Sunday 1 December 2019

End-of-the-Year Novel Updates

It's been a while since I've discussed the fourth Black River book - known as Graduate or Die, until someone talks me out of it! - and while that's mostly because I'm in that long haul between writing the book and getting to call it finished, there's been enough progress to justify a blog post, I think.

The last I mentioned it, I was stuck editing out a few tens of thousands of words, and that, thankfully, is all done and dusted.  It's still a relatively long book by Black River standards, by far the longest in the series, but now that's because there's a lot crammed in, not because I've used five words when I only needed one.  In fact, every time I come back to it, I'm astonished that I've included everything I intended at the overambitious planning stage: major locations that have merely been mentioned in passing before, character arcs for an ever-growing cast, and lots of weird little details that if I was a fan of this series - and let's face it, I totally am! - I'd get a kick out of seeing.  Which, I guess, is the point: I want this book to be all the sorts of awesome I'd expect if I'd devoted tens of hours to reading the first three.  And so, though with the writing essentially done the rest is noodling, there's a fair bit of noodling ahead.  Fortunately, I have the sort of publisher who's happy to give me a deadline of "deliver it when it's done, within reason."  With that said, I see no reason to suppose that Graduate or Die won't be out by the middle of 2020.

But that's only one of the books I have in the works for imminent-ish release.  I still don't feel like the time's quite right to be announcing the others, but I reckon I can at least go through what they are.  So, in order of when they're likeliest to appear, we have:

- A new science-fiction novel from a publisher I've not worked with before.  This one is being proofed as we speak, everything else is basically ready, and honestly, I probably could get away with just announcing it right now.  At any rate, that time can't be much further off, and it's a book I'm thrilled to be getting into the world, so once the word's out, I'm unlikely to shut up.

- A new science-fiction - or possibly horror, or maybe sci-fi / horror? - novella from a publisher I've worked with quite a lot.  That's in the midst of its copy edits, is one of the most deeply strange and hard-to-classify things I've written, and should be appearing in the first half of next year if all goes well.

- And lastly, a project so secret that I'd better not say too much of anything, except that I'm about to start writing it literally next week, that it's for another publisher I'm new to and insanely excited to be working with, and that I suspect it's going to blow some minds once I get to spread the news, because the concept said publisher approached me with is phenomenal.  Currently I'm a little panicky at the thought that I might not do it justice, while also determined that I will, since it's far too good to mess up.

So there we have it: four books at various stages of completion, but all coming in the not-too-distant future, which is an exciting position to be heading towards the new year in.  More news as I have it / am allowed to share it!

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