So, it has been a bit since a proper update, hasn’t it?
About this time last year, I dropped the news about things ending for me at DAW, my plans for the future, especially regarding Phase Two of Maradaine, and that 2023 would be more of a “rebuilding year”.
That last one was more true than I realized.
This past year has been especially challenging— really the past few years, but 2023 especially. Some of it I’ve talked about publicly, but in brief: significant legal and financial entanglements with my wife’s family, health and accidental injury challenges with my father, myself and my son, further crises and emergencies that are, frankly, almost comically absurd and melodramatic. It’s honestly been great fiction fodder, but terrible to live through. Add in that I’ve been trying to focus on finishing a non-Maradaine book, which has been… challenging to say the least, in no small part due to all the things above. Needless to say, 2023 has been the least productive writing year I’ve had in well over a decade. I’ve not finished anywhere near what I had hoped I would have by now.
But sometimes it’s good for fields to lay fallow and regenerate. Hopefully that’s what’s been happening. I’ve been accused of being a writing machine, and that machine probably required some maintenance, and we’ll be in a better place moving forward.
What this means is, as much as I’d love to give you all some concrete dates for An Unkindness of Uncircled Mages , City of the Truth and those further Phase Two books, I’d love to tell you I’ve finished a non-Maradaine book, I’d love to tell you I have a new agent, welll, I can’t do any of that. Hopefully 2024 will bring more news that I can share along those lines.
However, there are some things I can share!
I did write a story for the upcoming Traveling Light anthology set in the world we’ve been building on Worldbuilding for Masochists podcast, which we plan on releasing in August 2024.
I am releasing the next Maradaine Saga Short, the novelette The Withered Boy. It’s the story of a young man in an island community, outcast for the belief that he’s to serve a greater destiny out in the world. It will come out on December 5th. Also on December 5th, I’m releasing my own updated versions of Thorn of Dentonhill and A Murder of Mages, as trade paperbacks and e-books, and The Alchemy of Chaos and An Import of Intrigue will follow soon after. And we’ll continue to release these “Marshall’s version” of Phase One of the Maradaine Saga as I get rights returned to me.
And since we’re at the end of another year, how about a list of any awards-eligible works I had this year?
Novelette: Hultichia and The Withered Boy
Series:The Maradaine Saga (thanks to the above novelettes)
Podcast/Fancast: Worldbuilding for Masochists
That’s all for now. After all, I have quite a bit of work to do.
Happy to hear from you! And happy to hear about “The Thorn of Dentonhill” and “A Murder of Mages” too! I noticed the ebooks disappeared somewhere just after I recommended them to a friend.
Out of curiosity, how different will the Marshall’s version be to the original one of Phase One? Any substantial changes, or just small changes, or none at all?
The main differences are there’s a new afterword, and I fixed a couple typos that had always bothered me. But the important thing is that they’ll be available.