"I Dream of Damastion" — New Details!

The upcoming novella which will serve as an expansion episode for The Ravening Deep has now been named.

I Dream of Damastion will be a first person story, taking place in a claustrophobic environment where the stakes are high and the threat is difficult to see.

It will feature a previously unseen main character, and a dangerous villain we have met before.

Another Scam to Avoid...

You may remember that I posted an article a while ago about a site claiming to allow downloads of a pirate copy of List of the Dead, before I had even finished writing it.

Thanks to Google Alerts, which I use to notify me automatically when people write about the Armada Wars universe, I have now identified another scam. This one is similar but much more sophisticated.

Google Alerts found what it thought was a genuine link (now removed), to a site called fire-italia.org. When you click the link, it takes you through a series of redirects (one page forwarding you to another page on a different server) until you land on what appears to be a discussion forum. In this case, the topic under discussion was Steal from the Devil, and the thread starter said they were looking to download it cheaply.

That was my first clue, since it's only $2.99 (£2) on Kindle anyway.

You Really Matter! Why your views should be in REviews

This article was — I have to admit — prompted by a couple of reviews on one of my own books, my début novel Steal from the Devil. While I will refer to SFTD as an example to illustrate some of my points, what I'm going to talk about here applies to all books, whether they be fiction or non-fiction, traditionally published or self-published, paper or eBook, as well as other products.

The basic foundation of this article is this: any given reader is not just a lone "end customer". They are part of a community of readers, and also part of the ongoing life-cycle of books.

I'm going to talk about the problems with reviews, the value of good and bad reviews to writers, their value to readers, and what each group will find useful. So if that is the sort of thing that will interest you, read on!

Announced: Armada Wars Novella 1

Those of you following me on Twitter may have spotted this bit of news appearing quite sneakily a few days ago.

If you've got as far as List of the Dead you will know that in the current story various Imperial ships and facilities have gone silent. You can probably guess at why that is happening, given the other events in the novels, but might feel that you'd like to see it first hand (so to speak).

This first novella — one of a handful which will expand and enhance the Great War of the Shaeld story arc — will be released fairly quickly after The Ravening Deep becomes available. My intention for the novellas is to add extra dimensions to the overall story without interrupting the flow of the narrative with irrelevancies. This particular episode will deal with some of the mechanics of the ongoing invasion.

Without wanting to drop any spoilers, I can confirm that it will follow a previously unseen character aboard an Imperial starship.

Keep an eye out on the blog and social media for a title announcement!

"The Ravening Deep" Teasers

Just before the release of List of the Dead, I posted an announcement for the title of the next book in this series, The Ravening Deep.

You may remember that at the time I did not provide any plot details, for fear of dropping spoilers about the major events which occurred at the end of List of the Dead.

Well... enough time has now passed!

Let's have some teasers...

• Euryce Eilentes will be the flashback character in this volume, and as was strongly hinted at in List she will be coming into her own in major ways.
• As far as the dreadships go, the heavy defeat suffered by the Empire at the end of List prefaces what is coming next.
• The story unfolding on Guathelia, which so far has occupied only the prologues and epilogues, will collide with the main narrative.
• Maber Castigon will also collide with the main story, in a way you might not expect.
• You will hear more from Voice and The Emptiness, and also see more of Earth.

Deep is the middle volume of this five-part story, and it will very much be the Empire Strikes Back of the series. Dark days are ahead for our plucky protagonists!

Worlds Will Fall.