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.

A minor update has been issued today for From Shattered Stars.

• Language clarification in Chapter 1.
• Edits to Chapter 2 to clarify that Maber Castigon was transferred from ICS Disputer to ICS Night's Shadow, following the thwarted boarding attempt on Disputer.
• Minor dialogue addition in Chapter 12 to show the characters did in fact notice that infant Shaeld Hratha either lack camouflage, or do not camouflage themselves instinctively.

​Updates have been delivered for the Kindle edition (now rev. 1.4), as well as the current imprints of the paperback and hard cover editions. The paper versions are now live for all new customers.

The Kindle version is live for new customers, and available as a free update for existing customers.
You can check for waiting updates on your "Manage my Devices and Content" page, accessible from the Kindle section of your local Amazon site: UK Customers ↗︎ • USA Customers ↗︎

With the release of A Storm to the Savage, quite a few background changes have also come to pass...

1. Paperback editions of the Armadaverse books are now available in Australia, Sweden, and Poland, as well as all the other regions supported by Amazon Publishing,
2. The paperbacks will be getting a refresh over the next fortnight, to make them typographically consistent and to update the front matter,
3. Kindle editions have been updated with new front matter, principally to add ASTTS to the "also by the author" page,
4. The Up Next page now shows which volume is in the pipeline.

If you are not subscribed to the newsletter you may have missed the latest in terms of social media. There is a likelihood that the Armadaverse will be quitting Facebook. The hitherto under-used Armada Wars Twitter account will now publish all announcements. This web site remains the best source for all Armadaverse news and information.

There is also now a linktr.ee account which will be kept up to date with the sites/pages which are active and or useful.

The following books are now updated, and you can download the updates for your Kindle immediately:

• Steal from the Devil — Fourth Edition (rev. 4.0),
• List of the Dead — minor updates (rev. 1.2),
• The Ravening Deep — minor updates (rev. 1.2),
• From Shattered Stars — minor updates (rev. 1.2).

You can check which version of each book you have by looking for the revision number on the copyright page. If there is no revision number, your edition pre-dates the adoption of that system.

If you don't have automatic updates turned on, you can push the updated files to your Kindle device/s or app/s using the "Manage My Content and Devices" page in the Kindle area of Amazon's web site. That page is also available in the "Digital content and devices" list, found on the "My Account" page.

Please leave a comment if you have any problems obtaining updates — KDP had some communication issues this week, and I'm eager to ensure everything has gone smoothly.

The Fourth Edition of Steal from the Devil adds some new material, and changes the order of scenes up to the climax in order to make the flow of text far better. The climax is more robust, and key characters have enhanced scenes or background added throughout the book. Grammar and punctuation have received a very comprehensive scrubbing.

In all other books, including SFTD, other tweaks have been made. MAGA is now CAGA, fonts have been replaced since their accidental removal, the NCX files which build the "Go To..." menu have been repaired in the omnibus editions, typography has been brought in line with the printed editions, and so on.

Armadaverse Kindle books have always included "publisher fonts", so that you can read the book exactly as it was intended to be presented. These cause the eBooks to mimic the printed editions, both in style and typography. You can turn them on in the display options for your Kindle device or app.

A previous update accidentally omitted the font data, but it has been replaced across the updates above.

Another advantage of including fonts is that it allows stylistic differentiation in the text, such as for the incident in which Bruiser discovers anti-human graffiti in his home town:

As I mentioned previously, refreshed versions of the current novels (volumes 1–4 at time of writing) will be released soon. The plan is to release them all together for both the Kindle and paperback editions.

Books 2–4 will only be getting minor tweaks and corrections — nothing major needs changing. The files for the paperbacks, Kindle individual titles, and Kindle boxed set versions will be getting a hard reset to the "master version" of their respective texts (I've noticed slight discrepancies between the editions, thanks to a sloppy workflow.) The rear covers of the paperbacks will also be tweaked to make them look a bit more professional.

However Steal from the Devil has had a massive overhaul. I consider this the fourth edition, and some of you won't like this but there's... like... more material. I know, I know, I thought I was making tweaks and I guess I just got carried away. What I can say is that the longest new passages have all been character-based additions with the exception of the climax which gets some more action.

I will make sure Amazon KDP pushes the refreshed SFTD as a free update to Kindle customers. For paperback customers, you'll have three options:

1. Buy a new paperback (don't worry, it'll be the same size and cover style as the current one).
2. Ignore the changes — no plot has been altered so nothing that follows on from SFTD is affected.

So what has changed in Steal from the Devil? Here are some examples:

• The entire first chapter (intro to Hammer, Santani, and Caden) has now been restructured to reduce the choppiness of it all.
• Chapters 18 and 19 were swapped for pacing reasons.
• The super-long chapter 20 was split into two, creating Chp. 20 "Hammerfall" and Chp. 21 "Light the Dark".
• The order of scenes in the last three chapters has been rearranged to improve the flow of action and make the pacing far better.
• The climactic confrontation is no longer just a case of finding Morlum, having a quick chat, then shooting something real quick. A lot more is said, the tension is raised considerably, and a lot more actually happens.
• Maber Castigon is fleshed out slightly more, and we get to read a little about the way he sees the world.
• Euryce Eilentes is also fleshed out more, and we learn things which preface her arc in the later books.
• Bruiser has been given a bit more of a role, seeing as we all love him so. 
• Some very sneaky foreshadowing has been made more obvious.
• Mobile Air and Ground Assault (MAGA) has been changed to Conventional Air and Ground Assault (CAGA), as it will now be known across all books and supporting materials.
• "Skinprint" is now written as "skin-print", to aid people whose first language is not English. I mean they deserve some chance, right?
• Significant numbers of tweaks and edits to sentence structure, grammar, etc.
• Improved typography and punctuation has been modernised.

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.

In the run-up to the delayed release of From Shattered Stars, many of you will no doubt be planning to re-read the first three books of the series. If you're reading on Kindle, or using the Kindle app on another device, then before you start you may wish to update to the latest versions.

Steal from the Devil and List of the Dead have only minor changes, however The Ravening Deep has some corrections which put right a very silly mistake that slipped into the battle for Ramm Stallahad.

During that fight, Admiral Betombe and his task force use their wormhole generators in a novel way, with the intention of making life difficult for the intruding Shaeld Hrathan fleet. The problem is... the way I originally wrote that scene, interdiction had already begun throughout the system. So all of the admiral's ships' GNGs should have stalled.

That sequence has now been fixed, and a number of other minor edits have been made to clarify sentences and paragraphs. All volumes have also had their back matter updated to reflect the delayed release of FSS.

If you are uncertain about how to download the updated eBooks to your device, please refer to the final section of the FAQ page.

All the updates are now available for existing customers. You will know if you have the latest versions by checking the back matter — the release date given for From Shattered Stars will have changed to 2017.

Kindle updates were released today for all the current Armada Wars novels: Steal from the Devil, List of the Dead, and The Ravening Deep. The changes include updated front and back matter, tidying, improved spacing around some elements, drop-caps at the start of chapters, and a few spelling and punctuation tweaks. If you haven't already upgraded, Steal from the Devil will also be updated to the recently released third edition, which includes some new material.

If you have automatic updates turned on you will probably find the updates have been delivered already. if not, just go to your Amazon account and navigate to "Kindle > Manage your Content and Devices" to send the updates.

It's been two and a half years now since Steal from the Devil first came into the public arena, and a lot has happened since then. Reading back, it's easy for me to spot quirky little annoyances, or see things which could have been used more fully to portend future events.

I've therefore made a number of changes to the book, which collectively constitute an upgrade to the Third Edition (but don't worry — I've not gone all George Lucas on it). This edition will be available as a Kindle update and a new paperback within about a week (see yesterday's blog article about the new editions), and it is already available as the default Kindle version for new customers.

The editorial changes are as follows:

• Front matter updated for new releases.
• ‘By the Author’ moved before ‘Contents’.
• P7, 303, 310-312 — word insertions.
• P27 - seven new paragraphs added.
• P61, 300, 308 — new dialogue.
• PP300-301 — new prose.
• P33 - tense correction.
• P37, 44, 66, 68, 73, 84, 103, 295, 298 — word substitutions.
• P37, 38, 99, 239 — capitalisation.
• P292, 304 — word order.
• PP122-124, 285-286 — spacing improved.
• P43, 70, 72, 76, 80-81, 83, 85, 89, 96-97, 106, 124, 290, 297, 299, 302, 305-306, 308-311 — wording changes.
• P319 — back matter updated.
• P320 — author bio edited.

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".