Hi, everyone

Two pieces of good news first. The Apprentice Mistress has had its first set of edits and is now going under the second, which will hopefully be done in a week or so. There will be a third and final set, then the book will be up for purchase. I hope you’re looking forward to seeing Emily’s further adventures.

Linked to that, I have just completed the first draft of The Burning World and it is with the editor now. My hope is to get it up for purchase in 2-3 weeks, but of course nothing can be guaranteed. The audio edition of The Firelighters is set for release in spring, and I will continue to provide updates when I know more for myself. Please watch this space.

I’m not quite sure what I intend to do in the next couple of months. My current plan is to write The Alchemist’s Secret next, continuing the Zero books, now I have worked out the plot kinky that was stopping me from progressing. After that, I may finish the Mystic Albion books with The Many-Angled World, which will hopefully wrap up the plot threads I laid in the first two books, although I need to write out the plot and then stress test it to see how well it holds up. How does that sound? After that, I may write The Unnatural Order – Schooled in Magic 27 – or something else. I’m still waiting for a response from the agent about Conquistadors, so I may have to displace one book to continue that series if it works. Pray for me .

I have several other ideas in mind, but I don’t know how well they will work out. One idea is to do another serial, or a web novel, and see how that goes, but I’m not convinced the first three serials worked very well – I needed more comments as the story developed and I didn’t really get enough. Did you like the serial? Or should I just stick to novels and novellas?

Linked to this, I need to do a novella for Fantastic School Wars.

This leads to the more awkward part of the email . We are trying to put together the stories for Fantastic School Wars, and we really need more submissions. These stories are supposed to follow a theme of ‘war,’ combined with some degree of magical education. You can write a story about a United States Mage Corps training platoon that runs into very real trouble, if you like, set in a universe very much like ours, or a story set in a much more fantastical universe; you are welcome, if you wish, to set a story in one of your own universes (the original idea behind the collection was to introduce writers to a number of different authors and their works) and if you do so you can also plug your own work.

In general, we want stories between 3000 and 10’000 words, although we can be flexible on such matters. Stories are professionally edited; profits are shared equally amongst the writers; we want exclusive publication rights for one year, following publication, then you will be free to republish however you like.

If you have any interest in submitting a story, please drop me an email.

Real life has had its ups and downs recently, but we are plugging on. And that’s quite enough moaning .

Like I said, feel free to tell me what you think and suggest other stories (and submissions for wars).

Chris