Progress Report June ’22
I’m conscious that my progress reports have been few and far between lately. I’ve got a lot going on but not that much that I can actually announce or discuss, which makes progress reports every two months a bit of a pointless exercise…
The first draft of my next book The Devils is grinding on, albeit slowly and in between other things. The book now has a US publisher in Tor US, and a US editor in Lindsey Hall, neither of whom I’ve worked with before and both of whom I am excited to work with on this. I’m getting towards three quarters of the way through a first draft, though the plan is really to just vomit the thing out and then spend some time sitting in that vomit, editing, rewriting and rearranging it, until I have a book I like. Hard to know exactly what the timescale might be on that, very much depends on what happens with all this other stuff and how much time I have to commit to it. I will of course rush to announce it when a roughly reliable publication date comes into view.
Then there are quite a few special or limited editions of one kind or another in the pipeline. I believe John Anthony di Giovanni has now delivered all the art for Subterranean Press’s limited edition of The Trouble With Peace, so that one should be appearing within the next few months. He’ll be doing art for The Wisdom of Crowds as well in due course, but for now he’s at work on a little companion volume which Sub Press are doing – a novella length collection of four short stories that sit alongside the Age of Madness which will be called The Great Change – and other Lies. I’m hoping that’ll be available this year too – more information on the ordering of that as I have it. Then I’ve been working with UK specialist publisher Curious King on some really high-end letterpress limited editions of the First Law with art by Tommy Arnold. The whole run sold out within about half an hour of going on sale. Pretty crazy how the market for what I would consider astonishingly expensive collector’s editions has developed over the past few years. Anyway, that one’s going to contain a lot of art so it’ll no doubt be a while coming together, but if it all works out the aim is to continue with the other books in the series, and perhaps beyond to the stand-alones, who can say…
As Covid regulations relax I’m starting to commit to a couple of events again. Delighted to say I’ll finally be heading back to my regular haunt at the Celsius festival in Aviles in Spain in a couple of weeks, then having had to cancel Portugal comic con last year I’m aiming to show up to this year’s edition in December.
So there you go, a progress report that reports very little progress. Somewhat frustrating, but so it goes. Hopefully things will pick up and there’ll be enough for bi-monthly reports as the year continues.
But, as always, I promise nothing…
