Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

Each week can bring surprising changes. A couple of weeks ago I wasn’t thinking I’d be leaving this house any time soon. Now there are floor plans and to do lists. Last week when I wrote my blog I didn’t know I’d be offered the chance to have my cover designed this month, or that my formatter would come through with an estimate for his work!

So, it is all go. I’ll likely have a new cover to reveal in October, and could in fact be able to publish by the end of that month, if I so desired.

But I have to say I’d got used to the idea of releasing early next year. So I think I may share the cover and wait for the new year, give me time to get my ad copy written, maybe even send out copies for ARC reviews prior to publication. (If you want one, email me. Yes this means I’ll have to check my neglected gmail account. I’ll clean it up tonight, promise. After playing a rack or two of pool.)

And while it would be nice to publish soon, and cut the time between releases down to a mere three years (no laughing at the back), I think changing things up and publishing at the dawn of a new year may be a worthwhile experiment.

I’m also reflecting on why I wrote this book, and for whom. It was always part of my plan: this was the third leg of three stand alone novels set in one world, three protagonists, three threads of story that I could, if I so wished, pull together for an ongoing saga. Or tell separate tales as needed.

The three books each have their own soul: The Thief and The Demon a series of mysteries to solve, dilemmas to escape, fates to avoid and mighty powers to deny. The Killer and The Dead is the exploration of the least sympathetic character I’ll ever write, and his discovery of family secrets and ties, and how they change his view of the world and his siblings, all while living in a nightmare slum of lies and paranoia where nothing can ever be trusted. Now the Gardener and the Goddess is a new take: a tale of faith tested, destiny questioned, of love and fear of its loss, and through it all a search for answers by more than one person, with very different conclusions drawn.

All of my books are about freedom: physical, mental, spiritual, (Spoiler: the first book starts and finishes in a prison!) and the quest to understand a truth of this World Belt by people from very different circumstances. It is the Quest, always the quest to find hidden knowledge and bring it back to share with those left behind, having forged a new understanding of the world. This is never a short road, and I tend to push my characters through a lot of darkness before they see the light, but it is my intention that the light be found, eventually.

So if that sounds interesting to you, then maybe you’re the reader for whom I write.

And on that note, I’ll see you next week!