What was the original name of The Infinity Mantle?

The LORE Series as you know it now begins with The Infinity Mantle, but this was not always so. Years ago, when I started writing my first novel, moving away from children’s stories and poetry (none of which will ever be published!), it began with scrap paper and pen or pencil (whatever was to hand) and there was no title. See, I was home-schooling my two younger children and had set up a dedicated classroom. Books adorned one wall, a giant blackboard another, while a window filled the third wall and the fourth sported art projects. After school hours, when I prepared lessons for the following day, there I was, in a space that was fun, all about creativity, and in my spare time I started writing. Seriously, kids stay away from a classroom when they don’t need to be there, and therefore there was this daily period of silence (lol).

Eventually that pile of paper had to be put into digital format. A task, I must tell you, that I thoroughly enjoyed, for it allowed for my first ever edit. I began then to understand the meaning of drafts. The first draft is never the one that lands up published!

Anyway, the first book was written … and it was massive. HUGE DOORSTOPPER. Given that I was learning the ropes, therefore reading everything I found on the subject of fiction writing and publishing, I understood it would never be published as it was. Today I disagree with that belief but then I thought I needed to follow the rules – 80 to 100k for a first book, and the 100 was already pushing it. Book one, then, is the first four Arcana books today, or the omnibus edition as it is now, over 500k words.

I had decided on a title. Gathering of Rain. The series starts out with a gathering of the players and my main character’s name then was Rain, thus, Gathering of Rain, and it remained the title of the first book, after I subsequently created four books from that massive volume. To this day I love the title, but input from others revealed Gathering of Rain sounded like the title for a romance novel. Nevertheless, I put it up on Smashwords and actually received great feedback. However, when I landed a three-year contract for the first four books with an indie publisher, the time had arrived to create more effective Fantasy titles.

Gathering of Rain became The Infinity Mantle and I must admit the fit is perfect. With the rights in my hands again, I self-published under the same title. The reason for choosing The Infinity Mantle is explained in INFINITY EXPLAINED. Perhaps the cover will change, but The Infinity Mantle it will remain 

(Copied from The LORE Series)