Thanks for your patience, everyone. Here’s a quick update on the progress of Book 5: War Against the White Knights.

I finished the first draft of the novel earlier this week, and it weighs in at just over a hundred thousand words. Now, first drafts can be a bit rough, but Ian and I have been editing each other’s chapters all the way through. I’m still waiting for Ian’s feedback on the last two chapters, but other than that the draft pretty tight.

Normally, by this point I would have asked for volunteers to sign up to a Force Recon Team. The volunteers from previous books have given us sage advice, but running the Recon Teams takes time, and so I’ve decided not to call for volunteers this time around, so I can get the book to you quicker. I fully intend to run Recon teams for future novels.

However, we are certainly not dumping this book on our readers unedited, because we have brought in a top professional editor to give us hell if any part of the book is not up to scratch. I hope you will join me in welcoming Donna Scott to the Legion. She brings a wealth of experience, as you can see for yourself as I’ve copied her bio below. Donna is making good progress already, but I can’t commit to a release date until she’s completed her contribution. We won’t be doing a prerelease period this time, so as soon as War Against the White Knights is ready to go, I’ll publish the Kindle version. Paperback will follow soon after.

A couple more points before I tell you more about Donna.

As you probably know, I’m part of a box set of British military SF, which includes Marine Cadet (which you’ve probably already read), and The President’s Son (a short story set on Tranquility, which you haven’t).  There’s also an extended essay on the state of military Science Fiction, which you might find interesting. I mention this again because the publisher has put the box set in a Kindle countdown deal, so you can get all this for less than a dollar/ quid. The price goes up in about four days. Click on the advert for the buy link.

Talking of price, the audio editions of the first three Human Legion novels — published by Tantor media — are quite expensive to buy as CDs. They are now available to buy from the Amazon product page as audio narration add-ons to anyone who’s already bought the Kindle edition. To be honest, I don’t know a great deal about publishing audiobooks, which is why I allowed Tantor to acquire my rights (Tantor are the largest independent audiobook publisher, and have recently  been acquiring bestselling science fiction authors for their list). So I couldn’t say whether this cheaper audio add-on is available in all regions, but take a look on Amazon. I’m always interested to hear of what you think of the audios, both with the narration and the way you enjoy them,

And now, once again, let me welcome Donna Scott to the team.

A stalwart of the British science fiction scene, Donna Scott is Chair of the British Science Fiction Association  as well as being an established editor, copy-editor and proofreader. She has previously worked for publishers Angry Robot, Black Library, Solaris, Newcon, Immanion Press and Liveright, and has extensive experience of editing military SF, space opera, urban fantasy, horror, crime and YA.