Second Anniversary

FatedUSCover100As of this week, we’ve just passed the two-year mark for the release of Fated!  Last year I did a ‘First Anniversary’ post, where I looked back on everything that had happened since Fated’s publication.  Now it’s the second anniversary instead of the first – what’s happened since then?

In a lot of ways my second year of being a published (non-children’s) writer has been less eventful than the first.  In 2012, I had three books come out at three-month intervals – Fated, Cursed, Taken.  It would be nice to be able to keep releasing books at that pace, but unfortunately I write MUCH slower than that – the only reason Orbit and Ace were able to publish so many of my books so fast in 2012 was that I had Fated and Cursed written and edited well before 2012 arrived.  In 2013, I had only one book published, Chosen.

One book a year is, unfortunately, a lot closer to my actual writing rate, as borne out by this year’s work – the main writing I did in 2013 was Book #5 of the Alex Verus series, Hidden.  That said, I’m hoping to go a little bit faster than that in future.  Hidden wound up taking twelve months total – three months planning, six months writing, and another three months editing and rewriting until I got something me and my editors were all happy with.  For book #6, I’m shooting for nine months rather than twelve, and I’ve got a deadline to motivate me – the first draft of book #6 is due in by the end of June.

On that topic, the big news for this last year for me has been the contract for books #6 and #7 of the Alex Verus series.  It’s always a huge relief as an author when deals like this get settled – no matter how well sales seem to be going, you’re never quite sure how the publishers see it.  Now that the contracts are done and signed, there are going to be Alex Verus books coming out all the way into 2016, which feels weird to write (very far ahead, isn’t it?) but which is good.  Means I can focus on the writing without having to worry about the series being suddenly cut off!

The second piece of news publishing-wise for 2013 was the release of the Tantor audiobooks for the Alex Verus series.  I’ve been getting “when are the audiobooks coming out?” questions for what feels like forever, so it was nice to be able to finally answer that with a positive.  There are some tentative plans for UK audiobooks in the works, too, but nothing definite yet – I’ll post when I have more news.

So while there hasn’t been a huge amount of news for the past year, there’s still been a fair bit, and all of the news has been good.  The Alex Verus novels are still going and still selling, the work on writing more of them is going well, and my publishers are happy enough with them that they’re contracting for more.  Enough to give me reason to be optimistic about the next year!

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2 Responses to Second Anniversary

  1. Kamrin says:

    Fantastic news! Congratulations on the contract! Both me and my husband are huge readers and after I picked up and found your series, I got him hooked on them as well. While I always wish books like yours would come out more quickly, I am also very happy with the quality and find them well worth the wait 🙂 Good luck on your new writing schedule. I look forward to all future books.

  2. Hazel says:

    Yay! Congrats. Looking forward to Books 6 & 7. Am really liking the Alex Verus series. While waiting for Hidden to come out I started re-reading the series from the beginning. Still great reads even second time around.

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