A while back I published an excerpt from Carver, which is a new series I’m working on. Recently, someone asked me when it would be released, and I had to be honest and say I didn’t know. It’s still in the queue, but the fact of the matter is that my already-published series (e.g., Kid Sensation and Warden), take precedence. Those are the ones that readers are clamoring for, so those are the ones that get my attention. The unpublished series (like Carver, Zero, and The Seventh Shade) are items I tend to work on either between books in my published series or when I need a break/change of pace from my current work-in-progress.
That said, those are stories I really do want to tell. That being the case, I plan to make a concerted effort to get one of those done in the near future. (Readers seem to have liked all of my side projects, so I’ll probably just flip a coin to determine which wins that particular lottery.) However, it won’t come before the next Warden or Kid Sensation book.
Speaking of Warden, I’m still working on the next book in the series – tentative title: Warden (Book 4: Roost of the Roc) – and anticipate finishing soon. In fact, I posted a chapter on my Patreon page not too long ago. And since I brought it up, I feel the need to state – as I have in the past – that I don’t have any expectation that readers will support me on Patreon. It’s something I did at the urging of fans who wanted to offer me extra support – something I’m both flattered by and grateful for. On my part, I try to give them value for their support in the form of exclusive content. For instance, I posted a deleted scene from Conjuration involving Jim and the Pelagic Prince; there’s an excerpt from a future Kid Sensation novel where an older Jim and an unnamed woman discuss a child they have together; there’s also early peeks at cover art, and so on.
Anyway, the fact that I post exclusive content on my Patreon page doesn’t mean that I won’t continue posting excerpts and stuff here, but it does make it more difficult. Basically, I’m in KDP Select, which means that my ebooks are published exclusively with Amazon. More specifically, under the terms of that agreement, no more than 10% of my books can appear online elsewhere. So if a book is, say, 300 pages long, I can’t publish excerpts and such that collectively amount to more than 30 pages.
Unfortunately, I’m not of those people who can predict how long my books will be in advance. I’ve seen authors say things like, “My next book is going to be a 100K word thriller,” but in all honesty, I don’t know how they do that. I generally know that my next book will be a full-length novel, but I can’t say whether if will be 60K words of 80K. By way of example, I thought Replication would probably be about 300 pages in length; it ended up at over 500. But what that means from the standpoint of sharing things like excerpts is that I don’t know how much is safe to post until I’m well into the book. (Trust me, there are few things as nauseating as getting that email from Amazon saying you’ve violated your agreement.) In essence, it’s a balancing act at this point, but I promise I’ll still continue to post excerpts here as well as on Patreon.