I’m Making Progress! In Which I Offer Another Book Update

One of the reasons I started this blog was to chronicle my journey as a writer and, I like to hope, to pass along some of the things I’ve learned. I also intended to hold myself accountable and present updates on all my works in progress. I haven’t been too great about that last part, but I intend to do better. So. Here we go.

Make Up Test: A Rom-Com Winter Tale is all laid out and the illustrations (by the amazing Carol Bales) are finished and in place. It’s now ready for the proofreader. It’ll be released in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook in November, which a launch party at Eagle Eye Book Shop here in the Atlanta/Decatur area. It looks terrific. I absolutely love both the illustrations and the terrific custom drop caps (those are the big and ornate first letters at the beginning of chapters) that Carol has created. I can’t wait to share the book with you.

I’ve only just started Incandescent, my next Winter Tale, but I’m somewhere around 20 percent of the way through the first draft, I think. It’s a surprisingly difficult book to write, but I like how it’s shaping up. I plan (or at least hope) to have it finished by the end of the year, and it is scheduled for release next November. For those of you keeping score at home, this will be Carol’s and my fifth Winter Tale, and the first that’s not based on an existing short story.

Blackthorne Faire has been proofread, and the changes are all in place. So it is basically locked. The illustrations are still to come (from the incomparable Leighanne Schneider) and the back matter is missing, but it’s looking just terrific. I am absolutely thrilled.

In addition to the hardcover, ebook, and audiobook, it’s going to have it’s own board game, tarot deck, music, and a whole lot more.

Blackthorne Faire is the first of what I’m calling my epic novels—they are much longer than the Winter Tales, which are meant to be read in a sitting or two, ideally by the fire with a cup of something warm.

Speaking of the epic novels, I’ve finished a “final” pass on A Planet Called Eden (my astronauts vs dinosaurs space opera story), in which I polished up a few character and logic issues. It’s off to a beta reader or two next, and then I’ll deliver it to my publisher. It’s pretty much done, and it’s scheduled to come out (I think) in January, 2025. The screenplay is also done.

Speaking of screenplays, I have edits due on two film adaptations of my Winter Tale books. I plan to have one of them, The Star in the East, done by the end of October, but it’ll probably be next year for the other, Christmas Past. Deadlines help, as does confessing them to you lot.

I’ve finished what I think is my final pass (at least until I get notes from my publisher) on The Widening Gyre, the first volume of my massive four-volume contemporary fantasy series called The Unbroken Circle. I should have the second volume, Winter Kept Us Warm, polished and ready to deliver by the middle of October. I am somewhere north of two-thirds of the way through the third volume, What the Thunder Said. Alas, that’s pretty much where I was the last time I gave an update. It’s not stalled; Incandescent just has a more pressing deadline. The first of these is coming out in either 2025 or 2026.

Okay, that’s all the writing projects I have in the hopper at present. How about y’all?