A few things about the books, all of which are connected.

Firstly: the hardcovers have been removed from sale for the time being. If you have an order being processed it will continue, but no new orders can be made on Amazon. But don't worry, they will be returning soon in a much better and more affordable form.

There may also be... something special in them.

Over the past couple of weeks the eagle-eyed may have noticed the cover images of the Armada Wars books changing. This was A:B testing of new designs. The current favourites are in the image gallery on the home page.

The covers have been standardised across the range, and some have had their artwork tweaked. The interiors have also been spruced up using new software, which has also been used to create new interiors for the paper editions. There are now no discrepancies between Kindle, paperback, and hardcover, guaranteed — they all come from the same source file.

I Dream of Damastion and A Storm to the Savage have the new interiors, and their new covers are being processed now. Both Kindle and paperback editions are on revision 1.5 for both books. They are the example of what the main sequence novels will look like once the interior files are ready.

And because of the new layout, the page counts have been reduced, making both of those paperbacks cheaper.

All eBooks have now been updated with minor changes:
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• Changes to. the front matter to clarify which "books by the author" are part of the main sequence, and which are optional,
• Links added to front matter,
• Improvement of the back matter in the "to be continued" section, including links,
• Minor corrections in some volumes,
• New covers for eBook editions with contrast adjustments. Cover text now uses a new font family and has consistent typographic features,
• Main sequence novels are differentiated visually from expansion episodes by having the author and title at the top of the cover, rather than the bottom,
• Book descriptions have been updated, subtitles added, and search keywords optimised.

I am now resuming my original plan of interleaving the novel releases with the novella releases, albeit with the following changes:

• Significant elements from The Granite Whistle have been merged into A Storm to the Savage, so it is unlikely that I will write TGW in the form I originally planned. Watch this space.
• Forge Ruinous will now very likely end up being a full novel, rather than a novella, and it will be released after Whom Gods Shall Fear.

My aim this year is to knuckle down and keep up a steady pace. I Dream of Damastion is already available for Kindle, with the paperback proof on its way to me even as I type. I am planning to have A Storm to the Savage ready for a release soon, then all efforts will be focused into Whom Gods Shall Fear.

You may have noticed the artwork for IDOD changed in the past week, and the same iconography and cover design has been used for ASTTS. It will also be used for Forge Ruinous, although I have not yet chosen an image for the central glyph of FR's cover. Feel free to suggest your thoughts in the comments below.

I've said before that there are aspects of Steal from the Devil which I now find embarrassing and or problematic. As a debut novel, although many readers do enjoy it, one can only really say that it was released way before it was ready.

I've previously floated the idea of making some quite large changes. On those occasions I have received mostly negative responses, with people saying they would rather it was left just the way it is.

I've decided to split the difference. As well as being generally tidied up (see below), SFTD is going to get some enhancements, clarifications, and — of course — a thorough stylistic edit. I want to be very clear that nothing will change substantially as far as the plot goes. What will happen is that characters and situations will get expanded text, so that it is clearer what is happening, and the consequences further down the line are more understandable. I will try to bring the style of the book into line with the sequels, without losing any of its weird atmosphere.

I also aim to trim just a little fat — this means the teasers and references that ultimately went unused as the story found its own way through the sequels.

If you have strong feelings about this, then please do say so in the comments.

Over the years, with me having to update the same stories in various alternate files, discontinuities have crept into the published materials. These include vanishing custom fonts, different typographic conventions, and in some cases even material differences in the actual words of the books.

There is also the MAGA-cap wearing elephant in the room. A poll was conducted across Twitter and Facebook, and the overwhelming majority favoured a retrospective change to the lore where that acronym is concerned. The conventional air and ground assault forces will have to be called something different. Perhaps I just solved it there, and CAGA will be the replacement*. The point is that I've had it up to the eyeballs with people assuming that 'MAGA' is a nod to Trump, despite it obviously having nothing to do with him, so I'm just going to change it.

"AGRO" won the polls (standing for 'Air and GRound Operations'), but I think I will save that label for a team of specialists in a future story :o)

For all of those reasons, every single Kindle edition and paperback is going to be overhauled over the next couple of months. ​With the exception of I Dream of Damastion, which from today has the latest typography, corrections, and defined lore, all the updated versions will be released together. I will do my best to convince Amazon to push the Kindle updates out to existing customers, but only the changes to Steal from the Devil are likely to be considered significant enough to justify doing that.

Over the past couple of weeks, the paperback editions have been quietly migrated from Createspace to Kindle Direct Publishing. This means faster and simpler delivery (now fulfilled by normal Amazon means), and full Prime availability. The opportunity was also taken to make some tiny tweaks to the content and covers.

As you may have gathered from a previous post, the current paperbacks of the Armada Wars novels are undergoing a slight evolution.

For one thing, the matte effect covers are being replaced by traditional glossy covers. The proofs have arrived today and I have to say they look much better — colours are rendered more accurately and consistently, text layout and appearance has been improved, the "Armada Wars" title from the Kindle editions has been added, and they generally just look smashing.

Those paperbacks are populating to Amazon right now.

The other big news is that Steal from the Devil will be entering its third edition with this iteration. Unlike previous revisions, this one will add some new text: some dialogue, some prose, some inner thoughts. And a few minor tweaks and corrections of course. This update will also be issued to Kindle customers.

Finally, as was mentioned in the previous post, this update marks the end for the larger and more expensive "standard editions".

Thanks to a lot of input from yourselves — and between this blog and the brand's Facebook pages, that was the best bit of teamwork we've had for a while — the refreshed covers for the Armada Wars novels have now been selected.

They've all been uploaded to Amazon, and will populate throughout their regional sites over the next day or two. The paperback covers will be refreshed after The Ravening Deep is released (since the "also by the author" bit will need updating anyway.)

For those of you who have only just joined this mission, you missed all the fun. Here's what the rest of us decided on in your absence (the images below are clicky-make-big):