The roadmap for The Great War of the Shaeld has now been updated to include the covers of From Shattered Stars and the two omnibus editions, as well as the placeholder for Whom Gods Shall Fear.

Many of you will have been disappointed at the postponement of 2016's promised novellas, I Dream of Damastion and The Granite Whistle, and I imagine even more disappointed at the lack of From Shattered Stars appearing on the Kindle store and Amazon paperbacks list.

Firstly, an abundance of profuse apologies for the wait. And I really do mean that, because I know that a year is a long time to wait between books. Granted, many series gain new entries over several years (and sometimes even decades), but this was not supposed to be one of those.

The reason for these delays is, essentially, the curse of 2016. As it was for many people it was a horrible, horrible year for me. Just because it will be remembered — amongst other things — as the year in which gravitational waves were proven to exist, doesn't mean it wasn't lousy, demoralising, demotivating, and generally... well, shit.

I'm not going to go into the details here, because they are quite personal. Also that would feel very much like proffering excuses. Suffice to say that if you're angry at me for not having these titles out yet you can rest assured that I've paid for it.

So my plan now is to act as if 2016 never happened, in writing terms. The launch of From Shattered Stars is now the priority, since the novellas are not essential to the overall story; they are merely there to expand the universe a bit and offer different perspectives on the Great War.

The good news here is that the delay has allowed me to further develop several major plot points and character arcs. The novel which will be released this spring is going to be quite different from the book which would have appeared in December had I slogged away at it through all the heartache of 2016. The opening few chapters now have a more logical, internally consistent structure than I originally planned. Some key characters are now exposed to events and conversations which better utilise their established personalities and recent histories, and which also set them up wonderfully for all the terrible things they will have to face in the finale, Whom Gods Shall Fear.

So in some ways, this has actually been a helpful interlude!

Those of you who were looking forward to reading the side-episodes for The Ravening Deep will of course have noticed by now that they have not yet materialised.

Long story short, real world events have hampered my progress with the two novellas. My pre-readers and 'inner circle' fans are aware of what has happened to get in the way, but that's not for here.

The outcome is that if I continue to work on I Dream of Damastion and The Granite Whistle, then the fourth novel — From Shattered Stars — will suffer a delay.

That's not something I want to happen. I very much want to maintain the release cycle, and I'm pretty sure readers will be more interested in the resolution of TRD's cliffhanger ending and the continuation of what is now a full-blown war story.

So my plan now is to pause the novellas and get working on FSS to ensure it's out on time. I'll just have to come back to IDOD and TGW. Nothing is really lost, because although the novellas all link to the main story arc they aren't required reading. They simply expand the events a little with some different characters, places, and situations.

I'd imagine most fans will support this decision. But if not, by all means leave a comment!

In the spirit of mutual support between indie authors, I've just uploaded new Kindle versions of all of the current Armada Wars volumes (including the Omnibus, which is sort of current because it's on preorder right now.)

What's different? They all now include a new section at the back called You May Also Like.

The first book to be added to this section is The Calypsis Project, by Canadian author Brittany M. Willows.

The Calypsis Project is the first volume in a duology (with the second part, TCP: Rebirth, due soon), and will also get an additional prequel volume, TCP: Pulse.

From today, anyone buying Kindle copies of SFTD, LOTD, TRD, or the current Omnibus will get the recommendation. Existing customers will find it appearing in their Kindle editions if they refresh on the next update I make (which will likely be the update to front/back matter when IDOD is released).

I know a lot of authors are reluctant to do things like this, because increased file size means reduced royalties. But really, what's a few pages in kilobytes? Also, you can offset this by using affiliate referral links. So literally everyone wins!

​Come on indies, let's all work together here :D

http://thecalypsisproject.com

As anticipated the Throam T-shirts have arrived in the store today, as have the posters with text (Steal from the Devil, List of the Dead, The Ravening Deep, the value packs of those three, and I Dream of Damastion.)

The sharp-eyed might notice lots of prices have dropped since the store first appeared, in particular the poster value pack and the T-shirts.

To make things extra special we are launching the store with some voucher codes. These are valid to the end of May 2016. The codes are: 

• TENPERCENT-INTRO to get 10% off any one order,
• 15PERCENTON50 to get 15% off an order costing more than £50.

​Further voucher codes are available, but you need to be a member of the official Facebook fan group to access them.

The synopses for two upcoming episodes have now been made public, here and on Goodreads.

You may have read the synopsis already for the imminent novella I Dream of Damastion, which is due within the next month. Added this week was the synopsis for the second novella — The Granite Whistle — which also expands the third novel in the current story.

Sneaked onto the site at the same time was the book page for the fourth novel in the series, which also includes that all important, panic-and-joy-inducing synopsis. That's right: you can get your teaser fix for From Shattered Stars right now!

The cover art for the imminent novella I Dream of Damastion is here at last! Behold.

(Clicky-Make-Big!)

The book page for the upcoming novella I Dream of Damastion now exists, and with it comes a summary of the plot.

​Pre-order links and so on will arrive in due course, and you can expect the cover art reveal to happen some time in the next week.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I Dream of Damastion — the first of the two upcoming novellas which will accompany The Ravening Deep — will be delayed by about a month. There was simply no way around it.
The delay should not apply to the release date of The Granite Whistle, and it will not affect the release of the fourth main sequence novel, From Shattered Stars.

In other news, The Ravening Deep appears to have sated the fans' lust for more, and all the feedback so far has been excellent (especially if you ignore the one statistical outlier.)

It's probably worth me mentioning once more that if you have Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited, then you can ready any Armada Wars title for free on Kindle.

Those of you still waiting for audiobook versions will be pleased to hear that efforts are underway to get a timescale nailed down.

Don't forget that you will receive monthly email updates about the Armadaverse if you subscribe to the free newsletter. It's non-spammy and we don't share your details with anyone else.

The Kindle launch of The Ravening Deep is just over a week away, so it's a good moment to have a quick rest and talk about what else is going to happen over the next few weeks and months.

Development work for The Ravening Deep took up a huge amount of time, and as such the updates to the official Wiki for List of the Dead fell by the wayside somewhat.

Throughout December, there will be a concerted effort made to get existing articles updated for the text of volumes 2 and 3, and to add the new articles for characters, places, tech, etc which are introduced in the new book.

Some topics relating to The Ravening Deep will of course be delayed for a while in order to prevent significant spoilers.

Keyboard-bashing for IDOD will begin literally on January 1st 2016. It is due for a late February release date, which will be announced at the end of January.

Some development work has been done already, and the following details can now be revealed exclusively to this site:

• The main character will be non-military; a physicist brought in by Fleet Command to try to isolate a problem which plagues Imperial vessels throughout The Ravening Deep.
• This character has an eidetic memory, augmented by a brain implant.
• The ship on which the episode is set is a brand new, top-of-the-line star cruiser; a type of battleship we have not yet encountered directly in the main sequence novels.