Posted on

What’s been happening this summer?

In a word: editing. I’m currently on the fifth (and probably final) edit of Exodus, the third and final book in the Navigator trilogy. I find editing quite difficult, but have been glad to actually enjoy re-reading Exodus so many times in a row!

I’m also heartened that there haven’t been a lot of glaring issues; it’s mostly been tightening sentences for clarity, removing unnecessary commas and so on. The number of actual proper typos, or continuity errors etc has been (hopefully) relatively low.

So, what happens next? Once I’ve finished the final edit, there’s still a fair amount to do, including:

  • I’m keen to release second editions of both Parasites and Dusk, with very minor tweaking, so these need to be re-set and released
  • The cover art for Exodus needs to be created, along with the maps for each book. I wasn’t happy with how the map looked in Dusk, so I’m going to re-commission an artist to have another go
  • Exodus also needs to be laid out for both print and kindle, and fitted into the right template
  • We’ll also have a book tour! Most book tours don’t do tours for second or third books in a trilogy, so I’m hoping we can celebrate all three books at once, with some kind of giveaway

All of this takes time, so it will be a fair bit longer before Exodus hits the shelves. Because of other commitments, each edit of Exodus has been taking about three weeks, so we definitely won’t be ready until at least the early New Year. However, in the meantime, I’ll just be waiting for people to get stuff done – and as such, can start working on either Grace and Vengeance, The Slow and Gentle Wyrd or even The Witch Lord’s Apprentice, which I’ve been looking forward to writing for some time.

 Thank you for your patience, and I hope you (eventually) enjoy Exodus as much as I do. 

Posted on

What’s been going on since February?

I know, I’ve been terrible for blogging. It’s been four months, I’m sorry. All I can say is that I’m better at writing than I am at blogging / marketing / tweeting!

But it’s with great pleasure that I can announce that the first draft of the third and final book in the Navigator / Parasites trilogy, tentatively named Exodus, is finished. It was an odd book to write – I had a lot of freedom in the first book because I had a rough framework for where I wanted to go, but I could essentially make the worlds from scratch. The second had a few limitations, and a rough sense of direction, but I very much felt that we could still be exploring and experiencing the wonders of the universe.

Exodus was a lot tougher. Our heroes are on the run, up against the wall, and have a very, very narrow window for success and survival, not to mention big ambitions. They’ve got a lot riding on them, and although they’ve got some remarkable individuals on their side, they can’t pause for breath – and that’s not something that comes easily to Lyrans.

But we’re there, and I’m now starting the editing process, which isn’t wildly exciting to blog about or report on. I want to do a re-read of Parasites and Dusk to ensure good continuity – and if either of them get a tiny little sprucing up in the process, then all the better!

In other matters, one of the reasons why I’ve been quite quiet has been works on the house, which has been quite disruptive (and expensive). The house seems to have been cursed (hopefully not literally) with a number of leaks in a number of rooms, and rather than tackle them piecemeal, we’ve had major works done to correct them – which has been stressful, and often meant that I’ve not been able to write as much as I wanted to. I’m still slightly embarrassed to say that even when I had a full day to write (and only write) I barely managed 7k words. I did 4k in an afternoon at the weekend, which just goes to show the power of good mental health and the lovely Cherry Stream keyboard (scissor switches for the win!).

So I’m looking forward to bringing you all a new book soon – and then we can get onto the very exciting subjects of Grace and Vengeance, and the Slow and Gentle Wyrd, which I’ve been putting off to get Exodus done!