November Update

With Risen’s release now less than a month away, here are some bits and pieces of news for November!

The first reviews of Risen are coming in, and they’ve all been very positive so far.  Here’s the one from Publisher’s Weekly – one final starred review to round out the series!

A reminder of Risen’s release schedule:

• December 2nd:  UK/worldwide release of Risen (paper, ebook, and audio)
• December 7th:  US/Canada release of Risen (paper, ebook, and audio)
• December 14th:  Reddit AMA on r/fantasy to follow the release of Risen

We’re also coming to the end of my Author Commentary series.  The second-to-last one will be next week, covering Forged.  I’d originally planned for this series of posts to lead up to the release of Risen, and that’s exactly what I’ve done – we’ll reach part #11 just a couple of weeks before Book #12’s release.

For my part, though, I put the last touches on the manuscript of Risen nearly half a year ago, and I’ve been spending all my time working away on my new series.  The book’s about 80% of the way through its first draft if I’m measuring by word-count, but I’ve been doing some thinking and I’ve decided to change a few things.  It turns out that I wrote most of the book without a very clear idea of what the series theme would be.  That’s no longer true:  I now know exactly what that theme is.  However, this means that I’ll have to adjust the earlier chapters – two characters in particular need to be significantly rewritten.

This kind of rewriting is a lot of work, and will take a lot of time – I’m now expecting the first draft of the book not to be complete until January or so.  To me, though, it feels as though it’s worth doing.  I’m planning for this new series to be my major project for at least the next five years or so, so I think it’s worth taking a bit of extra time at the start to make sure the foundations are good.  Getting the first book right is important!

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15 Responses to November Update

  1. Is says:

    Hi Benedict,

    When can we expect the final Author Commentary for #12 – Risen?

    Thank you.

  2. Alicia W. says:

    It’d be cool to have an author commentary for Favours, too. Is that in the plan?

  3. Benedict says:

    Is: Probably some time in January.

    Alicia: No plans for that right now. There’d be much less to say about it than the main books in the series.

  4. Celia says:

    Any chance of us getting some info on what the theme of the new series is? 😉

  5. Benedict says:

    Celia: Still too early, sorry! 🙂 I’ll give you guys a proper update on the new series once I’ve done the rewrite.

  6. Jason Enberg says:

    I love that you decided to rewrite parts of the book. I think that is definitely worth the time to make sure the series is telling the story you want to tell.

  7. Kelsey S says:

    Would rather wait longer for a better book than a subpar one. At the same time, can’t wait for the finale of Alex and a new journey.

  8. Kurt Von Bosse says:

    It’s good to read that the foundation of the new series is being properly set, even if it means the first book gets delayed a bit. It should certainly make for a more satisfying read and require far less retconning in later books to correct earlier missteps.

  9. Anonymous says:

    Other than the covers and possibly outer dimensions, what’s the difference between the UK and US versions of the novels? Is there any?

  10. Alicia W. says:

    @Anonymous: I think it’s mostly punctuation. I am in the US, so I get the US version on Kindle, but I also have the paperback editions from the UK. As far as I can tell in the US Kindle version, they keep the UK spelling for everything (I don’t know if that’s true for the US paperback edition): dialled instead of dialed, travelled instead of traveled, kerb instead of curb, colour instead of color, etc.
    One example is quotation marks: in the US Kindle version, they use double quotes around dialogue, but in the UK books, they use single quotes.

  11. GregorV says:

    Wow, that review contains a massive spoiler, not that it was not anticipated, but we receive a very definite confirmation of how exactly the end will play out. I regret reading this, even if I’ve guessed as much 🙁 .
    Let this comment be a warning to anyone who did not yet read the review.

  12. Marti R says:

    Will book 12 Risen be released in audiobook form?

  13. Alicia W. says:

    @Marti R:
    Yes, it is coming out on audiobook the same day as the print & ebook versions.

  14. Bob says:

    “I think it’s worth taking a bit of extra time at the start to make sure the foundations are good. Getting the first book right is important!”

    Thinking back to Fated could you make the same statement? Did you have any idea during fated that you would have a 12 book series? Your statement on the “Gardener” approach for Rachel’s character vs a scripted approach comes to mind.

  15. Robert says:

    In 2015 you did a column on Sales and Royalties. It would be interesting if you could do it again following the completion of the Series. And how good sales resulted in the continuation of the series. You also noted a trend to ebooks over print books in that column, has the trend continued?

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