Happy Christmas everybody.

First reader finished King of the Crags a couple of days ago. Main criticism: More background detail needed (and do something about Character X).

At the same time I’m about a quarter of the way through Order of the Scales (about 35k words I think). I have discovered that in order for this book to work, it’s either going to have to be about half as long again as the others, or else two things need to happen: Firstly the history of the dragons (up to a point at least) and of the alchemists and their function in the realms needs to be well established in previous volumes. The Adamantine Palace quite deliberately didn’t do this, so The King of the Crags now pretty much has to. The second thing is that Character X serves no useful purpose other than to give the reader a vicarious thrill when he/she/it finally becomes dragon food. Well I guess you can have that in book two just as easily as book three.

So the rewrite will begin shortly, and it will take a while and King of the Crags will wind up a little longer and a little calmer than The Adamantine Palace and probably be the better for it. Submission to Gollancz is now expected sometime in January, a mere six months ahead of schedule