“When’s That Book Coming?” Spring 2016 Edition

State of the Union time, boys and ghouls.

What I’m Working On

I squirreled away my pennies so I could take April off to focus on Oblivion. Of course that’s gone about as well as expected, but I anticipate finishing a very bare bones zero draft by the end of next week. It’s going to need a lot of fleshing out (like, I’m 70% through it and I’ve skipped about 10K worth of scenes), which I hope to do throughout May, and I’ll need to schedule time with my beta and copyeditor, but I’m looking to release it late this summer.

When it’s done, I have to finish a for-pay project, but then I’ll likely be working on Zheng’s Tomb, which I’m about 13K words into. I’m also playing with a fun comedic crime novel called Trix Moody that I’ll tell you about sometime if it ever actually goes anywhere.

What’s Upcoming

Oblivion

Obv. More below.

New Series

As I’ve been hinting for a few months now (and previously told Patrons of Snark), September 20 will see the release of the first in a new series: Solomon’s Seal.

For the Livi Talbot books, think Tomb Raider meets Gilmore Girls in a mix of urban fantasy and adventure. SS will be up for pre-order in June. The cover is done but I’m awaiting the review quote for the front before previewing it along with rewriting the jacket copy, so look for that stuff later this summer when I have time to poke at it.

I’ll go into more detail about the series later, as right now I want to keep the focus gearing up for Oblivion, but atm I’ll say the Livi Talbot series is nine to ten books. At this point, I’m going to commit to publishing the first three. Other than something brief in the first one, there are no cliffhangers, so I won’t leave anyone hanging if my stress level gets too high and I decide to stop publishing them. (If sales are poor and piracy is high, I don’t want to quit with a cliffhanger and leave readers frustrated.) So three books to see how they do, each book with a resolution and nothing hanging. Beyond that, we’ll see. The goal is to release them three to six months apart–I have a workable third draft of Odin’s Spear done as a follow up to Solomon’s Seal that just needs a bit more smoothing out.

Wolfe

For Wolfe, it’s moved to next year. It was either work on those rewrites or work on Oblivion, and so I put it off. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Haunted

The novella Haunted is also backburnered. I just have too much on my plate with my books, for-pay writing projects, and re-releasing Aunt Judy’s books. I’ll see if I have time to rewrite it next year.

Heaven’s Choice

I also wanted to finish Heaven’s Choice, the prequel novella, before Oblivion but I’ve had to backburner it too. It was getting really long–Heaven’s quite a talker, probably as punishment for killing her–and I might save it for later when I feel like revisiting the series. If that changes, I’ll let everyone know.

Now for the questions…

Everything You Wanted to Know About Oblivion (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Release date? August 2016 (tentatively)

Pre-order? May or June

Availability? Everywhere ebooks are sold: Kindle, Kobo, Nook, iBooks, GooglePlay, ARe/Omnit Lit, direct, Smashwords, etc. Paperback on Amazon.

Length? About 90K words when all is said and done (around the length of Bloodlines).

Narrators? Peri and Mishka primarily. There are brief one-shots between Peri and Mishka’s sections featuring the other characters so most fan favourites get some “screen” time.

Is this the last book?  Yes. No, it wasn’t supposed to be, but I’m done; my heart can’t take having another Zara book pirated given how much she means to me. I am actually looking forward to writing the next arc of books just for me. I might put them out in paperback eventually, I don’t know–the cost of stock and editing might be more than I can invest. For all intents and purposes, though, this is it.

Happily ever after? Oh AHAHAHA, sweetheart. I am not the writer for you if HEAs are requisite for your reading material. There’s closure to the arc, however it’s a painful book on a lot of levels and I expect it to get some hate.

But Zara and Nate—  No, just don’t even with me. I’m not a romance writer. They are not the focus of the plot.

Additional short story at the end? Nope. I always used those to set up future books in the series. That would just be cruel this time.

Deleted scenes? I had to rewrite so much early on, yes, there’ll likely be some. I’ll post them at www.zaralain.com when the book releases. There were a few Peri scenes cut from the beginning that I loved but couldn’t use anymore.

Can I have a review copy? No. I am not touring or offering books for review or anything else, the stress is not good for me. People who took previous books didn’t bother with the fourth one and hated the third, so I’m certainly not handing out the fifth. It’ll be $4.99 in ebook or $11.49 in print, like the others. Some Patrons of Snark get ARCs. If you read it and enjoy it, and want to leave a review, I thank you. But I don’t have the spoons for pursuing reviews.

Will you have signed copies in your online shop? Yep!

Who dies? Everyone!*

Can I catch previews or excerpts? I’ve posted some for Patrons of Snark (and owe them another this month) and members of Alchemy Red on Facebook can sometimes catch others.

Does it have a soundtrack? Yep! I’ll be resuming Soundtrack Sunday with both Oblivion and Solomon’s Seal later. For now, here are my top four Oblivion tunes on repeat:

So that’s it for now. Hopefully some pre-order links next month–I’ll post when it’s all settled. Back to writing this damn book now.

*Not everyone. Probably.