February Progress and Updates!

Welcome to March! Okay, well, welcome to mid-March! I’d say “I don’t know how March’s first weeks got away from me” but I was busy launching a book, so I guess there was that. Let’s talk about what happened in February, and I’ll give you some feel for where we’re going in the next few months.

First, in Peltedverse news: Obviously, I did most of the launch prep for Farmer’s Crown in February. I also finished the edits for Faith in the Service (Alysha 5), and formatted it for e-book and print. I’m going to try to swing the audiobook before launch (that’s in May!) but I’m not sure if I’ll have the budget… we’ll see. Related, I streamed my initial work on the Alysha cover, and finished that painting so I’d have something pretty to show on the pre-order pages. Lots of work there.

Anent the Morgan trilogy (I know, I should call it Blood Ladders but it’s forever tagged in my head as ‘the Morgan books’): I ran the Kickstarter and fulfilled all the prizes within a few days, which was a new and interesting record. I put together the art e-book for it, too, which required a lot of scanning and commentary… plus got it uploaded to Bandcamp with a bonus track, which I wrote and recorded for the special ‘Author’s Edition.’ (You can buy that track separately if you listened to it through some other service.) I also did a raft of typo corrections for all three novels… it seemed the time.

Kherishdar, of course, is where I’m spending my new writing time; I didn’t keep track of how much I wrote in February, but it was at least 40,000 words. Plus, a lot of language work—we have crossed the 1000-word mark in the lexicon, which makes Ai-Naidari easily the most developed of my conlangs. Plus, we’ve been having a lot of fun on Discord constructing sentences, and even trying our hand at poems. *tips hat to Rabbit*

I should also mention here that in February I mailed out all the stickers to Patrons in the $10+ tiers. If you wanted a sticker (or Alysha button!) and didn’t fill out the form, or your envelope hasn’t arrived, tell me so I can get you your things!

That wraps up February, which was oddly a bit of a ‘loose ends’ month. About half the time I finish something, I know immediately what I should be working on next… the other half the time, I have this weird uncomfortable period where I'm not sure which project I need to tackle next. The faster I exit that period, the happier I am. I spent a couple of weeks after finishing Alysha 5 dithering about what to do next before I figured it out, so it made for a discombobulated month.

But we’re done with that, so… forward! Which is a great segue into…

Plans

As you’ve noted by now, I like to game out most of my year in January and then proceed to blow up all those plans! Which means that my forecasting is most accurate when it’s only a couple of quarters in advance. Given that, let me tell you how things are shaping up.

With Farmer’s Crown’s release and Faith’s pre-order set up, the releases for the first half of 2019 are in the bag. *buffs knuckles on chest* That means my next delivery date is in July if I want to remain committed to my six-releases-in-2019 schedule. I have plenty of time! My plan, then:

Continue writing Kherishdar to finished draft (probably late April; this is turning into an immense novel, y’all). The serializing will continue 3 days a week until I finish the draft, and then I’ll accelerate it to 5 days a week. The plan is either a September or November release for the retail editions.

Once I finish the draft of Kherishdar, I’m going to switch to the Jokka and write the story of het Serelni’s founding, which is working-titled ‘Red Honey’, with a goal of releasing in July (possibly with concomitant Kickstarter to help fund the retail release of the audiobooks).

That leaves me with one more release for this year, targeted for another Peltedverse book: either I’ll make a decision on Zafiil, or Surela will get her debut. I also have developing in the wings the Princes’ Game Collection, which collects short fiction and vignettes from that series. I’m planning on writing those for the audiobook Kickstarters, and to fill in the gaps between it and the Jubilee Summer books.

That’s writing, then. Kickstarters: expect April for the Morgan Books 2 and 3 audiobooks, a possible summer Kickstarter for the Jokka, and an autumn Kickstarter either for more Princes’ Game audio, or for the Kherishdar’s Exception audiobook. I’m currently waffling about the latter; the narrator for the series has done a stellar job, and I want him to do the last book because… he knows the universe and the characters and even gets the language right. But the narrator is a woman. Which he is manifestly not. Opinions about that from audio fans welcome!

Refining on audiobooks: the PG2 audiobook will start serializing on Patreon probably in May, maybe a little earlier. I’ll also be trickling out Bandcamp editions of existing audiobooks as the rights come back; that’s also when they’ll hit broader distribution (like libraries).

Finally, as I enjoy it and have time: more painting, sketching, and calligraphy.

So that was February, and that’s the plan going forward. I expect March to be rocky for various reasons, but, you know… we’re doing fine and having fun. I think anyway. <3

As usual, questions, comments, suggestions, etc, welcome!