The good news: the paperback editions of all main sequence novels will soon be appearing on the web sites of US books stores such as Barnes and Noble, just like the collected editions and expansion episodes (as previously announced).

This will of course include Whom Gods Shall Fear when it releases later this year.

The bad news is that prices have increased. Paper and printing costs have gone up dramatically, and print services did (to be fair to them) hold back these increases for as long as they could. I too have delayed passing them on since they were passed on to me in June, but now it's got to the silly point of receiving a $0.03 royalty on a sale.

Whether in print or Kindle ebook form, the collected editions remain the most economical way to purchase new Armadaverse books.

If you are not that concerned about having the latest and greatest edition, there are clearance copies on this site's official store. These are surplus copies from stock for direct sales at conventions, and are effectively brand new. They've just been superseded by an edition with a new cover and a cosmetic edit.

As we hurtle towards the Tenth Armadaversary, it's slightly daunting but also extremely satisfying to acknowledge that in a few months' time, this is what the line-up will look like... 

The Universe section of the site has received a makeover today, primarily focused on the Places section.

• You can now view lists of named star systems, either by controlling faction, or by galactic region.
• The list of named planets has been updated with the new worlds mentioned in From Shattered Stars, I Dream of Damastion, and A Storm to the Savage, as well as some of the less spoilery planets that will be named in Whom Gods Shall Fear.
• Some planets named in earlier books were found to be missing from the site, and have now been added in.
• Some worlds and systems were found to have been listed in the wrong galactic regions, and have been corrected.

Updates have been made to canon as a result of these edits. Most of the details below have been in notes and plans, some even elsewhere on this site (e.g. on planetary profiles), but few have been specified in books — although for some that will change in WGSF.

• The Lem Bataan home world, Phnemaph, is now listed canonically in the Yuacc system.
• The Viskr home world, Riishi, is now listed canonically in the Sampta Chfum system.
• The Kibriani home world, Kibria, is now listed canonically in the Ewarrn system.
• Woe Tantalum is now listed canonically in the Parable system.
• Lopama, the site of Forge Ruinous, is now listed canonically in the Roumhale system.
• Kelvestyr, the location of the Imperial War College, is now listed canonically in the Worrokek system.
• Mibes is now listed canonically in the Komistir system.
• Aldava is now listed canonically in the Breig Eta system.
• Damastion is now confirmed canonically as being in the Axicon system.

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 ↗︎

You read that correctly: hardcovers!

With the release of A Storm to the Savage comes a smorgasbord of new hardcover editions. Every single volume in the Armadaverse can now be bought in a weighty, hardback edition with a very nice matte cover! Typesetting is consistent between all the volumes, and they all contain the latest versions of the texts.

​Go to the Books section to get direct links to your most local Amazon region, for your favourite volumes!

I think it's fair to say nobody really saw the triple-point scoring, game-ending combo of 2020/2021 coming, and the effects are being seen everywhere. Hats off to the people and organisations who have kept their momentum and provided the same service consistently throughout, whether they be creatives, produce providers, emergency services workers... everyone.

For my part it's been a funny old time. As I have mentioned previously there are some ongoing personal issues which were magnified greatly by the isolation of multiple lockdowns, to the degree that they're now obstructive enough that I need to deal with them as my main priority. Hence the ever-expanding delays to my increasingly optimistic release schedule.

I am however determined to get this current series completed — everyone has waited so patiently, which must be difficult given the whopping great cliffhanger of the latest novel.

The next release is going to be A Storm to the Savage, which takes place on Palanda Ire shortly before the joint Fleet-CAGA counter-occupation. This was originally planned as a novella but it's turning out to be layered in an even more complex way than I had planned, with a much more nuanced protagonist. I'm trying to have little to no excess in it, but at the same time I don't want it to be a superdense read that has no resting space for the reader. It will likely end up as a short novel as a result, rather than a sub-40k word novella.

Once ASTTS is released all my attention will be focused on the grand finale of the series: Whom Gods Shall Fear. I'm very conscious of the length of the delay (I think my release schedule for the preceding books had an average separation of less than eighteen months), and I expect by now some people think this series will never be finished. It will.

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. 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 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.

Originally due in 2017, Whom Gods Shall Fear is still notable by its absence. Regular fans of the series will have noticed that the production schedule went from a prolific, one-a-year assault on the readers' senses, to a long and painful wait set to the refrain "not yet but soon, not yet but soon..."

All I can really do at this point is apologise. I'll probably write a longer post about this at some point — lord knows it must affect a large number of independent writers — but for now let's just summarise the root cause as a prolonged and non-trivial bout of depression.

The thing about depression is that it saps not only your motivation to do anything, but it also affects your memory. With an author, for a long time it can pass undetected as "I'm just not feeling inspired."

In fact, prior to recognising what the problem actually is, I was reading and re-reading my own books in order to "get re-inspired". And do you know what happened? My working memory must have been affected pretty badly, because in certain parts I kept wondering if I really wrote all this, and how. Weird huh.

Anyway... the part you as the reader want to know: I am taking steps. Normal service is resuming bit by bit. My priority now will be to get WGSF finished, and I'm just going to stop suggesting release dates that may or may not be kept.

The delay has had benefits. As I have mentioned previously in various spheres I have adjusted Voice's storyline so that his actions fit more smoothly into the overall Armada Wars story (I think I mentioned before I've got a couple of decades of releases planned out, which all contribute one  way or another to a final conflict of prodigious proportions.) It's also given me, as you might expect, some first hand insight into some of the characters' situations, and rather than being a two-dimensional asshole Maber Castigon in particular will now be far more rounded via his flashback episodes. Also, while these delays have been ongoing, discoveries and observations have appeared in the astrophysics news which have direct impacts on the climax of the book and future plans. Hasty but careful adjustments are required!

In related news, I've spoken to a few superfans about Tankers, and what is very clear is that there's an underlying need for their sub-world to be expanded. I included more of Tanker Regiment very deliberately in From Shattered Stars — purely because they were so well-received when they first joined the lead characters — but it seems there's still great demand to see more of them in action.

Because of that, the planned novella Forge Ruinous may now be written as a full length novel. It will of course link in with the plot points in FSS, and I'll leave it to you to speculate as to how it does so. Writing this as a novel may somewhat delay the start of the Perseus Aflame series, but I guess delay is now becoming a tradition.

Because of that change, the 'novellas' section of the web site has now been restructured as the Expansion Episodes section.

​RCV