Benedict Jacka

And it’s done.  

I finished editing the manuscript for Alex Verus #12, a.k.a. Risen, last weekend, and sent it off to my publishers at the beginning of the week.  It’s now with my US and UK editors and will stay with them until they get back to me with their first-round edits – if you’re curious, we’re now on Step 4 (Waiting for Edits) of the process that I wrote about here.  My Alex Verus novels have required fewer and fewer rewrites/revisions over the years, and for book #10 and #11, the edits stage was very quick and painless.  So at the risk of jinxing myself, I’m not expecting any delays – that the book should be published in December 2021 on schedule.  (I know, I know, you’d rather have it sooner, but my publishers like to schedule books ages in advance – they probably would have pushed it all the way to 2022 if I hadn’t specifically asked them to release it no later than one year after Forged.)

Right now, though, the biggest thing on my mind is that I’m finally done with Alex Verus.  It’s a very weird feeling – my entire professional identity for the past nine years has been ‘the guy who writes the Alex Verus series’.  Now Alex Verus is finished, but I’m not.  I’m going to move on to something new.  

It does feel kind of appropriate that I finished the last Alex Verus book right at the end of 2020.  Alex Verus is very much a 2010s series – it was written in between 2008 and 2020, and the in-universe timeline begins with Fated in 2011 and ends with Risen in 2017.  I guess my next series will be my one for the 2020s!  

Which brings me to the question of what my next project will be, but I’m not going to get into that just yet.  It’s something I’m thinking about (and have been thinking about off and on for more than a year) but right now, I’ve been working on Risen pretty much flat out since the spring/summer of 2020, and I’m kind of exhausted.  I’m going to a take a break.  I’ve got various bits of news concerning new books and future Alex Verus stuff, but that can wait!

Busy editing Risen.  It’s the last time I’ll be doing this for an Alex Verus novel.  Strange feeling.

Book should be heading off to my publishers by Monday.

Happy 2021 to everyone!  Hope it goes well!

I’m just in the middle of writing the last pages of the epilogue to Book #12.  It should all be done and sent off by next week’s post – I’ll go into more detail then.

Merry Christmas to everyone!  I know 2020 hasn’t been the best year for a lot of you, but hopefully things will get better.  

Alex Verus #12, otherwise known as Risen, is very close to done.  I finished the last chapter and wrote ‘THE END’ a couple of days ago.  Just need to do the epilogue and give it one last edit.

Just started the last confrontation in what’ll be the last chapter of the last Alex Verus book.  Word count is at 94,000 out of my original estimate of 90,000.  

Alex Verus #12 also now has a title and a (projected) release date!  It’ll be called Risen and if all goes well it’ll be coming out on December 2nd, 2021.  This does depend on everything going to plan with edits and publication schedules, so don’t go writing it down in your diary just yet, but that’s the target we’re shooting for.  I asked my publishers if we could put this book out no later than a year after the last one, and it seems they might be willing to do it.  My plan is to finish the first draft by the end of the year, give the book a quick edit and incorporate some suggestions from my beta readers, then send it off to my publishers in the first week of January.  

Now that the release of Forged is over and the Reddit AMA is done, everything’s quiet again. 

‘Quiet’ is a pretty good description of my working life in general.  Every now and then I’ll have a book release or an AMA or some other event, but for the remaining 95% of the time I just stay at home and write.  Some authors spend a lot of time on publicity work and conventions and tours and social media, but for various personal reasons I’m never been all that keen on those.  For the most part, I write my books and do these weekly blog posts and that’s it.  

Speaking of which, I’m still working away on Alex Verus #12.  The good news is that, by my standard baseline, it’s 97% complete.  The bad news is that in this case the baseline is wrong – it’s based on the assumption that the first draft will be 90,000 words long, which this one won’t be.  I’ve just finished the first of the four final confrontations, and it’ll definitely take at least one full chapter more to do the last three.  And after that I still need to do the epilogue.  So 100,000 words is probably more accurate.  

Still, I should be done by the end of the year.  Exact publication date from there is going to depend on my editors/publishers, but if we’re lucky they’ll be able to get it out by the end of 2021.  Fingers crossed!

Just a reminder that I’ll be doing my yearly Reddit Ask Me Anything on r/fantasy tomorrow!  I’ll start answering questions at 12 noon GMT, and I’ll keep replying on and off over the next 24 hours before wrapping things up at 12 noon on Friday 4th.  

I’ll post the link tomorrow when the AMA goes live, but in the meantime, here are some links to the AMAs I’ve done on Reddit in previous years:  

2016 AMA (done right after the release of Alex Verus #7, Burned)
2017 AMA (after release of Book #8, Bound)
2018 AMA (after release of Book #9, Marked)
2019 AMA (after release of Book #10, Fallen)

Hope to see you there!

Well, after far too many issues, it’s finally here!  Alex Verus #11, Forged, gets its release today for readers in the UK, Europe, and everywhere else that isn’t North America, and hopefully you should all be getting the right edition this time.  

As usual, the book is available in ebook format, a trade paperback edition, and an audiobook narrated by Gildart Jackson.  

Also, just as a reminder, I’m going to be doing a Reddit AMA (question and answer session) on r/fantasy two days from now, on Thursday 3rd December.  If you want to ask me questions about Forged, the rest of the Alex Verus series, or pretty much anything else, drop by and say hi!