Update

I'm aware that my posting of late has primarily consisted of 'look! Here's more places where you can buy my stuff!' rather than being a true blog per se, to whit something detailing the minutiae of my life as a writer and/or soap box for my opinions. But you'll have to bear with me a little longer, and should feel relieved that I only ever really feel inclined to blog (outside of when I'm flogging something) when I think I actually have something to say. Further, when  I do have something to say, it's not usually something that can be said in just a few words, requiring a level of time and energy I worry about putting into something that doesn't have a deadline attached. 

However, I did pop into the Glasgow branch of Waterstones and asked if they'd ordered in Empire of Light, which they hadn't, upon which the bookseller concerned very kindly put some copies on order. Which is one of the interesting and indeed even unique things about a chain book store like Waterstones; their booksellers have the power to order stock in for whichever sections they're put in charge of if they think it'll sell. I worked very briefly in Borders, and the booksellers there certainly didn't have that level of involvement.

What this means is that if you're someone who prefers to buy their books from a physical store in the UK - and I know a lot of you do - and you can't find one of my or anyone else's new book in your local Waterstones, ask the bookseller in charge of that section to order it in. Otherwise, given the regular flood of titles in sf and fantasy published every month, that book might well have slipped past the bookseller's attention.

Public service announcement over. Where am I now? Dazed and bleary. I should be able to finish the current edit of Final Days today and tomorrow, following which will be a week or two of checking and tidying before sending it on its way. And then, essentially, straight on to Thousand Emperors.

I should note lastly Empire of Light has its first non-Amazon review up, kindly provided by Liviu Suciu over at Fantasy Book Critic. It's a good one.

And a quick edit - I see via a tweet from my editor Julie Crisp over at Tor that I am their 'featured writer of the month' at Tor UK's dedicated Amazon page. There's a reposted interview I did with Mark Chitty and the aforementioned Liviu, and even some pdf download links for the two short stories I have posted here on this website, namely 'Touched by an Angel' (first published in Interzone in '94) and vampire romp 'The Ranch' (previously published nowhere but here). Altogether it's a nice little package.

Empire of Light and Nova War out today (officially)

I say 'officially' because I sat in the Glasgow Waterstones last week signing a couple dozen copies of the Nova War paperback, but technically the release date of both that and the hardback of Empire of Light, the third Shoal book, is today, July 2nd. Both look like they're doing well on Amazon. Haven't seen any reviews of Empire of Light out in the wild yet, but my eyes are peeled.

There's an excerpt from Empire of Light here. If you want to find an easier way to read it, I'd recommend using either the Safari browser's reader function or, if you're like most people I know and use Firefox, there's a Firefox add-on called 'readability' which provides a very Safari Reader-like function. Both make reading long-form text on the screen a much more pleasant experience.

Edit: the ebook of Empire of Light should be out on the 6th of August, according to Pan Macmillan/Tor UK's own page. I'm guessing it'll appear on Amazon.com and other sites that sell ebooks shortly after.