Below is this month’s update on upcoming books. One of the first things you’ll notice is that Warden (Book 4: Roost of the Roc) is now published, so it will be dropping off the list. (On a side note, the book has seemingly had a very pleasant reception, so many thanks to my readers for that.)
The next thing that will probably catch the eye of anyone reading this is the fact that only a little progress was made on the Smokescreen book. In addition, the anticipated publication date has been pushed out to the end of May. There are a number of factors that played into this and normally I don’t bother readers with those, but since I’m now essentially putting up a timeline I thought I’d get into the weeds a little.
First, it’s tax time, and I failed to account for that fact in my initial estimates for completing the next book in April. In addition, I recently received a notice from Amazon saying that one of my ebooks that was supposed to be exclusive to their site was on another platform; they gave me 5 days to get it fixed or the full wrath of the Great & Powerful ‘Zon would fall upon me (e.g., they’d kick my book out of the Kindle Select program, I’d forfeit a bunch of royalties, etc.). Needless to say, I dropped everything to address that asap. Moreover, it came to my attention that the descriptions of almost all my books on their respective Amazon product pages had been altered – basically, they all appeared as a single block of text instead of being in paragraph form, so I had to devote some time to fixing that. If that wasn’t enough, I had some issues with one of my websites, and in trying to fix the problem my web hosting service essentially blew up the site. *KABOOM*
The aforementioned issues are not everything that’s happened of late, but believe it or not, these types of things are not uncommon. For instance, this isn’t the first time Amazon has told me one of my titles is on another site and threatened told me that they’ll boot me from Kindle Select if I don’t fix it. (Oddly enough, their email always seems to arrive on the weekend, which cuts into the time they give you to remedy the problem because you only get 5 days – not 5 business days – to make things right.) Likewise – and shockingly – this isn’ the first time I’ve had a website inadvertently destroyed by someone attempting to fix a problem. But these aren’t the kinds of things I typically share with readers; to the extent I mention it at all, I usually just say there’s been slippage in the schedule (or words to that effect). But again, if we’re getting into timelines and such, you guys are probably going to see more of the sausage-making than you care to with respect to my books.
Anyway, below is the current schedule for upcoming titles. Aside from the Smokescreen novel, I don’t think anything else has changed. Also, with Warden 4 complete and dropping off, I’ll probably add an additional title to the list next month.(Disclaimer: these are subject to change and therefore not set in stone.)
Warden (Book 4: Roost of the Roc)
- Completion percentage: 100%. (Woo-hoo!!!)
- Publication date: Per Amazon, I believe the official publication date was April 11, 2022.
Smokescreen book (working title: Smoked: A Kid Sensation Spin-off Novel)
- Completion percentage: roughly 45%.
- Estimated completion date: Shooting to be done by end of May
- Publication date: Too early to guess
Kid Sensation #10 (working title: Expiation)
- Completion percentage: roughly 25%.
- Estimated completion date: Too early to guess
- Publication date: Too early to guess
Vixen novel (working title: Siren’s Call: An Alpha League Supers Novel)
- Completion percentage: roughly 20%.
- Estimated completion date: Too early to guess
- Publication date: Too early to guess
Urban fantasy novel (working title: The Seventh Shade)
- Completion percentage: roughly 20%.
- Estimated completion date: Too early to guess
- Publication date: Too early to guess
- Link to excerpt here
Urban fantasy novel (working title: Carver)
- Completion percentage: roughly 10%.
- Estimated completion date: Too early to guess
- Publication date: Too early to guess
- Link to excerpt here
As I’ve stated before, the above represent just a sample as opposed to everything I’m working on, but hopefully they provide some insight regarding what’s in the pipeline.