Already the nights draw in and another year rushes towards its inevitable end. So what’s been happening these last couple of months?

Been to a lot of book events lately – did one with Pierce Brown up in Birmingham a couple of weeks back, one with Garth Nix in Bath this week, and have one with John Gwynne in Bath next week. Always nice to sit down and talk with other writers. I’ll be doing some of that in the lead up to Christmas too, as I head off to Guadalajara Book Fair at the end of November, then straight to Salt Lake City for Dragonsteel Nexus at the start of December. I’ll be doing a lot more of it in May 2027 when The Heretics comes out, as the details for a UK tour 3rd-9th May and US tour 10th-22nd May are currently being worked out – I shall share the specifics as soon as I have them.

Talking of The Heretics, that book is now proof read, signed off and totally complete, the cover art by Will Staehle is largely there, and the internal art and endpapers by Joel Daniel Phillips are pretty much done. All taking shape very nicely. I believe Advance Reader Copies will be slipping out into the eager hands of booksellers and reviewers over the coming weeks. I’m currently wrestling with the next (third) book in the series. I’ve written a first part, maybe 50,000 words, but I’m not really happy with the cast as yet, and might rethink a couple of characters, see if I can find ways to make them a bit sharper and more arresting. As I said a couple of months back the plan here was to experiment with a really rough version, sit with it, rewrite, rethink, so you could say this is the plan working. We shall see how it develops.

A surprising amount of time and energy these days is going into special editions of one kind or another, with a truly crazy amount of art to review and design decisions to be made, with no sign that the hunger for these things is abating any time soon. Looks likely there’ll be as many if not more exclusive and subscription editions of The Heretics as there were of The Devils. High up the price scale Fablelistik now have their limited letterpress editions of The Devils up for preorder. These are serious books with serious paper, bindings and some very interesting internal design, along with a host of b&w illustrations and some never before seen colour plates.

The special editions of The First Law Trilogy I did via Kickstarter with Lit Escalates proved to be a big success (5th most successful book-based Kickstarter of all time, apparently, if you can believe it, and thanks to anyone who bought one), so we’re continuing on to Best Served Cold. This time we’ll be partnering with the magnificent Anthony at Curious King, responsible for the high end letterpress editions of The First Law, and should end up with a higher quality book including some 30 colour and b&w illustrations by Tyler Jacobson, acid free paper and sewn bindings, as well as wraparound cover art by Joel Daniel Phillips to match the First Law editions, with which he has truly surpassed himself…

Rather than kickstarter, we’ll be selling exclusively through Lit Escalates’ website alongside some other merch and goodies, and there’ll be a month long pre-order window from November 24th, so if you want one, make sure you order in that window. I believe there’s no upper limit on the number of signed books available, but there’ll be a limited number of signed and dedicated on a first come first served basis with (I believe) folks who bought The First Law books getting a 24 hour head start, so those may go quick.

In the lead up to Christmas, as well as taking this aforementioned trip to the North American continent,  I really hope to hammer away at the first part of the next book and get the rest planned, start to feel a bit more confident with the shape of it and hopefully send a much more finished first part to my editors for discussion. You can see how far short I fall of that hope on New Year’s Eve when I return for my yearly review…

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