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. Releases Planned for 2021 and Onwards...I am now resuming my original plan of interleaving the novel releases with the novella releases, albeit with the following changes:
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. Steal from the Devil — the ReduxI'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. Kindle/Paperback RefreshesOver 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. The People pages under the Universe category have now been completed for all characters seen or mentioned so far in the Great War of the Shaeld series. At time of writing this literally includes every named character, from civilians seen in passing to each and every member of Tanker Regiment seen in the last book. [Edit: since this article was first posted, new index pages have also been added for all characters by surname, all the women, and all the men.] This feels like a great achievement, since there are over 100 named characters, many of them linked to various events throughout the four existing novels and beyond. The "upcoming characters" page has now been removed, so the new characters who will be arriving in Perseus Aflame will be added to this site when the first book from that series — On Vicious Wing — is actually approaching its release date. Some characters from the first of the upcoming GWOTS-era novellas, however, do have partial profiles on the site already. These are:
That novella is of course I Dream of Damastion, which should be released before the end of the year and may help to tide people over until the much-delayed release of Whom Gods Shall Fear. The protagonist of another upcoming novella — A Storm to the Savage — also now has her own page. Watch this space. For serious fans of the Armadaverse, it's highly recommended that you take a deep dive into lore by reading the background and insights into your favourite characters! 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 It's that time! The title of the fifth novel in the current Armada Wars series is now announced as...
Whom Gods Shall Fear. The title is fitting for the end of the Great War of the Shaeld story, with apocalyptic undertones hinting at the collision of every one of the major themes which have caused so much creeping fear in the preceding books. There will be no spoilers whatsoever for the next year at least, but one thing is certain: there's going to be trouble. |
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