Django Wexler

You can grab a preview of my new YA fantasy, Ship of Smoke and Steel, as of today! The book releases January 22nd.

One difficulty in the writing business is I often am aware of new things way before they get announced.  It can be frustrating!  Now, however, next year at least is mostly locked down, so it’s time for an update.

First, the obvious.  The Fall of the Readers, the fourth book in The Forbidden Library series, will be released on December 5th.  The Infernal Battalion, the fifth book in The Shadow Campaigns series, will be released January 9th.  (Both are up for pre-order!)  These are both the final books in their respective series, which I must say is a little weird for me!  Wrapping everything up has been fun, though, and I hope everyone likes the conclusions.

(Also, in case you missed it, the price of The Guns of Empire ebook is down to $7.99, so it’s a great time to pick that up!)

Obviously, that leaves me in need of new things to do, which I’ve been working to set up for the past year.  Now I can tell everyone!  First up is a YA trilogy with Tor Teen, tentatively titled Deepwalker.  (That will almost certainly change.  My titles always seem to change.)  From Publishers Weekly: “The publisher said the series … is an epic fantasy about a teenage girl trained in ‘the art of combat magic’ who is ‘blackmailed into stealing a legendary ghost ship.'”  I am writing this now, and it’s a blast.  I can’t wait to share it with everyone.  The first book should be out early in 2019.

Second, as of today I can talk about my new epic fantasy trilogy with Orbit Books.  No title yet, for similar reasons.  From the Orbit post: “Gyre and his sister Fiera were torn from each other when they were children. Twelve years later, they will meet again as enemies. Trained in the ways of the Order, Fiera believes the only way to keep the world safe is to eliminate all traces of the forbidden blood magic that almost destroyed civilization many centuries ago. But Gyre, a mercenary on the lawless frontier, seeks out the lost arts to break free of the Order’s domination and release mankind from the dead hand of the past.  As the tensions across the country rise, not even the ties of blood will keep these two siblings from splitting the world apart.”  This is next on my plate to write, and I’m super excited to get to it.  It should come out a bit later in 2019.

For now, these are US deals only.  UK stuff, hopefully, is in the works!  

Other projects may also be on the horizon, but that’s all I can talk about for now.  I hope everyone is looking forward to them, I know I am!

This is one of those good news/bad news situations.  To get the bad news out of the way first, my US publisher, Ace/Roc, has decided not to do a MMPB (mass-market paperback) edition of The Guns of Empire.  This means the hardcover will probably be the only physical edition.  

The “why” is pretty simple: with sales overwhelmingly in ebook anyway, there’s just not enough sales potential for a paperback run.  It’s not a decision I have any control over, and for those of you collecting the series in MMPB all I can do is apologize.

However, here’s the good news!  The price of the ebook edition has dropped to $7.99, which is where it would be for a paperback.  So if you’ve been waiting to pick this up, now’s the time.

For those in the UK, I don’t believe anything has changed — both hardcover and trade paperbacks of the UK editions are still available.

And, of course, we’re still on track for the hardcover release of The Infernal Battalion in January!

I still need to update the site (lazy author! no cupcake!) but The Guns of Empire is now available in the US and the UK as an ebook, and in the US as a hardcover. Info on the UK hardcover is still forthcoming. Buy it from your favorite store!

Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Indiebound

A thing I can finally talk about! The short version is this: The Guns of Empire will be published in the UK by Head of Zeus on August 9th, probably only as an ebook but with other editions possibly to follow. (More on that when I know it.)

The slightly longer version: Astute readers may have noted the lack of one of Steve Stone’s wonderful UK covers for The Guns of Empire on Goodreads, etc. My original contract with Del Rey UK was for three books, and I learned earlier this year that they would not be picking up books four and five. (Also that Michael Rowley, my excellent editor there, would be leaving for new ventures.)

Needless to say, this was a bit disappointing, but my main worry was that it would mean there was no way for UK fans who had been following the series to get book four. My agent and I started looking at various options, including just throwing it up on Amazon ourselves if we had to. (In which case you’d probably have been treated to my excellent stick figures on the cover!)

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Nicolas Cheetham at Head of Zeus, who’d been one of the initial bidders on The Thousand Names, was excited to pick up where Del Rey UK had left off. Importantly, they agreed to bring the book out in a simultaneous release with the US; I’d been having nightmares about having to tell UK fans they were going to have to wait another six months. So, many thanks to Nicolas and Head of Zeus, and I can finally reassure everyone in the UK that they won’t have any delay in getting their Shadow Campaigns fix.

In the spirit of collecting things in one place, I thought I’d talk a bit about what’s going on for next year. (I’ve also collected the things I did last year in my Annual Awards Begging Post.) So here’s what’s coming up, book-wise. (Please note that release dates, especially far in the future, are always tentative; this is all based on the best information I have as of 1/1/16.)

The Palace of Glass, book three of The Forbidden Library, will be released on April 12. There’s more great art from Alexander Jansson, which I’ll post some of here as we get closer. You can pre-order now!

The Guns of Empire, book four of The Shadow Campaigns, will be released on August 9. Needless to say I’m very excited about this one, and I’m (still) in the process of working hard on it. And it’s also up for preorder!

Going forward from there, my next project is Forbidden Library book four. After a great deal of outlines, negotiation, and head-scratching, we’ve decided that this will be the final book in The Forbidden Library series, meaning there will be four in total instead of five as I’d mentioned earlier. Let me emphasize, though, that this is not going to be a case of me wandering off and leaving a story unfinished; book four will have the conclusion that I’d planned for the series from the beginning. It will release sometime in 2017, although I’m not certain precisely when.

After that comes Shadow Campaigns book five, which is also the end of that series. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that finishing The Guns of Empire was a bit of a forced march, and book five will be released a little later in the year (probably October, although it’s not set yet) in 2017 to make sure there’s enough time for everything.

There may, at some point, be a second Shadow Campaigns novella. It fits in roughly between The Shadow of Elysium and The Guns of Empire, but I don’t know at present when I’m going to have the time to write it. I’ll keep you posted.

After that — unclear! In all probability, something cool and new. I have more stuff I want to write then you can shake a stick at (seriously, IdeasFile.doc is now like thirty pages long) so it’s a matter of picking and choosing. Good times ahead!

My Shadow Campaigns novella, The Shadow of Elysium, is out today! Take a look.

As usual, we authors do these yearly posts where we point out that there are awards out there, and that while we of course don’t want the awards, honestly, how gauche would that be, we probably wouldn’t actually turn down the award in the event that other people of their own free will, without being prejudiced, decided that we were the most award-worthy person in that particular category.

So, in that spirit, here are the things you should nominate me for this year:
The Campbell Award for new writers. This is my second (that is, final) year to be eligible for it. After that I’m an old fogey forever.

Others on that list that deserve your consideration: M.L. Brennan, Brian McClellan, Wes Chu, Luke Scull, Michael Martinez. (That’s just people I happen to know, off the second-year list, I’m sure there are many other worthies.)

Hugo — Best Novel:
The Shadow Throne is eligible this year, as is The Forbidden Library, though kids’ books are rarely nominated. In all honesty, I don’t deserve this one, because this year is an incredibly strong field (I will probably cast my personal vote for Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs) but if you’d like to throw Shadow Throne a nomination, I’d be honored to see it on the list.

Hugo — Best Novella:
John Golden, Freelance Debugger qualifies here, and I thought it was a lot of fun. If you haven’t taken a look at it, it’s now available in e-book, audio, and paperback (bundled with the other John Golden story). Have a look!

That’s about it for my stuff. In all seriousness, though, if you’re a WorldCon member, please nominate something — voting has been robust for the final round, but the nomination process is shakier since fewer people participate. Support your favorites!