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... 

Readers who cannot or will not shop at Amazon may be pleased to hear that Armada Wars has now occupied territory on the world known as "Barnes and Noble".

The Books 1–3 Omnibus is already listed on the site, as are A Storm to the Savage and I Dream of Damastion. These are all the latest versions of the texts (polished up in the approach to the Whom Gods Shall Fear release date), with the new covers.

The Books 4+5 Omnibus will also be listed on B&N when it becomes available in 2024. So while the individual paperbacks for the main sequence novels are not yet listed on B&N, fans of the series will still be able to purchase the whole of the first series as matching omnibus editions (which will also save money).

All of those paperbacks will be eligible for the B&N free shipping offer (shopping cart containing $40 of eligible items). Premium Member bonuses also apply!

Watch this space for the individual editions appearing...

UK shoppers have not been left out — the same titles are currently invading the Waterstones and Blackwells web sites.

​The Books 1–3 Omnibus has landed already, and the expansion episodes should appear soon.

As with B&N, the books are eligible for the Waterstones shipping offer. On their site you need £25 worth of qualifying items in your cart to benefit from free shipping.

On Blackwells, all titles include UK delivery.

The books are also populating to other stores in the UK, such as Foyles, so if you have a favourite book retailer you may well find soon that you can purchase Armadaverse titles from them.

Don't forget that discounted 'previous version' paperback editions of the main sequence novels are also available in the official store.

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,
• Copyright pages updated with a new standard form,
• Links added to front matter,
• Improvement of the back matter in the "to be continued" section, including links,
• Various minor corrections in some volumes,
• All main sequence eBooks now have updated "excerpt from the next book" sections,
• New covers for eBook editions with contrast adjustments,
  
• Cover text now uses a new font family and has consistent typographic features,
• Book descriptions have been updated, subtitles added, and search keywords optimised.

Whom Gods Shall Fear is well on the way, with over half the planned word count finished despite the fact that only a third of the chapter spine is filled out. This might actually be the one book where a lot goes in the editing stage! Or it could just end up being double the length, guess we'll find out.

The book is planned to arrive later this year. When it does land it will end the main story of this series, and conclude the Great War of the Shaeld.

In preparation for this release, the People section of the site has been updated. Almost all characters who will be in WGSF are now marked as such on their bio pages. Those where it is uncertain at this stage if they will be written in have been left without the link, as has one character in particular whose appearance is intended to be a sickening surprise.

Those of you who enjoyed the introduction to the crew of the Leo Fortune will be pleased to hear that they will be making an appearance. We may also encounter Hywen, last seen in A Storm to the Savage, and Doctor Berris, who played a small role in I Dream of Damastion.

In fact... many characters who have only had small moments so far will be turning up to watch the galactic bonfire, and some of them will be bringing marshmallows. The theme of 'consequences' may well play a significant role in this finalé...

Rumours of the death of Armada Wars are greatly exaggerated.

I've written previously about the reason for the delays, so I won't labour that here. The delay for Whom Gods Shall Fear is only really valid as a comparison to the release frequency of the previous volumes anyway — it's one seriously dense book, and it MUST be exactly right.

Quite frankly I'm just pleased that I'm still clearly doing better than George R. R. Martin.

There will at least be one book released this year (2022), which is going to be A Storm to the Savage. This volume has turned into one of the most complex to write so far — you'll see why when you read it — which is quite funny seeing as I originally conceived it as a straightforward bit of extra world-building. I'm confident that it will definitely be a rewarding experience if you read it more than once, hint hint.

ASTTS will be the first Armada Wars book to use the new, mandatory Kindle format. It may also be the first book in the series to receive a hardback release! I'm closing on completion, and the provisional August release date may be brought forwards.

So... what you really want to know... when can you expect Whom Gods Shall Fear. As soon as I am done with A Storm to the Savage, all my writing time will be spent on WGSF. I will be aiming for a 2023 release. I am reluctant to say that's written in stone, because... well if you've been following the series for a while you'll know that I tend to be far too optimistic! Sometimes I am a slow learner.

But things are better now than they have been for a long time, so there is some small sliver of hope that I will get it out when I plan to. More hope than our heroes have, anyway...

Thank you, dear readers, for being so patient.

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.

Let's get this out of the way immediately — we're not talking about 2020. 

2021 has arrived, and as you've probably noticed already things are back in full swing in the Armadaverse.

This post is a round-up of the plans for this year. Don't forget that there is a mailing list for the Armadaverse. It's recommended that you subscribe, because there's a good chance that the Armada Wars brand will abandon mainstream social media in the near future.

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 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 a certain 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 the old acronym 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 Gound Recon 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.

You don't have long to wait now before the next volume arrives from the Armadaverse: I Dream of Damastion is now available as a Kindle pre-order!

It's been a dry couple of years for Armada Wars fans, and this expansion episode should hopefully slake your thirst prior to the release of the final full novel in the current series.

Set during the events of The Ravening Deep, IDOD takes a sideways step from Caden and the others, and follows a different set of characters as they discover and resist Voice on a smaller and more claustrophobic scale.