The New Home of The 27 Kingdoms
Once upon a time, I “accidentally” wrote about 50,000 words on a dark fantasy story about twins and a tower for a short story call. I don’t remember if this was actually the first time I so dramatically overestimated the length of a story, but it stands out in my head as the first.
Around the same time, on a challenge from my Southbridge Thai Orchid writing group—or I’d forgotten to download a copy of whatever I was “supposed” to be working on—I started a story about a princess who was preparing for her wedding, only to find out she’d been married for five years. Her memory was faulty due to abuse…and there was a dragon involved somewhere, but the dragon was in as much torture as the princess.
I honestly couldn’t tell you which I started writing first, but I am pretty sure that it was the princess story that first referenced the 27 Kingdoms Treaty.
With these sets of stories, I came up with a whole grand plan of self-pubbing with a pen name (because these were way darker than the middle grade books I was releasing and there was still lots of marketing data showing fantasy books with female author names were not getting nearly the attention as those with male or initialed author names). I had bartered a lease with my horse, Calico, for fantastic art from my friend, Dante Saunders, and I was bartering editing for editing on what I’d written.
But that’s as far as I got. I was working as an acquiring editor for a midsize press, learning how freaking hard it was to publish. I hadn’t gotten my ADHD diagnoses yet, but I was aware how I struggled in meeting long-term deadlines and ongoing release schedules. I was giving more to my authors than to my own writing (another still-ongoing struggle), I was president of Broad Universe…and I won’t even get into the long list of other things I had committed serious time and energy to.
I was on the way to a serious burnout.
We don’t need to get into how bad that burnout was, but one of the smarter decisions I made was not pulling the trigger on my grand publishing plan for the 27 Kingdoms books.
Since then, I have tried several ways of getting them out into the world with other publishers because I was trigger-shy of the whole self-publishing idea. I was very excited when I sold the series to Chris Kennedy Publishing’s fantasy arm, New Mythology, but I once again found myself in a situation where so much was happening in my life that I couldn’t keep up with the publishing schedule.
More than that, I’d learned more about worldbuilding and what I wanted to do with this series—and what I could do! Hell, I wrote over 300,000 more words just in my princess and dragon series, not even including the World Bibles.
And if you read my October post, part of my journey was helping another friend learn how to self-publish! Which meant I had to learn it, myself. Fortunately, I love conventions, conferences, and learning, so I absorbed a lot of information. More importantly, in helping Dr. Patti publish, I learned the most important thing: I learned that I could do this, too.
I also learned how to better ask for help.
I plan on introducing more of my helpers in future posts—and my newsletter, where I announce things first! (Sign up for it here!) But right now, I want to introduce you to the namesake of Noble Armata Press, the publishing arm of A Novel Friend, who made this possible.
My mom! Jo-Ann Noble.
Now, she doesn’t want me to talk a lot about her, so I’ve got an excuse / order to keep the rest of the post brief. But after I lost the contract at CKP/New Mythology…and shortly thereafter fell off Bentley and broke 12 ribs…she wanted to help me get back on my feet. I explained what I wanted to do, and she was willing to help make that happen. <3
I am very blessed and fortunate to have been raised in a family that told me I could be anything—and meant it! But helping me make this project happen means even more.
So let me show you a little more about this logo—designed by the amazing Angi Shearstone (who I’ll write more about later!).
Noble is my maiden name. In my early plans with the series, that was going to be the pen name I used.
Armata is my mother’s family name. It’s Polish, thus the Polish eagle on the main sail.
When I think of “armata,” I think ships, though its Polish translation is more literally “cannon.” But I wanted a ship, even though there are other great publishing houses that use that icon. It’s a great metaphor for the publishing journey. I also specifically wanted the dragon motif that went with the series. DragonLance books were one of my foundational reading experiences growing up, so I wanted to work that in there, but specifically the Asian style rather than a Viking or European styles, as the dragons in the 27 Kingdoms are more like those from various Asian myths and stories.
I ran several of Angi’s tests by my mom, and we both agreed we liked this one.
We both also appreciated that Noble Armata Press created the acronym “NAP,” since both of us may or may not be guilty of working ourselves a little too hard and really needing naps. So what’s next? Here’s a hint!
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