What the heck? Where’s the next book, Eric?

I’ve been hearing that a lot recently. People email me and say, “In the front of your book is says the next book in the Chaos and Retribution series is coming out in the spring, but I don’t see it. What’s up? You’re not pulling a George Martin on us, are you?”

It’s time to set the record straight.

Book 4 isn’t coming out this spring. (Go ahead, throw things. Get it out of your system. I can wait.)

However…

Book 4 is written. It needs editing , but it’s there. And Book 5 is well under way.

You want another reason to throw things? Neither of them is coming out until late Fall.

But why?

I could say it’s because I want to finish the whole story first. That way I can make sure it all makes sense. Dropping one book at a time, it’s easy to get to the end of the story and go, gosh, that didn’t work out quite right. If only I’d done this one thing differently back in book 4. If only I wouldn’t have killed off my main character, when I actually need him still.

I think that’s a good reason for a delay, don’t you?

I could also so it’s because I, personally, like to binge my favorites. I don’t want to read a book and then wait months (or years) for the next volume. I want it now! By doing it this way, I can release books 4-6 in rapid order, so no long wait times between books. (You see, I’m looking out for you all!)

But there’s an even bigger reason.

In early February I began re-publishing my first fantasy series, Immortality and Chaos, with new covers and a new map. Basically, I did everything wrong the first time I published that series and the re-launch was a chance to do things properly and see if I couldn’t get the books to sell.

I’m happy to say that it’s been a resounding success! Since early February when Wreckers Gate was re-launched, I’ve sold over 10,000 books and had over 8 million pages read in Kindle Unlimited. Woohoo! (Compare those numbers to last year, when I sold 7180 books and had 1.6 million page reads, and the year before, when I sold 1220 books and had 51,000 page reads.) It’s safe to say the arrow has been pointing upwards. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Anyway, that took up a lot of my time. But it was also strangely exhausting, in a way I’d never expected. Being able to make a living with my writing is a dream going back more than 30 years. During that time I’ve spent countless hours poking away at the keyboard, getting up early in the morning, endlessly rewriting blurbs and query letters.

My reward was tons of rejections from agents and editors and utterly lackluster sales in Kindle. Over and over the message from the world was, “Give it up, kid. You’re not going to make it.” (And in the late 2000’s I did actually quit writing for a couple of years, I was so discouraged.)

So when the unthinkable finally happened? It was utterly emotionally exhausting. For a month or two I was on a constant roller coaster, swinging from wild enthusiasm and hope, to crushing certainty that this was only going to be another gut punch.

And it affected my writing. During that time I did finish the rough draft of book 4, but when I went back and looked at it I could see that it lacked a spark that the others have. It would have been a disservice to those of you who are enjoying the series to release it that way.

The good news is I’ve finally got my feet back under me. I did a lot of work to Book 4 and improved it a lot already. Book 5 is chugging along. I’ve written 28k words on it in just over a week (the finished book will run around 120k words, for perspective). The ideas are flowing. The characters are perking up and coming back to life. It’s all looking quite promising.

And there you have it. Now you know what’s what. (That is, if you didn’t look at this post and go, Nope, too long. In that case, there’s a quick synopsis for you at the bottom!)

PS There is a fourth Ace Lone Wolf book, for those of you who are fans. It will come out in a few months when I re-launch that series as well. In the meantime, soon there will be a free prequel Ace story for you to munch on.

TL;DR Eric is late with the next book in the new fantasy series. This is because Eric has been very tired due to actually making a living as an author. Books 4-6 will all come out close together in late Fall.