Benedict Jacka

Well, plus a short epilogue.  92,000 words so far as of the beginning of Chapter 18, so we’re looking at about 100k for the finished manuscript.

Shooting for first-draft completion by the end of the month.

Chapter 16 of Inheritance of Magic #5 is done.  About two more (maybe tw0-and-a-half) and we should be finished.

Still hoping to be done by the end of October, though it’ll take a bit of a push to do it.

Just got sent the draft cover for the French edition of An Inheritance of Magic this week!  Here it is:

It’ll be published by Bayard Editions on 27th January, 2027.

Back home from my holiday, and as promised, here’s an overview of how things are going with the Inheritance of Magic series!

Book #4 in the series, A Progression of Demons, will be published in hardback/ebook on March 23, 2027.  As usual, the audio edition will be coming out around the same time.  Narrator is the same guy who did the last three, Will Watt – if all goes well he’ll be voicing the entire series.  The UK paperback edition will be released later on.

Book #5 in the series is into its last stretch.  It’s currently around the 80,000-85,000 word mark, and I’m working on what should be the last section.  Another 15,000 words or so and it should be done.  I’m hoping to get it finished in October – fingers crossed!

Worldbuilding articles are still kind of in limbo at the moment.  Due to various issues that I’ll get into in at a later date, I’m more pressed for time than usual and I’m struggling to keep up with the writing and other duties.  This happens from time to time and inevitably the result is that I have to start letting lower-priority stuff fall by the wayside, and worldbuilding articles are unfortunately one of those lower-priority things.  I do have a few ones planned out, but it’ll probably be some time before I get around to writing them.

Alex Verus #9, Marked, is supposed to be featured as a Science Fiction and Fantasy Goldbox Deal on 10/11/26, priced at $1.99.  I’ll post closer to the time when it’s confirmed.

And that’s about all for now!  More news as and when I get it.

Back home!  Had a nice holiday and even managed to get a little bit of writing done (not much, but that’s to be expected, really).  More news next week.

Currently away on one of my very rare non-writing holidays.  Back next week.

(Well, probably non-writing.  I still might end up trying to get started on the last section if I find the time.  Would be really nice to get it done by mid-October or so!)

Second-to-last section of Inheritance of Magic #5 is finished!  The book’s currently at 80,000 words – one more section of 15-20k, and we should be done!

I’m off on holiday for a couple of weeks now, but I’ll try to get a little work done while I’m gone, and I’ll aim to finish the manuscript in October once I’m back.  See you in a fortnight!

I’ll be away for a couple of weeks starting next Friday.  This is actually pretty unusual for me – I rarely go off on holiday, especially in the middle of a book – but this has been booked for a long time and it’s the first time in years that I’ve done anything similar, so I thought it’d be nice to have a break for a change.  (I had hoped that I might have book 5 finished before the date arrived, but no such luck.  Oh well.)  I’ll queue up a couple of posts for the website while I’m gone, though I’m currently still a bit overloaded with work so there won’t be any worldbuilding articles.

I’m currently hoping to get section 5 of book 5 done before I go.  Then I can do some planning while I’m gone, and complete the sixth and final section of the new book over September/October.  Fingers crossed!

Advance notice that Risen, the final Alex Verus novel, is supposed to be featured as a Kindle Deal about a month from now, between 14th September and 20th September.  It’ll be $1.99 on the US & Canada Amazon store during this period.  This hasn’t been confirmed as yet, so I’ll post again at the time when it is!

A Progression of Demons, Book #4 in the Inheritance of Magic series, is at the proofreading stage.  This means I’ve got the final-ish file of the book, which in theory I’m supposed to read through to check for errors.  In practice by the time a book gets to this stage I’ve edited it something like five times already, and it’s very unlikely that I’ll catch any errors that the actual proofreader (paid by my publisher) is going to miss.  So I usually just do a quick check to make sure the edits have been implemented and call it a day.  It is nice to have a final set of checks, though.