Goodreads.