Next Book Thoughts and Update (Patreon)

The eleventh book in the series will continue the war with Tymetron, and I'm aiming to do something a little different with it: I want to do a logistics book. So many times the negotiations and organization are pushed to the background so that the main characters can fight some more guys. Well, I'm going to try to make this aspect of war interesting, building a book around alliances and the management of the big sublime materials that nations fight over.

This necessitates a somewhat different structure, and I imagine it will be a little controversial. It doesn't have the average rising action to climax sequence, which is effective... but I've written that in multiple books, and as I've said before, I don't want TWC to be repetitive. I hope that this shift will make the war feel longer and more real without it being just hundreds of thousands of words of battle after battle.

Either of these decisions might not work for some readers, and I can only say that I did the tenth book with very conventional pacing, and I think the rising action of the twelfth book should be intense (because it will be a climax of not just one book but the whole arc). My hope is that if readers are this deep into the series, they'll tolerate the variation if they don't enjoy it.

I'm sure that some won't, however. It's always a little frustrating when people assume that you couldn't have possibly intended to write what you did, and you must have foolishly made a mistake when trying to write what they wanted to read. I'm putting a lot of effort into thinking about how to structure a book along different lines, both for individual readability and the series as a whole.

Of course, the fact that something was done intentionally doesn't mean that it's good: some won't like the result, and it's even possible that I'll agree. Right now, though, setting up the book this way seems like a fun way to take on war from a different angle and give both the characters and organizations a chance to show off new facets of themselves.

This isn't entirely an interim book, though. There are a couple long-running subplots that will be wrapped up, one that I think some will really enjoy, and another answering a narrative question that I haven't seen people asking.

I think the eleventh book is also the first time that the characters visit every single world in one book. I could have done this earlier, of course, but readers couldn't track that many locations. Hopefully by now it's comprehensible and feels like the scale is ramping up in more than just big numbers.

Anyway, I'm planning to release Crimsoncrest in early to mid October. This is the timing that works out for a number of reasons: I have some promotional deals coming first, and there will be an Audible launch that you'll hear about after. In the meantime, there will be the last blueprint, a fun tutorial, and perhaps some preview chapters!