Time for an authorial status update.
1. Sara, the small elusive wife, has no visible evidence of cancer on any scan, and is going to live. In a few months, she can even quit the immune therapy drugs.
Thank you for all your kind messages and for your prayers, which meant everything to us even if we're not religious. Because they meant we were not alone.
I read them aloud to her as she was wheeled in the operating theater to have her brain cut into.
We couldn't respond to every message, but we saw each one, and our gratitude cannot ever be discharged.
2. Yes, everything is late. While Sara was fighting for her life, my first, last, and only priority was caring for her.
It wasn't just the time commitment — it was the mental disruption.
(Yes, I went there. That's the joke.)
I can survive and even be okay under stress, lack of sleep, and days spent in hospitals. But the creative process is a more delicate and temperamental beast than the rest of me.
Most projects were set back about 6–9 months. That’s over now, and I can work again.
3. The Theft of Fire audiobook is in a one-week process of final premaster review, to catch the tiniest of errant sound imperfections lest they slip through. After that, audio mastering and release.
I don't have an exact date, but it's a matter of weeks and days.
4. The audiobook road was a long one.
I had to fire two audio engineers, one for being too pushy, one for being too passive, but the third one was just right, and a talent ear and a zealot for quality besides.
Thank you, @TenorRichards, and also my actors, @CDoombeard, @tiny0nion, and that other one who refuses to herself a damn X account. Someday I hope to be rich enough to pay you what you are worth.
The good news is that, despite all the delays, the next audiobook will be a much faster process. I have a solid team now, and we know the process. I will be able to release the Box of Trouble audiobook several months after publication of the novel.
5.Which brings us to the final and most important point.
When sequel?
I can finally give you some information on that. In mid-June, I took the time to go through my git repository, and sort the difference between notes, summaries, outlines, and actual written manuscript material.
Out of approximately 145,000 words, 39,000 were finished material. The rest were mostly detailed scene-by-scene summaries and notes.
Since then, I have brought the completed word count to about 72,000 words. I estimate that the total word count will be around 150,000.
150,000 – 72,000 may seem like an awful lot, but this is not a process of green-field developmental writing. I am writing story from very detailed preparatory summaries and scraps. In some places, there is literal copying and pasting going on.
Based on an exact count of days, computation of rates, and estimated length, my calculations predict that the manuscript will be finished in early September.
I say “manuscript” and not “first draft,” because for many writers who sit down and write front to back, the first draft is an early step in a long process of rewrites and editing to bash it into the shape of a workable novel.
But I am a careful architect, and write from general to specific, with much care, and notes, and outlines, and rewriting. Which means that first draft, that manuscript, is very close to a finished product, and most of the rewriting and editing has already occurred.
When I finish a manuscript, I make a final pass for continuity edits and then send it out to my beta readers. If I am finished on September 1st, and take 3 days for polishing, I can release to beta readers on September 4th, then I can give them one week to finish the book before doing interviews.
This gives me 2 months until November 11th, the release date for Theft of Fire, two years earlier. In that two months, we would have to complete:
- Beta reader feedback edits
- Professional line editing and fixing
- Cover design and art
- Proofreading
- Layout and typesetting
- Amazon page text and other promotional material workup
- Release logistics such as platform integration, ISBNs, etc.
- Website updates and preorder logistics
This is an almost impossible task, and if that's not immediately obvious to you from the list, then you have never published a book.
But we are going to try.
Because it's important to me.
When I began this career, I planned to put out one quality novel a year, and still be scribbling, like an epistolary H.P. Lovecraft protagonist, up until the moment death takes me.
But a plan is a list of things that don't happen.
Between cancer, an unexpected surge of publicity that left me with many demands on my time, and my own inexperience at wrangling my writing process, I was unable to release another novel on November 11th, 2024.
If I can get it out the door on November 11th, 2025, that will mean that I was, once, one year late, and that it will likely never happen again, at least not that badly.
And if Joanne Rowling took two years to finish Goblet of Fire, I can live with that.
But I'd like to hit two years to the day if I can. Because that will mean I have control again. That I have mastered this beast, and tamed it, and made it answer to my will.
Twenty years ago, or thirty, two years between novels would not have raised so much as a comment, or raised eyebrow.
But the legacy of former author @GRRMspeaking is not just that he wasted all considerable grace given to him by readers, but that he burned right through it and went on to consume the grace given to other authors, who now get much less patience and understanding due to his laziness and lack of moral courage.
Go fuck yourself, George, you spineless oxygen thief.
But I cannot fault the reading public for learning from experience and applying inductive reasoning.
So that means that things which are not my fault can still be my problem, and I want to deliver value, not excuses.
So I want to deliver a pristine and engaging Theft of Fire audiobook by August, a worthy sequel on November 11th, or as soon after that as logistics allow, and a worthy audiobook for that sequel in late winter to early spring of next year.
If I can do that, I believe I will deserve to have people shut up about that bastard George in my timeline.
For now, the only thing I can do to earn your continued faith is to be transparent.
I hope this message qualifies.