Not a chapter, but...

Today, I finally sent Broken Knife to another publisher, Legion. Their application requires a lot more work, but they have a much faster turnaround than Aethon, at around 5 weeks. I applied to Aethon on July 8, but they can take up to 90 days (or more, going by comments) if I'm going to hear back from them, it should be by mid-October. Five weeks from today is September 12, so I'll know about Legion by the beginning of October for sure. I'm still hoping to hear from Shadow Alley, who was the only publisher who actually seemed interested when I spoke to them at LitRPG Con, but I may send them an email asking in a week or two, even though their submissions are closed. Since they said they'd take a look, I feel like it should be okay to ask.

All of that is to say that I should know if anyone is going to bite by mid-October or Halloween at the latest. I'm going to plan a self-publishing release at about that time, and if it turns out I don't need it, YAY! I had planned to go ahead and stub TBK next week, but now I'm debating. I may choose to leave it up, so that if one of the publishers is interested, they can see the full story, with all of the comments and reader interaction. As usual (especially this year) I'm struggling to have the emotional bandwidth to do some of the things I need to do, and I think closing TBK might help. I don't know 😅

Anyway, I will write a chapter of Lucky Rabbit this weekend, but it took a lot longer to submit to Legion than I expected. I'm going to paste my cover letter below, and if it seems like a lot, it is. Most publishers/agents want to read as little as possible from you. Max 500 words, which includes: who you are and why you're qualified to write your story (ha!), your story hook, sometimes a summary (with all the spoilers), and comps, which are truly evil things.

(Comps are comparisons of your work to something else, like: For fans of Stephen King's It, but with the comedic stylings of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. This requires that you remember other books, their titles, their authors, know which ones are big enough that the agent will recognize them, but not so big that it's overdone. You don't want to compare your book to Harry Potter, because everyone has done Harry Potter, and it's not 'fresh'. Also, it has to be recent, preferably in the last year, or at most three, because anything older than that is also not 'fresh'. ARGH!)

So here is my letter about TBK, and don't tell me if it's horrible, because it's done now 😭 I've already re-read it and realized a few places that are unclear or don't make sense 😬 Kaz's egg? Yes, the egg Kaz found, but that sounds like Kaz just hatched, and...yep, not gonna read it again. Too late!

(Also, if you haven't read TBK, this definitely has all the spoilers.)

Hello,

I'm Elizabeth Oswald, the author of The Broken Knife, as well as the LitRPG series Legendary Farmer, the duology Cuckoo's Dream, and a Middle-Grade Fantasy novel called Grimalkin's Test. My current Work in Progress is Lucky Rabbit. I have a Bachelor's degree in English -- Creative Writing from the University of Washington in Seattle. I've had stories in my head for as long as I can remember, though I stopped writing due to the demands of job and family, and only started again during the Covid pandemic. 

Broken Knife is a cultivation/progression series following a canine-type kobold named Kaz as he leads a party of humans through his mountain home. It is about 881,000 words and six books long. It reached #58 on Royal Road's Best-Ranked stories, and has 1,865 followers, with 1,874,113 total views. Ratings are overwhelmingly positive, with 4.7 stars and 475 ratings.

The story begins when Kaz, a bearer of a magic never found in the males of his species, discovers a dragon nest and unwittingly rescues an unhatched egg. Shortly after, he meets Lianhua, Raff, Chi Yincang, and Gaoda Xiang, a group of travelers there to find the remnants of a lost civilization that Lianhua believes once controlled the mountain. Kaz's sister, the leader of his small, nearly destroyed tribe trades Kaz to the humans in exchange for help in taking over another tribe.

When Kaz's egg hatches, Kaz finds himself the possessor of a baby dragon, which he names Li. This begins his discovery of cultivation, when he clears Li's dantian of a blockage that looked strangely like one of the runes in the book his chief jealously guarded. He and Lianhua form a pact to support each other when he realizes she knows about the dragon, and she gives him a ring which conceals Li's appearance, making her look like a harmless rodent that lives in the mountain.

The journey through the mountain reveals that not only does Kaz know far less than he thought about the place he lives, but that his former chief -- the female he thought was his mother -- had lied to him for his entire life. When he accidentally fractures his own core, only Li's intercession keeps him alive long enough to keep it from breaking entirely. A strange being comes to him in his dreams, 'fixing' it for him, but leaving an ominous handprint on his core.

With Kaz's bond to Li deepened, they travel deeper, meeting a hidden race called the mosui. When Li and Lianhua are captured, Kaz tracks them down, quickly falling into a trap set by the mosui, who take kobolds as slaves. Kaz is certain he can remove the collar they place on him and escape, thanks to his cultivation, but he allows himself to be taken to their city so he can find his friends. There, he's placed in a mine with a number of other kobolds, but soon escapes and makes his way back up through the levels controlled by the mosui until he finds Li, who already managed to get free, thanks to Lianhua. Lianhua herself fights back against her captor, who is a powerful cultivator, but nearly dies. Kaz arrives just in time to save her, but the cultivator has to be defeated by Chi Yincang, who serves as a conduit for Lianhua's grandfather, who is at the Core Formation stage. The slaves rebel, taking down the mosui, most of whom are killed. After the battle, Lianhua searches the city's records and discovers that the mosui are a created race, as are Kaz's people.

Kaz continues to lead the group downward, though their goal has been partially achieved, since Lianhua also learned that the mosui city was built by the civilization she was searching for. She seeks further proof, however, and Kaz himself needs answers. He was born in the Deep, though he doesn't remember much of his childhood, but he believes the tragedy of his life and the origin of his people are linked. His dragon companion, Li, has become his friend and new family, learning to speak in his mind.

When the group reaches the Deep, they discover that while it is outwardly peaceful, politics and dissatisfaction roil beneath the surface. Kaz allows himself to be abducted by a chief who seems to be at the center of many of those secrets, and in doing so discovers some surviving extended family, including a great aunt who tells him that his mother was actually his aunt, and the female he called aunt was actually his mother. Further, because of the murder of his father's entire tribe, the path from the Deep has been closed for years, and his tribe was exiled for a crime they didn't commit. Kaz kills the chief who abducted him, allowing the truth to emerge.

When Kaz gets too close to discovering who was really behind everything, a horrific creature is sent against him by the mysterious figure who once 'aided' him with his core. He manages to defeat it with the help of his friends, but seems to be badly injured. He returns the knife given to him by his mother, which turns out to be the key to reopening the Deep, and escapes from the mountain. He's joined by his young cousin, Kyla, as well as Li and the humans.

They travel to the nearest human city, where they discover that Raff has been accused of abducting the princess, who went missing shortly after Raff left. Raff's sister, Jinn, and his noble family, are also suspects, and Jinn is also missing. Raff believes Jinn and the princess may simply have run off to have an 'adventure' and he and Kaz join a tournament in hopes that Jinn will recognize Raff and come to find him. Things go horribly wrong when people start trying to kill or kidnap them, as well, and they discover that someone has been systematically replacing the nobility of the city with dopplegangers, including the king himself. Kaz, Raff, and the others stumble across a colony of xiyi, a lizard-like race created by the same people who made the kobolds and the mosui. They free the human nobles, defeat the xiyi, and battle the black dragon worshipped by some of the xiyi. Some of the xiyi become their allies, and they also discover that the rest of Li's family may be held by the xiyi in their home.

Kaz's cultivation has grown to the point that he is now able to reform his body so long as his core remains intact, and he realizes that because his people are a created race, rather than natural, they're not included in the cycle of the world. He decides to return home to confront Nucai, the last remaining member of the group that created his race, who has continued to manipulate them for centuries. When he returns, he and Li use their power to hide from Nucai, traveling down from the top of the mountain while Kyla, Lianhua, and the others enter through the portal into the Deep. He retraces his steps, seeing everything from his new perspective, and continues to learn more about himself, his people, and the mountain itself.

Meanwhile, Kyla and the others are immediately drawn back into the politics of the Deep. Kyla meets the blacksmith, Shom, the only kobold who can manipulate the rare metal, adamantium, which is what Kaz's knife is made of. Kyla discovers that Shom is actually Dongwu, the creator of the kobolds, who has been hiding in the mountain ever since the first king, Qiangde, was killed in the xiyi rebellion. Shom tries to get the humans to leave, afraid that they'll destabilize the situation, but Kaz arrives and forces her to leave them alone. She realizes she can't frighten them off and attempts to convince them instead, but it's too late. Nucai sends his spies to abduct one of the humans in order to force the rest of them to come to him. A huge plot is revealed, and Kaz goes in to confront Nucai, while Li attempts to sneak in. Li is captured, and Nucai threatens her in order to keep Kaz under control. Kaz and Li work together to free her, allowing Kaz to attack Nucai.

Nucai runs, and Shom attempts to prevent him from destroying the Tree, which as been his prison for centuries. Shom is badly injured, but slows Nucai enough for Kaz to get there in time, and Kaz kills Nucai. The Tree has been destabilized, however, and Kaz realizes that the Rabbit and the Tiger, two of the twelve Sacred Beasts who protect the balance of the world, have been providing the power that kept the Tree alive. He rescues them, accepting in the process that he himself must become the Dog in order to save the mountain and his people. He creates a new Tree, which anchors the ki in the mountain, using his own power to keep it alive. The Great Beasts go free, and Kaz and his friends live on, with Kaz (and eventually Li) as part of the new Divine Beasts, able to teach the world to accept kobolds, xiyi, and the few remaining mosui so that they can live outside the mountain.

The cultivation system in The Broken Knife is based on traditional Chinese mythology and xianxia, with dantians, cores, and ki. There are many worlds, linked by Gates, which open involuntarily when a world is thrown out of balance. When that happens, creatures that are not native to the world can come through, bringing other forms of ki that are alien to the original world. Humans were one of those invaders, which is why they're outside of the normal cycle, though they can use ki. Eventually, they can gather enough of the foreign ki to create a core made of it, which pulls them to through the gate and into their original world, which is why no human above Golden Core remains in this world.

Meanwhile, animals native to this world have a small chance to be born with a core, which strengthens over time or as they're exposed to powerful sources of different kinds of native ki. The twelve Divine Beasts maintain the balance of the various kinds of ki, in order to prevent the Gate from opening and sending more outside, corrupting ki into the world. Kaz's race was created by using a plant from outside the world to combine the cores of Golden Core humans with naturally cored animals. This is something entirely unnatural, and so the world doesn't know what to do with them. When they're removed from ki-rich environments, they quickly begin to devolve back to their natural (animal) aspects.

The creatures used to create kobolds naturally had mostly females with cores, and that remained true when Shom made them, though she manipulated the process to make this almost always true. Only when she made the last tribe did she realize that she was reducing males to the same position as female humans and make it so males could also have cores. Kaz is one of these, though he doesn't know it at first.

All creatures, including humans, increase their body cultivation level by filling their flesh with ki, to the point that they are essentially power, rather than flesh. Spirit cultivation differs, however, because humans need wei, the foreign ki, to ascend (creating new bodies in their new world), while wei is unusable by beings native to the planet. 

The planet uses the cores of the animals to cleanse the wei (the foreign ki), and the Divine Beasts are the best source of truly pure ki. Animals cannot form a core, but have to be born with one, and can never ascend because their ki belongs in this world. Only animals with all five forms of ki can become divine, and then they have to choose a ki type to guard. Kaz chooses Wood ki. Wei can block natural ki, and is the only thing which can hide from a Divine Beast, since they, like the world they represent, can't use it or feel it with their aura.

The original Emperor of the lost race Lianhua is searching for was actually a dragon named Qiangde, who was born with a core, but wanted to ascend. He spent his entire life trying to figure out why humans could and he couldn't, which led to him creating races which combined both humans and animals. He eventually decided to try to become the Divine Dragon, thanks to the story that the Divine Beasts could pass beyond the Gate to the Divine Emperor's palace. He failed, but he killed or captured several of the Divine Beasts and set the world out of balance in the process. This is the situation when Kaz arrives on the scene and manages to free the spirits of the former Divine Beasts to choose their successors and reenter the cycle.

I have attached the first book of The Broken Knife, and look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you,

Elizabeth Oswald