Edited Dec. 28, 2014: Barnacle Tide has been removed and is now only an excerpt. The entire Siren Song novella will be available in January 2015.

Barnacle Tide has been published. It’s the fourth installment of Siren Song, a story featuring a M/M pair in a fantasy world. It is about 8500 words long and is preceded by Like Dark Algae, Bright Storm and Run Aground.

Normally I wouldn’t publish something quite so long in one go, but I didn’t want to break up this story any more than I already have. It was actually going to be even longer on the first draft, but I rearranged a few things and kicked a plot point to later on to keep sections less cumbersome.

As to the story itself, I wanted Rikel’s family to have a real part in it ever since I came back to writing more about him. I thought it was a little inevitable given his motivations in the story I published back in February. But more characters means more relationships and that means either more words overall or less words for the MC and love interest to interact. I tried to keep a balance in the overall story so Caarafk still has half a chance at becoming a real person in my readers’ eyes but doesn’t monopolize Rikel’s time too completely (despite monopolizing his thoughts).

Next Sunday, Dec 14th: One Last Song (Siren Song 5) – When the song fades for a final time, there might be nothing left to salvage.