Howdy folks!
As I’ve discussed on Twitter and on the podcast, The Broken Heavens mostly-sort-of-done-kinda-partial? draft I sent to my agent/editor was found wanting, and requires a lot of revisions. These things happen. In the mean time, the due date for my next book, the military SF novel THE LIGHT BRIGADE is due to Saga Press on February 1st.
Deadline #2 LOOMS.
Ever since we snuck GEEK FEMINIST REVOLUTION into our existing schedule a couple years back, I’ve been struggling to catch up on my deadlines. Add in the weird break between the first two Worldbreaker books contract and the third Worldbreaker book contract, with the Saga contract between them (since Angry Robot was sold, they couldn’t buy the third book for like six months or something), and my deadlines got ultra messy. Also, the US descended into fascism, of course, which is bad for everyone’s deadlines.
Anyway. Agent and I discussed these issues and decided it would be best to hit the Saga deadline on time, since I’m clearly not going to get any less late on delivering The Broken Heavens. My agent let my publisher know this just before I left for Scandinavia. The publisher did note that pushing out the date could cancel people’s pre-orders, but my agent forgot to forward me that part, so I was just as taken aback as all of your. These things happen.
Now that I have the heads’ up, well – yeah, cancelling pre-orders is pretty shitty on Amazon’s part. Though shifting the date out to 2019 or 2020 may not have cancelled them? Maybe? Who knows? It’s a thing that can happen, and I’m sorry it did for all of your who pre-ordered through Amazon and I wasn’t able to give you a heads’ up (I’m getting emails, DM’s AT WORK, and notifications of all kinds and I’d rather be writing). Writing is great, but the wheels of publishing can be really shitty sometimes, because there are a whole lot of moving parts and pieces.
Ultimately, the fault is with me for writing a book that’s very late. At this point, as said, I’m trying to save the publication schedule with THE LIGHT BRIGADE since the Worldbreaker timeline is already fucked. Sometimes you can’t force a book. I churned hard on The Broken Heavens, but my agent promised me she’d tell me when stuff wasn’t up to snuff, and she called it with this one. It will get there, but I needed to cut a lot of stuff, and as said – that Light Brigade deadline was getting closer and closer.
So despite what Amazon may tell you, no, the book is not out in 2035 (my on-signing payment for this book was $5k. I would just send it back if that were the case and move on!). It’s still on my schedule, I’m still working on it, but LIGHT BRIGADE has to take priority so I don’t miss that deadline, too. That said, it’s had to come off of Angry Robot’s publication schedule since we no longer have a firm turn-in date (“after Light Brigade” is best I can do), which means we’re not sure when we can get it back in. That will depend on when I can turn it in. And that’s all on me.
That’s the best I have for you! Sorry for the confusion. I like to have a heads’ up before this stuff happens, but there are a lot of players here and I was also traveling for a couple weeks, and sometimes these things get dropped.
You know I love you all, and thank you for supporting these books. Sorry it’s where it’s at and Amazon is weird. It’s not the publisher’s fault.
In the meantime, remember that you can get monthly stories from me via Patreon, and I will let you know when I actually TURN IN A REAL DRAFT of Broken Heavens and the book is back on the publishing schedule.
THAT information, at least, I will know for sure!
