Future Plans

If you're paying attention, you'll probably have noticed that I've updated my website with a new background and have now added a page for The Muffler's Ministry. That's a little way off release, probably sometime in the first quarter of 2021, but it's advanced enough to say something sensible now. That includes a preview of the current draft of the opening three chapters, which have changed a little from the versions I shared in earlier blog posts.

Also, I now have a release date for My Family and Other Ghosts – 3rd August 2020! At least, that's when the Kindle edition should appear – the paperback can take a day or so more to trickle through the Amazon system.

There's more...

Once I've sent a draft of The Muffler's Ministry off to my beta reader, I've a major revamp of my existing novels to get underway.

The biggest change is that I'm going to be moving away from making them available exclusively through Amazon. Instead I'll be distributing via Draft2Digital, at least for eBooks – I'll make a decision about paperbacks later, which will continue to be available via Amazon in the interim.

Don't worry, you'll still be able to get the books via Amazon – although there may be a very brief hiatus – but you'll also be able to get it through many more outlets, including Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

I'm not planning on making any textual changes to the stories themselves (unless I spot any typos) but they will get new Afterwords, and Forewords where appropriate. I'll also be updating the covers and the blurbs.

I'll transfer the three novels in The Tamboli Sequence first. This is a sneak preview of their new covers, although I'm likely to tweak them further ahead of publication:

When I relaunch these, I'll do a separate blog post for each novel to discuss their background, expanding further on their politics and giving more personal context.

After a month or two, I'll be transferring My Family and Other Ghosts too. I have a couple of different routes I may go with the front cover here, either similar to the current one, or something entirely different. I'll be listing it under both Science Fiction and Family Drama in its first incarnation, and it depends on where the bulk of interest that I get comes from. These are the two options I'm currently considering:

The Muffler's Ministry will be published directly on Draft2Digital, so there's no need to migrate that. This is the cover I'm currently using, but I’m sure it will change:

There's still more.

At the same time, I'll be carrying out a revamp of my mailing list, giving more benefits for signing up to my stunning insights. One of those will be getting free access to an eBook containing a selection of short stories that I'm writing. You'll also be able to get free Advanced Review Copies of future eBooks in exchange for providing honest reviews. I'll be distributing these via BookFunnel, so you should be able to read them no matter what eReader you use. I'll make my old novel, The Stream, available free via this route too.

The number of short stories at first will be limited, but you'll get access to any new ones as they become available. At launch, you'll get these stories as a minimum:

• An expanded version of the Ascension short story, featuring Kofi Albus and Katinka Farkas, set between Integration and Transformation, probably now called Transcendental.

• A new short story set between Long Division and Transformation featuring Indra and Sandra, possibly called Lemma.

• A short story acting as a kind of epilogue to My Family and Other Ghosts, set about a year after the novel ends, probably called The Shaws and The Olivers.

Well, that should keep me busy.