Spring Update

It’s been a while, so here’s an update on what’s going on with Alex Verus and my writing in general.  

The copy-edits for Alex Verus #12, Risen, have been finished and the manuscript’s back with my publishers.  I’m more or less finished with the book at this point – it’ll get one last look-over when I see it in proof form, and that’s it.  Everything’s on schedule and Risen’s going to be coming out eight months from now as planned.

I’ve also finished up my work for the computer game I was writing for, Terra Invicta.  It’s currently being tested in a closed beta and isn’t available to the public, but I’ll let you guys know once it gets made available on general release.  

I spent a lot of the first three months of this year writing notes and doing planning and world-building for my new series, but at the moment that’s winding down.  I’ve reached the point where I’ve done pretty much all the preparation that I need, and the only thing to do is to start.  In fact, I’d been planning to start at the beginning of May, but I was divided as to whether to start on the new book, or whether to write an Alex Verus short story that I’ve had in mind for a few weeks now.  

In the end I picked the short story, and that’s what I’m working on right now.  What swayed me in the end was the fact that I’ve just come off writing a 12-book series – it made sense to me to experiment a bit and try a few different things before I plunge into a new multi-year project.  I know that once I start writing the new book I’ll be concentrating on it too much to write anything else, so if I don’t do this story now it’ll probably never get done.

I haven’t figured out exactly what I’ll do with the story once it’s finished – I could shop it around to my publishers, but they’d probably take ages to decide what to do with it.  I’m more inclined to make it available online, and I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to do that, but it’ll take a bit of setup to make it work.  I’ll give you more info once I have it.

And that’s about all the news for now!  Next week we’re going back to the author commentaries, with Alex Verus #3, Taken.