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.

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. 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:
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• Reximillian Bel-Kenita — Protagonist.
• Euelli Berris — Head of developmental research, Kenita-Deng Incorporated.
• Mansour al-Rashid — Captain, ICS Ardent.
• Zana Turei — Chief engineer, ICS Ardent.

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 novella — A Storm to the Savage — also now has her own holding 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, I've now decided that the planned novella Forge Ruinous will 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

Happy August!

It's been a while, and you probably thought everything had ground to a halt in the Armadaverse. But fear not, for the wheels are always turning.

When the blurb dropped for volume one of Perseus Aflame some people got so excited that a little bit of wee came out. You still have to wait until 2021, but in about eight seconds you will know what you're actually waiting for.

The volume one book page has now been updated with the actual title, and it's officially on Goodreads.

In addition to the previously mentioned price drops for Kindle and the standard paperbacks, there's a new offer running throughout September. While stocks last, signed paperbacks bought from this site will be discounted by a whopping 33%!

The coupon code for that offer is 09KABOOM18. You can shop for signed copies here.

The discount does not apply to the new Omnibus paperback, nor to the Whom Gods Shall Fear pre-order. It's available on the four individual paperbacks that are currently available.


In related news, it is now time to retire the mutating coupon code. This was the code found on the back of the business cards distributed through Armada Wars convention appearances.

It might be wrapped in absolute secrecy, but one thing is clear: the finale of the current series of Armada Wars novels is a book fans cannot wait to get hold of.

To encourage readers to get up-to-date with the series before the fifth novel lands at Amazon, and to encourage fans to "bring a friend", prices have now been dropped across the entire series.

For Kindle, prices have gone back to the original model of having the first book at $0.99, and subsequent volumes at $2.99 (that's 99p and £1.99 for people in the UK). The price of the first Kindle omnibus has been adjusted accordingly.

Paperback prices have been moved down until the royalty is barely worth even having. Seriously, it's a laughable amount. Again, the price of the paperback version of the first omnibus has also been adjusted.

But wait, that's not all!

If you have bought an eligible copy of any Armada Wars paperback through Amazon, in a region which supports MatchBook, then you can now claim your Kindle copy for free. YOU HEARD ME!

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These changes are populating across the regional Amazon web sites now, and should be reflected in all regions by 30th August.

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If you want to give something back to the Armadaverse, please leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. It really makes a massive difference.

The project to add X-Ray content to all Kindle editions has now finished with the successful completion of the material for the Armada Wars Books 1–3 Omnibus.

This was a hugely tedious undertaking as it involved copying entries across from the three individual novels contained within the omnibus, while being careful to avoid the inclusion of spoilers.

There are 110 character entries, and 260 terms. Phew!

As a result of this phase of the project, some new terms have been added into the X-Ray content for the three separate novels, and some definitions have been tidied up.

As before, to refresh your Kindle edition with the new X-Ray content you need to delete the file from your device and download it again (which costs nothing). The new content will come with it. If you buy the book new as of the time this post appears then you need do nothing else: you already have the X-Ray content.

New to the store! Signed copies of the Armada Wars: Books 1–3 Omnibus paperback, posters for Whom Gods Shall Fear, and the posters 1–5 value pack.

The poster value pack saves 25% over separate purchases! The signed copy of the Omnibus is being introduced with an early bird discount, and those of you with the special coupons from Armada Wars convention appearances can get an additional £5 off.

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.

Additionally, the paperback edition of the Armada Wars Books 1–3 Omnibus is now live on Amazon! This 3 lb monster of a book contains Steal from the Devil, List of the Dead, and The Ravening Deep, and comes with a cost saving of about 20% over the individual copies. The second omnibus will be printed to the same dimensions, for those of you who like your books to line up properly.