I’m writing to you all from Australia, where I have come on my writing retreat, which used to be an annual thing until Covid. I have an unfortunately tight deadline, and I’m neck deep into Cast in Atonement, which is not yet done.
I hope to be finished before I leave Brisbane. And when I say finished, I mean: finished first draft. After which I will revise for submission, and then submit.
Shards of Glass is due out at the end of November, so I’m fielding a few questions about that — but my head is fully entangled in the Cast novel, so Shards feels like it was written years ago (it wasn’t).
My toe has improved enough it doesn’t bother me much, but according to X‑rays taken a week before I left, it has not fully healed yet — it’s an oblique break, and apparently those are worse. The baby toe (I broke two) was totally fine according to X‑rays. It’s the other toe that isn’t. I’m told that when it’s fully healed, it will once again bend properly — so that’s my new test. Does it bend properly? No? (insert colorful phrase here).
As for Hunter’s Redoubt, I have sent files to the audiobook narrator, and am working my way through the proofreader’s corrections and adding them to the book. At this point, I’m hoping for a sometime-in-October release date. As you’re all aware, the book is being self-published, and having gone through much of (but not all of) the process to publish, people who tell you that self-publishing is easy, and it’s a great way to make more money if you do it yourself, are clearly not breathing the same air I am.
Print will be available as Print On Demand (which is how Memory of Stone was done), and it will therefore be available in a trade paperback. And it will probably be more expensive than publisher trade paperbacks because it will be 826 pages long. T_T. (Everyone said it doesn’t matter how long the book is, it can still be printed! But those Everyones clearly meant: it doesn’t matter how short the book is. Because it absolutely matters how long it is T_T.)
My alpha reader wanted a PoD hardcover, so there will probably be that option. But again, because it’s not offset printing, it will cost way more than a normal hardcover. Ingram now does full dust-jacketed hardcovers that are otherwise the same as normal trade hardcovers. I think the only people who won’t scream at the price are Australian >.<.
And also: Managing editors should be paid way way way way more. Way more.
I hope everyone is surviving the various heat waves. Here, it’s early spring, so the temperature hasn’t gone above 80, and is frequently 70ish.
Stephen Engel 
ebhdoc 
Pat Fernandez 
Joey 
Jeanine 
Karen L. Durst 
Steve Faught 
Joyce 
Jen (Brisbane) 
br60103 
Taen 
Kristal 
Chris Carlucci 
melanie 
Aquilegia 
Beth Williams 
Leia 
Leia 
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So glad to hear your toes are healing and it sounds lovely to be somewhere where the temperature is not in the high 90’s. I will be interested in the print on demand hard cover of Hunter’s Redoubt as I have all the other House War novels in hardcover and prefer hard cover as I reread, reread, and reread and they hold up better than paperbacks.