On the writing front, I have a lot of news and some explanation, so it will be long. Grab you a drink and settle in.
My three-book contract with Penguin-Random House has a non-compete clause in it that states I cannot publish any novel-length work two months prior and three months after a novel I’ve contracted with them is published. DRAGON UNLEASHED, which is published through PRH, goes live June 9th. Any novel length work I have in the hopper must be rolled out no later than April 8th OR no earlier than Sept. 10th, otherwise I’m in breach of contract due to the non-compete clause. Make sense? Here’s the next part.
My editor has a big chunk of THE IPPOS KING on her desk – but not all of it. She’s edited what she has, and according to the last count she gave me, there are almost 600 revision notes and comments that I need to review and incorporate. This is a big book. Bigger than RADIANCE, bigger than EIDOLON. I’m currently at 87k words and guesstimate I’ll hit or get close to 100k words by the time I’m done. At the rate I’m writing right now, I’ll have the book completed by April 8th. I WON’T have it edited, revised, proofed, formatted, or published by that date. There’s just no way possible. That being said, I have a contingency plan which I’ve discussed with my agent and with my editor. I’m all about work-arounds and Plan Bs.
Beginning the first week of April, I will start serializing the rough draft of THE IPPOS KING on my blog AND put up the preorder for it with a go-live date of Sept. 15th. My editor has given me her blessing on the preorder since the book will be finished by the end of this month, and it’s just a matter of revising, proofing, and formatting after that. The Sept. publishing date will also allow me the necessary time to format for print and maybe (MAYBE) have it produced for audio as well, so that all three formats can go up at the same time instead of the digital version first and the others to follow later.
As for the serialization, I’ll post a section once every week until it’s done. Again, this is the rough draft, and I’m not correcting/revising anything, so you’ll see it in all its tarnished glory prior to my editor working her editorial magic on it. That means typos, misspellings, continuity errors, repetition/redundancy, homonym abuse, etc. I know I have grammar experts, proofreaders, copy editors, and developmental editors who visit here and read my stuff. That being said, please refrain from commenting about the mistakes and/or offering suggestions for fixes. My editor and I know they’re there, and in all likelihood, they’ll be addressed by her and my proofreader to be fixed in the final.
Also there may be instances where the final either includes sections not in the rough draft or exclusions that were originally in the rough draft. The inclusion part definitely pertains to sex scenes. Because I have no idea or control over who is reading what I’m posting on my blog or their age, I’m keeping the serialized version to a mild PG level rating while the final version is at a higher heat level.
So, keep an eye out for the first part of the rough draft of THE IPPOS KING to go up on my blog first week of April. I’ll post a link here along with the link to the preorder for the digital copy (I’ll put up preorders for the print and audio once I have real assets for those formats ready to go. This would be a cover flat for the print version, and a completed and edited audio file.).
So to wrap up, my current book release schedule looks like this:
Rough draft of THE IPPOS KING serialized – starting first week of April 2020
DRAGON UNLEASHED – June 9, 2020
THE IPPOS KING – September 2020 (after Sept. 10th)
GASLIGHT VIDUUS (part of the UNDER A WINTER SKY anthology) – November 2020
I thank you for your patience in all this. I could try and beat the contract clock by rushing out TIK by April 8th, but it would be a mess, so I’d rather serialize the rough copy and give you the polished final version a little later (I did this exact thing with RADIANCE). I hope you’ll enjoy Serovek’s and Anhuset’s story.