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.

A Storm to the Savage is now live on the Kindle store, for both purchases and Kindle Unlimited!

The official release date of August 5th was moved to 1st August at the weekend. Readers who had pre-orders can now download to devices.

The paperback should also be available (277 print pages). And as a special bonus, this may turn out to be the first book in the Armadaverse to get a hardback release! Get your regional Amazon link on the details page.

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.

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.

There have been yet more additions and improvements this weekend. Strap yourself in!

Quite a lot of work goes on behind the scenes, as well as constant edits to keep the site current with the latest books and correct small, unnoticed errors.

It's always good to know that people are visiting the site and poring over the information here, so feel free to comment.

1. ​A new (and quite long) page was added for CAGA.
2. A new page was added for the Imperial Navy, which is now the parent to the freshly streamlined Imperial Starships page. Expect individual ship profiles soon for the featured ships.
3. A section on meritocracy was added to the Imperial Combine overview, and the page has been cleaned up.
4. The [spoiler] panel has been added to more character profiles, particularly those whose latest involvements are heavily plot-related.
5. The legends on [spoiler] panels have been edited to show which book/s the spoilers apply to.
6. Many character profiles have been edited and cleaned up, those with long entries being broken into sections.
7. The people section was trimmed down and no longer duplicates links to all the characters listed elsewhere.
8. The Privacy & Policies page has moved under the FAQ, along with a new Asset Usage page.

Amazon OneLink is now being rolled out across the site. This system means that you only have to click one button to go and find a particular Armada Wars book on your local Amazon store — Amazon works out for itself what geographical region you are in, and routes you accordingly.

The system is being implemented for Kindle edition links, paperback links, and some audiobook links.

At the moment it's up and running for readers in the USA, the UK, and Canada. People from other regions can click the same link to use the Amazon.com site, or choose from the regional links which are still listed.

One known issue is that OneLink doesn't always register your region on the first click, and sends you to Amazon.com regardless of where you are. Subsequent clicks seem to be handled correctly. Presumably this is a bug that Amazon is working on already.