Benedict Jacka

Some bad news for this week.  Book #4 in the Inheritance of Magic series, A Progression of Demons, has had its publication delayed.  It’s now going to be released four months later than originally planned, on March 23rd, 2027.

This delay is the decision of my publisher.  I sent in the first draft of Book #4 around the beginning of November 2025, which would have given them 12 months to handle editing, copy-editing, and the rest of the publication process.  Unfortunately they didn’t get started on this process until almost halfway through said 12-month window.  The full story is long and not particularly interesting, but the short version is that they sat on the manuscript for the first 5 months, finally (in response to my increasingly irate emails) began work on the edits in May, and then decided that since they now only had 7 months left, they’d have to push the release date back to compensate.  Even with these delays, the book could still be made ready for publication this autumn – it’s currently at the proofreading stage and I’ll be sending the proof back this month – but they’ve decided not to.

Needless to say, I’m really annoyed by all this.  I don’t always hit my deadlines for my books, but I usually get pretty close, and I work really hard to stay as near to them as possible so that the books can keep coming out on a once-per-year schedule.  Working flat-out to finish a book, sending it off, waiting for months and months with no communication, then finally having my publisher essentially tell me “oh yeah, we just didn’t get around to it” is infuriating, particularly since they didn’t even bother to tell me about the changed publication date (in fact, I only became aware of it because some of you guys noticed the changed release date on Amazon).  The longer the wait between books in a series, then the harder it becomes for readers to remember what happened in the last one, and the more likely it becomes that they’ll drift away and forget about it.  So this sort of delay hurts my sales and readership.

Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about it, so I’m just going to have to put up with it.  I’m still working on Book #5 in the meantime, which (I suppose) is now going to be finished months and months before the publication of Book #4.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get them to publish it in November, so you guys will get two books next year.  If not, we’ll just have to see.

Book #4 in the Inheritance of Magic series now has a title:  A Progression of Demons.

More details on its publication next week.

The third book in my Inheritance of Magic series, A Judgement of Powers, will be available for $1.99 on Kindle in two days, on the 26th.  Apparently it’s a “Goldbox Deal”, whatever that it.  (I assume it’s probably nothing to do with the old computer RPGs that I used to play back in the 1990s.)

The price drop hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it’s scheduled for the 26th, so if anyone you know doesn’t have the book but is interested, maybe it might count for something!

Sorry that posting has been a bit thin lately.  There have been some problems going on behind the scenes relating to book publication and I’ve been struggling to keep up with everything.

Don’t worry, the books are still getting published, and you’ll still get to read them!  However, I can’t really explain all the details just yet since I’m currently still trying to sort things out and would rather not go into the details until I do.  Once I have things finalised on my end I’ll make a full announcement and explain everything properly, at which point things will hopefully make a bit more sense.

Next section of Inheritance of Magic #5 is done.  It’s currently sitting at 65,000 words; two more sections and we’ll be finished.  Judging by the length of past books, I should be about two thirds of the way through.

Still going to try to get the first draft finished by the end of the summer, though that’s starting to look optimistic.  On the whole, though, I’m happy with how it’s going.  Progress on this book has been quite a lot faster than the last one.

The copy-edited manuscript for Inheritance of Magic #4 arrived this week, and I’ve gotten to work on it.  (For those who want an explanation of what copy-edits are, you can look here.)  I’m scheduled to send them back July 14th, and so far they’ve been nice and easy, so I should be able to make that deadline with no trouble.  Once that’s done, all the major changes will have been made, and the manuscript will be 99.9% identical to the one you guys will be getting come November.

The edits process for this book has been really long, mostly due to factors out of my control, so it’s nice to have it ticking along smoothly again!

The UK edition of A Judgement of Powers is having its paperback release!  Release date in a couple of weeks, on July 14th.  The author copies just arrived, so I’ve had a chance to have a look at them.  They look quite nice, though the spine art is a surprise – instead of making it uniform, as they did with books 1 and 2, they’ve gone with a sort of fading in-and-out look, with a mixture of browns and golds.  It does make it stand out, though I wonder if it’ll make it look too different from books 1 and 2 side by side.  We’ll see what people think!

Second half of Inheritance of Magic #5 is creeping along.  I’m focusing pretty hard on it, since I’d still really like to get the book finished by the end of the summer.

Copy-edits on Inheritance of Magic #4 are scheduled to come in at the end of June.  They’ll probably take me a couple of weeks or so, but I doubt they’ll be too much of a distraction.  Planned release date of Inheritance of Magic #4 remains November.

Now that the edits on Inheritance of Magic #4 are done, it’s back to work on Inheritance of Magic #5.  I’ve started work on the second half, which I’m hoping to finish by the end of the summer.  Don’t know if I’ll make that deadline, but it’s the target I’m shooting for;  if I average one page a day for the next few months, I’ll make it.  We’ll see how it goes!