A lot is happening behind the scenes in the Rage Universe, and many stories are still left to be told.
Séréna is one of those stories.
Mark Longfellow has been tasked by the Temple of Pearls to bring a casket containing mysterious relics to a faraway castle in the Gonthor Mountains, but these relics are very coveted, and mercenaries have been hired to steal it. So the temple decided to send decoys to the Gonthor too, each of them traveling alone under the name Serena with a pouch supposed to contain the relics, each having been led to believe that one of them might be the Right One, the one who would carry the relics of the Hand of Saint Maximilian to an ancient temple in the Gonthor.
You discovered just how many there are in Chapter 11 of the Serena Series, but you don’t know them yet.
Meet them all, and discover more about the Temple of Pearls and the Serena Universe, in this new book written at a frantic pace by Sister Olivia and beautifully drawn by Sister Viviane, all in one night!
Don’t worry (or do worry, I don’t know), it’s still us. The book is written by me, Eric Peyron, and penciled by Stéphane Degardin, and it’s really by far the strangest and funniest book I’ve ever written. The idea happened as I was writing a scene in Serena Chapter 11 which was supposed to be a penciler’s nightmare: I needed all the main characters gathered in the same room. All the main characters. You won’t understand why it’s so daunting until you know just how many there are. In short, I asked Stéphane to draw a crowd in which no one is unknown.
Well, believe it or not, it’s also a real challenge to write too, especially since I needed everyone to act in character. Which means I had to know everyone before their adventures begin. Meaning I had to first actually write literally the whole first season. And I didn’t manage to fit them all in Season 1, so I had to write Season 2 too, which actually gave me ideas for a Season 3 and a spinoff series… And once that was done, I thought I could get back to writing Chapter 11. Well, that wasn’t enough. I had the stories, but I didn’t quite nailed the characters, so I wrote myself a bible with everyone in it. Then I looked at it, and thought to myself: I have to publish this too. But I didn’t want it to feel impersonal, like some Marvel Universe or DC Who’s Who. Actually, the whole Serena series is about taking characters usually written as generic characters, and making them main characters.
And at some point, Olivia happened. Imagine one my characters taking a step forward, and volunteering to write everything she knows about her temple and her sisters. She would interview them all, and have Viviane draw them, and then all I had to do was let her talk.
And I finally got to finish Chapter 11 which was a relief!
I’d recommend to read the first eleven chapters (either in Worlds of Rage or in Serena #1), and then read The Temple of Pearls.
Read it at least for Olivia, she tried to write it very carefully even though she was in a hurry (and many time, it shows…), she managed to neatly shape her letters, and she managed to write it all in one night!
Even I didn’t manage to do it.
There are three versions of this book with three different double covers! Choose the one you like the most!
Here are all the publishers of these books in alphabetical order! Just hover on each icons to display their names, and click to display the corresponding Page!
The Temple of Pearls (Cover 1) in Public Libraries
Nextory being the provider of its digital library for many public and private organisms in France, most notably Public Libraries, you will find below a list of those who offer this issue, in alphabetical order.
The Temple of Pearls (Cover 2) in Public Libraries
Nextory being the provider of its digital library for many public and private organisms in France, most notably Public Libraries, you will find below a list of those who offer this issue, in alphabetical order.
The Temple of Pearls (Cover 3) in Public Libraries
Nextory being the provider of its digital library for many public and private organisms in France, most notably Public Libraries, you will find below a list of those who offer this issue, in alphabetical order.
Important: All the printed versions of these books are already available exclusively on Amazon, and the digital versions will follow, but there’s been a little setback. To sum it up, the digital versions will be available in all the digital libraries publishing books in PDF format, but not yet to all those who publish books exclusively in ePub format.
Here’s what happened, for the more tech savvy among you. Some 6 years ago, I tested the first version of Affinity Publisher, and while testing it, I wrote a book (in French only sorry), that I published on digital libraries like Apple Books or Amazon Kindle. To that end, I had to create an ePub file of the book. Since Affinity Publisher doesn’t allow yet exportation in ePub, I exported the book as a flattened PDF, converted the PDF into an Apple Pages document, and exported the resulting document in ePub. The process is a little easier with Amazon Kindle, since I can open the PDF directly into the Kindle Create App and then export it in their own KPF format. And everyone was fine with it! Even though I actually converted a formatted text file as a series of image files, Apple and Amazon still allowed me to publish the book! And then, AI happened… Actually, it’s a coincidence, but five years later, at the time Apple and Amazon began working on their own AI, I received a message from Apple telling me that my book wasn’t suited for publication on Apple Books, so I had to recreate it entirely in Apple Pages (which wasn’t that hard, since there were next to no images in it). The problem isn’t the same with The Temple of Pearls. As there are too many images recreating the whole book for an ePub publication either into Apple Pages or in Adobe InDesign is going to be too much work for… not that much money, obviously. So I tried anyway to publish the book the old way, and so far all the Temple of Pearls digital books have been validated by Apple (surprisingly), and rejected by Amazon. I’ve created each book’s respective entry in Kindle Direct, but I’m going to wait for Serif to add an ePub exportation function to Affinity Publisher before creating ePub versions. I do know that Serif has been working on an ePub Exportation function, but I don’t know when it will be available in beta. When it’s available, I promise you I’ll test the beta as a priority, and create ePub versions of all my books. Until then, you’ll have to be patient, sorry.