I was on a roll this week, and I finished editing Ancient Dreams and sent it to the editor early. The book has only a couple of outright new scenes, but a lot of minor aspects of the book have changed to try to help the writing flow more smoothly. Since I finished it to that degree, I decided to go ahead and Put it up for Pre-Order.

I want to add that I put the release date for July 15th because that’s when I can guarantee the editor can have the project done by. He has a lot of other clients, so he can’t drop everything to edit my book. Well, I suppose he could, but that’d be bad business, and I probably wouldn’t do business with him if he did. Still, if he gets me the edited version back early, I’m going to move the release date forward at that point.

Now, I will be able to fit the book into a paperback, but I need to warn everyone that I’m going to have to pull some tricks in order to do it. CreateSpace, one of Amazon’s print-on-demand divisions, allows me to publish the print copies you’ve seen so far. They have a hard limit of no more than 828 pages to a book, and even going with a book size of 6 inches by 9 inches (my current ones are 5.5 x 8), it’s well over 1,200 pages in length. To get it down to fitting into 828 is going to require reducing the font size significantly (I don’t have an exact font size to tell you just now, it’ll have to wait until I see the final version). I’ve been looking at publishing a hardback version via Barnes & Noble as well, since they’re the only ones who do hardback print-on-demand that I’m aware of, but at a cursory glance they’re going to have the same issue.

Enough about Ancient Dreams, I have more to talk about! The audiobook of Down with the Queen is coming along well, and just as forewarning, Blooming Orchid’s voice is going to change from Born a Queen. In the original audiobook she didn’t have many lines, so it wasn’t apparent, but her voice was too similar to Gina’s, so the narrator and I decided to change it a bit to keep her distinct from Gina. Recording is scheduled to be done in a couple of weeks, though that can always change. I expect the audiobook will probably go live at the end of May.

However, this means that I’ve finished the revision of Ancient Dreams and don’t have to worry about that for a while. It also means I can start work on my new projects. I’m going to finish the short story A Date in Sanctuary, which will be exclusively available to those on my mailing list for several months at a minimum.

Then I’m going to get started on Through the Fire, since I’ve been having fun plotting things out for it ahead of time. I honestly don’t know how long each book will be at the moment, but I anticipate three volumes for the story arc I have planned, and that story arc is designed to easily lead into a second one. Something else I’m considering doing is writing a short story about the main character of Through the Fire as a sort of prelude/introduction to the world, getting it professionally edited, then releasing it for free. I’m not sure I’m going to do it, but I suspect that I will.

Anyway, that’s it for this week!