I realize I’ve been promising this post for a very long time. Frankly, I’ve been putting it off because it was causing me a bit of anxiety. I needed to focus on actually writing the book, rather than writing about the book. Thankfully, Meg has really stepped up and kept the blog running in the meantime, posting all the amazing things people send in.

But it’s the start of a new year, and I want to set the record straight as I move into the home stretch, so let’s get right to it…

Not a Trilogy!

First off, the Demon Cycle is not a trilogy. The third book, The Daylight War, will NOT end the series. It was always intended to be a series of five books. A quintet.

This is a confusing point, though, because the series was widely marketed as a trilogy in the early days. It’s an understandable error that isn’t really anyone’s fault, but one that has caused me an ongoing headache these past years.

When I initially sold The Warded Man to Del Rey, they asked about my plans for sequels. I did a treatment for the series showing the full story arc. That treatment was for five books. I noted that while the arcs for all the main characters would resolve in the fifth book, I might continue to write further stories set in the same world with different characters or at different time periods (like The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold).

But I was also realistic, and at the end of my presentation, I noted that if I HAD to close it out in three books, I theoretically could, but really didn’t wanna.

Del Rey hedged their bets (a totally fair move on their part), offering to buy the first three books and see how it went. Several other markets, like the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Poland, etc., quickly followed suit and bought three books as well.

Happily—and thanks especially to you, my fans—the series took off and I never had to worry about what I might need to do to force the story into three books. However, since the initial contracts in so many countries matched the length of the original Del Rey contract, the book media and some internal marketing teams assumed (not unreasonably) it was to be a trilogy. It was widely reported as such with the viral speed of the internet, and has caused wildfires I’ve been trying to extinguish ever since.

I have since signed contracts in the US and UK for another three full novels after The Daylight War. The first two if these will be the final books of the original quintet. The last will be a standalone novel set in the same world with some shared characters. It is plotted out already and I think it will be a kickass book that will appeal to both fans of the series and new readers.

But even with six books to spread out into, the Demon Cycle has grown with the telling. I don’t think this is a bad thing. However, instead of changing my five book plan, I have started doing some spinoff books for the more standalone storylines. These are not necessary to enjoy the main series, but do expand the world and give insights into the characters and their motivations.

In between writing The Warded Man and The Desert Spear, I wrote a novella for Subterranean Press about Arlen during his pre-warded Messenger days called The Great Bazaar. It was meant to appeal new readers, introducing them to my world, while also giving those who had read Warded Man a great bridge into Desert Spear. It also had some deleted scenes from The Warded Man along with my reflections on the writing process that caused them to be cut, a Krasian dictionary and ward grimoire.

I love that little book. After writing The Desert Spear, I wrote a second novella entitled Brayan’s Gold, gorgeously illustrated by Lauren K Cannon, about Arlen’s first (extremely dangerous) Messenger run. Again it was meant for both fans of the series and new readers.

These novellas have gone on to be translated into German, Polish, and French, most of them released in 2011. All are beautiful, illustrated editions that are a great fix between the novels. The original Subterranean Press books are pretty rare and expensive now, but easily available as eBooks in both the US & UK, and a new UK edition combining them both into one book will be printed this year.

I intend to continue writing one novella between each novel. The next, Mudboy, will have a storyline that introduces a wholly new character. It started as part of Daylight War, but got too big for its britches. It’s already mostly written.

The full Demon Cycle bibliography now looks like this:

Novel Quintet:

Book One: The Warded Man (First published 2008)

Book Two: The Desert Spear (First published 2010)

Book Three: The Daylight War (Forthcoming)

Book Four: The Forest Fortress (Forthcoming, working title subject to change)

Book Five: The Core (Forthcoming, working title subject to change)

These five books will close the storylines for Arlen, Jardir, Rojer, Leesha, Renna, Inevera, Abban, etc.

Standalone Novel:

Book Six: Tibbet’s Brook (Forthcoming, working title subject to change)

This book will mostly be about Selia Barren from Tibbet’s Brook, showing her life story and how it affects her decisions in the present as she contends with corelings, Krasians, and the growing power of Southwatch, all while wrestling the demons of her own past. It is mostly plotted and I am very psyched to write it.

Standalone Novellas:

The Great Bazaar (First Published 2010)

Brayan’s Gold (First Published 2011)

Mudboy (Forthcoming)

Others TBD

Pub Date

The next thing I would like to clarify is the publication date. As of this moment, The Daylight War will probably be out February 4, 2013.

This 2013 date has been rumored for some time, and prompted a lot of “Say it ain’t so!” messages from fans via facebook, twitter, email, and the like. I know it comes from a place of enjoyment for my work, and the VAST majority of messages have had a tone of excitement and exuberance that brings joy to my heart. But on some occasions, the exhortations have been… ruder, implying that I should be doing nothing but sitting chained to my desk cranking out manuscripts.

It is fair for people to be annoyed about the current pub date, as the book was briefly available for pre-order on several major bookseller sites with a release date of Spring of 2012, leading many to set their hopes on that date. The shift of almost a year is a pretty big one. Even now, I say “probably” for the 2013 date because in publishing few things are set in stone. Several countries are trying to coordinate a worldwide release date, and it can be a complex thing.

Especially when the author misses their deadline.

Ahem.

Oh, I have my excuses. Early this year my part-time assistant (deservedly) went on to a full time publishing job, leaving me with a lot of administrative work that ate away at my writing time. Around the same time I also had major shoulder surgery that left my arm in a sling for months. I’m told it went well and I will be back to full strength without pain at some point, but six months out I’m still only at 75%, and prolonged or strenuous use leaves me in a lot of pain.

And I spend a lot of time with my three year old daughter Cassie. I know I could put her in daycare or hire a sitter as many people do, but these years before she starts going to school all the time are precious, and I don’t want her to ever feel like daddy didn’t have time for her. We do arts and crafts and build marble runs and train sets. We practice her reading and watch Pixar movies. We argue about what she wants for dinner, bathtime and bedtime. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

But also, in fairness to me, the deadline was not realistic. When I first sold the books, there was pressure from the publishers to turn in a book every year. At the time, I naively told them I could do that, because even though it took me seven years to write The Warded Man, I did that writing part time. Now I would be full time, and should have the sequel out much more quickly.

Eh. Not so much.

I’ve talked about this before. My writing process is a very slow, meticulous one, and sometimes it requires me to stop and unravel a story knot before I can continue. Whether this method is right for everyone is debatable, but it is what works best for me to deliver a level of quality I am satisfied with. I take a lot of pride in my books, and don’t want to knock them out half-assed. I ended up delivering The Desert Spear close to a year later than originally promised, and The Daylight War has proven to be much the same.

That said, I have gotten my focus back, and am knocking out Daylight War chapters left and right these last few months. I am finishing up chapter 19 out of an estimated 27, and I expect to deliver it to the publishers in the early spring, so they will have plenty of time for editing and making sure everything is ready for the ’13 release while I get a head start on book four.

I am getting faster, I think. Warded Man took me seven years. Desert Spear took three. Daylight War is looking closer to two. I don’t know that I’ll ever do a book a year, but I hope you’ll have a shorter wait for the 4th book than for the 3rd.

I can assure you, though, The Daylight War will be worth the wait. Here are a couple of previews:

First up, the excerpt from Inevera’s storyline that was included with the eBooks and UK paperback of The Desert Spear is now live on the Excisions page! Throughout The Desert Spear, Inevera’s motivations, and what she really saw in the alagai hora she cast, remained a mystery. The Daylight War takes you back into her childhood to see her humble beginnings. Read it here.

Next, my spontaneous reading at NY Comic-Con this year, where I gave a peek into Arlen’s newly leveled up powers, and how he and Renna are getting on after the… incident:

Usually these bonus materials come in the form of an excerpt from the next book. The Warded Man mmpb, for example, contains the prologue to The Desert Spear.  We are already including a short Krasian Dictionary in the mmpb, but Del Rey was very keen to include an excerpt from The Daylight War, as well.

But I’m not ready to give one up.

This isn’t because I haven’t written anything. I have a good 200 pages of pretty kickass material (if I do say so myself), but as I mentioned on the blog recently, I did a bit of a hatchet job on the book a month or so ago, and the new POV introduction (Mudboy) that I was going to include as the TDS mmpb excerpt was cut from The Daylight War. Not because it isn’t good (oh man, is it good), but because including the full character arc (which would span a dozen or so years) would have made the book somewhat unwieldy. The main story is meaty enough.

I could also include a taste of the Arlen & Renna chapters I have finished, but they contain a LOT of big reveals I am not yet ready to make public with the new book still some ways off. It was impossible to pick something that wasn’t too spoilery.

So what to do?

After a conversation with my editor, we decided to leave it up to you, the readers. We will be including an Q&A interview with me in the mmpb in addition to the Krasian Dictionary, and would like to include YOUR questions.

All you need to do is comment on this post with a question you would like me to answer. My editor and I will select the best ones, and they will appear in the mmpb, along with my answers.

Rules:

1) Please include your first name and where you’re from (not a specific address, just town and country).

2) Ask as many questions as you like, but I will only pick one per person to answer in the book.

3) Questions may be on any topic (writing craft, magic system details, specifics about events in the stories, etc), but please don’t ask questions the answers to which would be story spoilers, like “Who will Arlen end up with, Renna or Leesha?” Obviously, I am not going to answer those.

4) I may answer some questions immediately in the comments thread, if they are ones I am not planning to include in the mmpb insert.

5) The final interview is due to Del Rey on Oct. 1 (less than two weeks!), which means I need time to pick questions and answer them, so the sooner you ask, the better your chances of getting your questions into the book.

Thanks for your help!

What we’re releasing today is an imperfect work, with the idea being for it to be improved upon over the coming days and weeks, in response to your feedback regarding its design and ease of use. You’ll notice, for example, that the private messaging functionality is yet to go live, and that the registration process could be somewhat less clunky. Once you’ve registered, you’ll need to check the email account which you provided during registration for a message which contains your auto-generated password.

So, without further ado, I would like to invite you to check out the forum. Please feel free to post whatever you wish. It would be especially helpful if you could leave us your feedback here, under Forum Feedback.

(Please note that during the development phase, we secretly opened up the site to registered users for the first time. This is why about a half a dozen of you who are WordPress-savvy were able to register. Now that the forum page is no longer password protected, those users should be able to view the forum and sign in with your original login details.)

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

David

In addition to the t-shirts I mentioned in the last post, the Messenger today brought another something very special, my sample copies of Der große Basar, the German translation/extended edition of The Great Bazaar.

Der große Basar isn’t just a translation of the US edition, though. It really is unique. In addition to another beautiful cover painting, the German edition has a bunch of all-new  illustrations, including a gorgeous fold-out map of Fort Krasia, The Desert Spear:

Der große Basar also includes Brayan’s Gold, an all-new Arlen Messenger novella exclusive to the German edition. This story isn’t even being published in English, the language it was written in, until later this year! It’s a German worldwide exclusive, at least for the next few months.

Here are some links to recent German reviews since the book came out:

Games Orbit

Faerie Fire

Suite 101

Crazy Culture Clap

Reviews on Thalia Books

The Warded Man MMPB released yesterday, and my while I think my carefully plotted wards all activated properly, the drain on the grid might have affected the weather. The sky was overcast yesterday morning as my agent and I embarked on our quest to sign every book we could find in Manhattan and Brooklyn in a single day, sunup to sundown. I had 200 signed bookplates in my pocket, along with the signing pens my mother gave me a couple of years ago. Joshua had a backpack full of xeroxed press reviews about the book, and paperback samples to give as gifts to any bookstore staff who expressed an interest in reading fantasy to keep or just leave in their break rooms.

We started out in Park Slope Brooklyn at the 7th Avenue Barnes and Noble, where they had eight copies in stock, but they had just arrived, and were not yet shelved. This is one of the main reasons authors should do this sort of thing on release day. There were probably ten stores we visited over the course of the day that had not yet shelved the books.

I want to be clear that this is not the fault of the stores or their employees, at least not at the ground level. In most cases, the books (which the store had ordered months in advance) had been delivered that very day, or just the night before. Stores receive a lot of books in these shipments, and it takes time to inventory and shelve them all. Most stores shelve the bestsellers first (as any smart business should), and in places without a lot of staff, it can take days to get around to a new author like me.

But by coming in and introducing ourselves to the staff, we were not only able to have the books shelved immediately with good facing, but made even more enticing by the “Author signed” stickers now adorning the front. I slipped a signed bookplate into every copy, so that any readers who enjoy the book enough to want to buy The Desert Spear (Free excerpt with that link!) in April will be able to peel off the sticker backing, and, PRESTO! make their new hardcover into a signed book.

From Park Slope we went to another couple of stores in Brooklyn, and then took the subway into Manhattan, starting out on Wall Street at the Borders down there, and then making a zig-zaggy loop up the east side of the island and then going crosstown at the top and zig-zagging back down the west. We visited 20 bookstores in all, and I signed 108 books, plus another half dozen that we gave to store staff, bringing the total up to 114. We met a lot of great, hard working, and friendly store staff & customers, and had fun geeking out about books with them. It was also an opportunity to thank the floor workers for what they do. I used to manage a comic shop, and know how difficult a job retail sellers have. And they usually do it with a cheery smile.

It was a great day, but even after a night’s rest, my feet are still killing me.

Did I mention that the MMPB has an exclusive Desert Spear excerpt not available online at the back?

Also in the news is The Great Bazaar. Subterranean Press reports that there are only about 75 copies of the trade version left, and the limited edition is already sold out. It is unlikely these books will last much longer, and there are no plans to go back on press. If you are at all interested, I strongly suggest you order soon. I love that little book dearly, and consider it’s events Canon that give real depth to some of my favorite characters in the series.

Not convinced? Check out what Blood of the Muse has to say about The Great Bazaar.

Last but not least, there is some more news on The Desert Spear:

Aidan Moher has posted a New Exclusive Desert Spear Excerpt on his blog A Dribble of Ink. I know that people wanted some Arlen/Leesha/Rojer action, so I came through this time around with a delicious appetizer for that. Check it out.

There have also been some great new reviews popping up, now that the release date is looming. The Superfast Reader follows up the interview we did a few weeks ago with this review.

Other glowing reviews appearing, like this one from Library Journal, or:

“…Those willing to give Jardir his due will see him develop depth and perspective that give his inevitable confrontation with Arlen magnitude. This more brutal sequel emphasizes political and romantic intrigue without losing the urgency of the demon war.”

-Booklist

“…Well-drawn characters, fascinating worldbuilding, action and conflict make for an exciting page-turner.”

* * * * 1/2

-Romantic Times

Finally, Recorded Books has announced the upcoming audio book of The Desert Spear, which will again feature the talented narrator Pete Bradbury, whose silken rumble of a voice could charm the panties off a marble statue of Athena. His reading of The Warded Man is available now, and it’s fantastic.