You read that correctly: hardcovers!

With the release of A Storm to the Savage comes a smorgasbord of new hardcover editions. Every single volume in the Armadaverse can now be bought in a weighty, hardback edition with a very nice matte cover! Typesetting is consistent between all the volumes, and they all contain the latest versions of the texts.

​Go to the Books section to get direct links to your most local Amazon region, for your favourite volumes!

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 pre-ordering on the Kindle store!

The official release date is August 5th, at which time pre-orders will download to devices and Kindle Unlimited users will be able to read the book.

By that time the paperback should also be available (278 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.

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.

The following books are now updated, and you can download the updates for your Kindle immediately:

• Steal from the Devil — Fourth Edition (rev. 4.0),
• List of the Dead — minor updates (rev. 1.2),
• The Ravening Deep — minor updates (rev. 1.2),
• From Shattered Stars — minor updates (rev. 1.2),
• Books 1 & 2 Starter Pack — minor updates, SFTD Fourth Edition (rev. 1.2).

You can check which version of each book you have by looking for the revision number on the copyright page. If there is no revision number, your edition pre-dates the adoption of that system.

If you don't have automatic updates turned on, you can push the updated files to your Kindle device/s or app/s using the "Manage My Content and Devices" page in the Kindle area of Amazon's web site. That page is also available in the "Digital content and devices" list, found on the "My Account" page.

Please leave a comment if you have any problems obtaining updates — KDP had some communication issues this week, and I'm eager to ensure everything has gone smoothly.

The Fourth Edition of Steal from the Devil adds some new material, and changes the order of scenes up to the climax in order to make the flow of text far better. The climax is more robust, and key characters have enhanced scenes or background added throughout the book. Grammar and punctuation have received a very comprehensive scrubbing.

In all other books, including SFTD, other tweaks have been made. MAGA is now CAGA, fonts have been replaced since their accidental removal, the NCX files which build the "Go To..." menu have been repaired in the omnibus editions, typography has been brought in line with the printed editions, and so on.

Armadaverse Kindle books have always included "publisher fonts", so that you can read the book exactly as it was intended to be presented. These cause the eBooks to mimic the printed editions, both in style and typography. You can turn them on in the display options for your Kindle device or app.

A previous update accidentally omitted the font data, but it has been replaced across the updates above.

Another advantage of including fonts is that it allows stylistic differentiation in the text, such as for the incident in which Bruiser discovers anti-human graffiti in his home town:

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, including the omnibus and boxed set versions.

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. Refer to my Patreon page for free excerpts with the most substantially changed material. It's not posted there yet, but it will be when the revised books launch.
3. 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 in the first half of 2021, 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.

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.