The Unwelcome Warlock: Progress Report Forty-One

The contracts with Wildside are signed and counter-signed, payment is on the way, and the publisher has asked me to please remove the free version — we want people to pay for the official e-book when it’s released.

Therefore, I’ll be taking down the Epilogue and Chapters Three through Forty; they’ll be gone no later than Monday, possibly much sooner. If there was anything you wanted to re-read, either get it now or wait for the finished book. (Chapters One and Two will remain, as advertising.)

I haven’t finished the revised version; Wildside wants it ASAP, and the contract has a deadline in late May, so I need to get to work on that.

We still don’t have a specific release date for the finished book, but Wildside likes to get stuff out to market and earning money quickly.

There will be a trade paperback (probably print-on-demand), and an e-book. Don’t know about a hardcover yet. A mass-market paperback edition is very unlikely. No word yet on details like cover art or price.

Thanks to all who contributed!

The Unwelcome Warlock: Progress Report Forty

Chapter Forty and the Epilogue are now online. The serial is concluded and complete. My sincere gratitude to everyone who contributed!

Wildside Press has sent my agent a contract, but it’s not signed yet, so I have no information about the eventual publication date, cover price, or much of anything else. I do know that once the contracts are signed I’ll be taking down the serial version, so read it while you can.

I have only made the most tentative of starts on the second draft at this point. Given the time needed for revisions, editing, copy-editing, cover design, and so forth, it will still be several months before the finished book sees print.

When it does see print, I’ll be sending copies to everyone who donated $25 or more (in the U.S.; Canada the minimum is $30, and overseas it’s $35). I’ll post updates about that here when the time comes, as well as e-mailing information. I’ll be verifying addresses as best I can before anything actually ships.

I’m fairly sure there will be e-book editions for the Kindle and for other e-readers, as Wildside is enthusiastic about those, but again, I have no information at this point.

As long as the serial is online, I’ll accept donations/advance orders. (You can look at them either way, now that we know the book will appear.) Once it’s down, you’ll have to wait until you can order from Wildside, Amazon, B&N, or whatever your preferred source is; I won’t continue taking orders after that.

If you donated more than the minimum, we can discuss in e-mail what extras, if any, you might want — but please, don’t do that now; wait until I announce that the book’s ready and I’m verifying addresses.

In the past, I’ve always included extras of some sort with everyone’s books, but this novel is much longer than any of my previous serials, so I’m not sure whether I’ll be doing that this time. We’ll see.

As for future serials, right now I have no definite plans. I’ll want to see how the writing and publishing business develop over the next year or so — e-books and other developments are drastically changing the market. I will say, though, that this is definitely not the last Ethshar novel; I’ve started writing the next, a “young adult” novel with the working title Ishta’s Playmate (formerly A Stranger in the Forest) that I hope will move the series back to traditional publishing. We’ll see how that works out.

Thanks again for your support!