Glynn Stewart

Science Fiction & Fantasy Author

Year End Round Up

2021

This won’t be a full length wrap-up. Like I said last year, my partner and I are both particularly vulnerable to covid so we’ve hunkered down as best as we can.

We lost my mother this year. Not directly to covid, but the overload of hospitals in her region due to people refusing to take it seriously was a huge factor. My sympathy and tolerance for covidiots is now less than zero. Be warned.

And as a final capstone to the year, we’ve discovered that our house has serious water damage and mold due to errors in construction. We’re out for six months while a team basically strips it down to the frames and rebuilds it from scratch.

So yeah. It’s been a stressful year.  I’ve written seven novels and a novella and published, amusingly, the same number of each (there is overlap, but the novella I published in 2021 is not the one I wrote. That’s coming out in February).

  • Equilibrium (January 2021) – Book Three of Scattered Stars Conviction.
  • Excalibur Lost (February 2021) – stand-alone novella.
  • A Darker Magic (March 2021) – Book Ten of Starship’s Mage, the first book in the Mage-Officer of Mars arc with Roslyn Chambers
  • Eyes of Tomorrow (April 2021) – Book Nine of Duchy of Terra and the final book of the series. (Also the last book in an nineteen-month run of monthly releases)
  • Drifter’s Folly (June 2021) – Book Four of the Peacekeepers of Sol
  • Fortitude (August 2021) – Book Four of of Scattered Stars Conviction.
  • Mage-Commander (September 2021) – Book Eleven of Starship’s Mage
  • Evasion (November 2021) – Book One of Scattered Stars Evasion (the second series in the setting, though Conviction is continuing)

I believe we started simultaneous audiobook releases with Evasion and will continue with Admiral’s Oath, the first book in the new series in the Castle Federation Universe. This requires some careful timing with our audiobook partner, though, and I lost several months’ of work with my mom’s illness.

But the only way to go is forward, one step at a time, one word at a time.

I hope everyone is staying safe and having a wonderful set of holidays, whatever you celebrate.

Happy reading!

Glynn Stewart

What to even say about 2020

A round-up post, huh.

Gods. What to even say about 2020. I have heart issues. My partner has asthma. So along comes a pandemic that we are both specifically vulnerable to.

I jokingly say a lot that we haven’t left our house since February. It’s an exaggeration, but not much of one.  Thankfully, with the way we’ve structured Faolan’s Pen and what we do, that’s entirely doable for us – entirely thanks to the readers who keep buying my books.

Despite all of 2020, we were lucky enough to escape most of it unscathed. We all remote-work from home normally, so we were spared the worst of the adjustments that hit people who hadn’t done it before. A number of projects were suspended or cancelled until things calm down – and it looks like we might be able to get some of those going again this coming year! More news on that as it becomes available.

For obvious reasons, we didn’t manage to attend many conventions this year. We did make it out to ConFusion in Detroit in January, which I really enjoyed.

2020 was a “stay alive” year, but apparently my response to stress is to write more. That meant we actually had twelve releases in 2020 – ten novels and two novellas:

  • Conviction (January 2020) – book 1 of the Scattered Stars: Conviction series (also the first book in the Scattered Stars Universe, where I plan to write at least one more series and a few stand-alones)
  • A Question of Faith (February 2020) – a Castle Federation prequel novella that had been rattling around my head for a while about the start of the first war
  • Mountain of Mars (March 2020) – Starship’s Mage Book 8 and the last Damien Montgomery-focused mainline SM novel.
  • Relics of Eternity (April 2020) – Duchy of Terra Book 7
  • Wardtown (May 2020) – The first of a series of Fantasy Westerns I’m writing as I have time because I really enjoy both the concept and the shorter length (Western novels traditionally run 40-50K, and tying a story up in that length is an interesting challenge)
  • The Peacekeeper Initiative (June 2020) – Peacekeepers of Sol Book 2
  • Deception (July 2020) – Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 2
  • The Service of Mars (August 2020) – Starship’s Mage Book 9 and the first Roslyn Chambers-focused mainline SM novel
  • Pulsar Race (September 2020) – the first stand-alone Starship’s Mage novella
  • Shadows of the Fall (October 2020) – Duchy of Terra Book 8
  • Raven’s Course (November 2020) – Peacekeepers of Sol Book 3
  • Blood Ward (December 2020) – Teer and Kard book 2

 

Damn, just writing all of that out and linking it does help drive home how busy a year I’ve had!  No travel, no cons. I can’t say no distractions because, well, 2020, but it was a good year.

880,000 words, give or take.

Looking forward, I just finished my March release (A Darker Magic, the tenth mainline Starship’s Mage novel, which is a weird thought to me) and I’m taking a bit of time off from writing. Not quite a vacation, I have a few other things to handle (like this blog post), but it’ll be a quieter week to end the year.

I hope everyone is staying safe and having a wonderful set of holidays, whatever you celebrate.

Happy reading!

Glynn Stewart

2019 Roundup – I DIDN’T DIE

That headline is necessary after last year 😀  No cardiac incidents at all, in fact. (The follow up to my supraventricular tachycardia incident last year was “yup, you’ll eventually have this recur and we’ll deal with it then”).

On the other hand, I tore my Achilles tendon in June and spent three months in a cast, including WorldCon 2019.

I don’t recommend conventions in an aircast and I most definitely do not recommend relying on Heathrow airport’s disability services to get you to a plane on time.

 

WorldCon 2019 itself was a blast and I loved Dublin, but being laid up in the cast was a major limitation for, well, everything.  Got to see some interesting panels, met some authors I’ve loved for a while, had dinner with CE Murphy.  It was a great trip.  Unfortunately, we eventually concluded that New Zealand was just too far for us to haul a team of three-to-four people and we’ll be skipping WorldCon 2020. Have a blast for us if you’re going!

The other con we went to last year was the 2019 Nebulas in LA. That’s a much smaller and more pro-focused event than the WorldCon and was probably more useful for me in terms of networking and so forth. We’ll be back in 2020 and I’m trying to puppy-dog-eye my way onto the programming.  We’ll see how that goes 😀

 

2019 was a middling-along year in a lot of ways. We published eight books and since you might want to know what they are, here’s the links:

  • Noble’s Honor (February 2019) – this wrapped up the Changeling Blood trilogy, which I’m a bit sad to see go!
  • Shield of Terra (March 2019)
  • Bound By Blood (April 2019) – this one wrapped up my co-writing project with Terry Mixon, which was a lot of fun.
  • Sword of Mars (June 2019)
  • Refuge (July 2019)
  • Imperium Defiant (September 2019) – this wrapped up the second Duchy of Terra trilogy. Sensing a theme to the year yet? 😀
  • Raven’s Peace (November 2019) – first book in a new series
  • Crusade (December 2019) – this wrapped up the Exile trilogy

Along with the novels, we re-released two of the novellas from Spaceships and Spellcasters as stand-alone e-books and turned Spaceships and Spellcasters into a print-only collection. The novellas:

 

We also launched our Patreon, a new endeavor for me. By signing up for the Patreon, you get access to all of my books one to two weeks before they go live. We’re using Bookfunnel for this, which means the process for loading onto your device should be relatively straightforward (or at least well-explained. Bookfunnel are fantastic at supporting this process).

Currently, the only exclusive Patreon content is a single short story I wrote during 2019 that didn’t really fit anywhere else. It’s free if you sign up though!  Next up for the e-ARCS is Conviction, the first book in another new series.

 

The general theme of 2019 was wrapping up earlier experiments. By my math, I permanently closed off three universes and ended a trilogy in a fourth.  We also brought our long-running experiment in keeping certain series out of our exclusivity deal with Amazon to a close. We were simply leaving too much money on the table by not being in Kindle Unlimited—it’s the unfortunate truth that the KU market alone is now larger than all non-Amazon e-book vendors combined. Keeping future books available to that audience is one of the reasons for the existence of the Patreon, as those books are universal (but also of limited availability. Once the book launches on Amazon, it is no longer available through the Patreon).

 

I launched the Peacekeepers of Sol series in 2019, which I’m looking forward to sharing with you guys going forward, and wrote the first book in the Scattered Stars: Conviction series as well.  Those will join Starship’s Mage and the Shadow of Terra trilogy as my four ongoing series in 2020.

 

Some things changed in the background and in November of 2019 we welcomed our newest employee aboard. If you’re in the Facebook reader group you’ll have seen her posting there. Robin comes to us from a Canadian publisher  and brings our little publishing house up to four people and a small army of contractors 😀

 

As of writing this, the first two launches of 2020 are already complete (the Conviction novel for January and a Castle Federation novella for February) and I’m elbows-deep in the next Starship’s Mage novel, targeted for March. We have eight novels targeted for release again next year, including more Peacekeepers, more Conviction, the first two books of the Shadow of Terra trilogy and two Starship’s Mage novels.

I like the plans I have for all four series and look forward to you guys getting to read them and enjoy them.

 

For now, I wish everyone the happiest of holidays with your loved ones and a happy new year.

(And note that paperback copies of the Exile trilogy would make a great Yule gift ;))

 

Happy Reading!

 

-Glynn Stewart

2018 Retrospective and 2019 Plans

2018 was the longest year that ever was a year. That was the repeated description from one of the handful of Youtube personalities I follow and I can’t help but agree.

I have to actually look at the spreadsheets to see what the first book we launched in 2018 was (ONSET: Stay of Execution, apparently. Wow.)

Seems like we wrapped up ONSET longer ago than that.

2018 was a year of missteps for us. We ended up shifting our mix more towards Urban Fantasy than we meant to, which hurt our overall sales, and we spent a lot of our own capacity on trying to break into more traditional print sales.

Most of that effort culminated in Book Expo America, where we received a rather thorough if painful education in just how even successful independent publishers are regarded by the mainstream publishing and distributing world. Distributors insisted on handling our electronic distribution as well as print distribution and, well, that wasn’t happening.

 

Then we came home from Book Expo America and I had a heart attack. Stress and pneumonia induced, primarily, but still a horrid wakeup call that I was burning myself out. Fortunately, our plan had been to use 2018 to build a lead time in our publishing schedule. That lead time ended up being used to allow me to take most of the summer of 2018 off without us falling behind on the release schedule.

I’m better now, I promise 😉  WorldCon 2018 was better than BEA, with a lot more positive moments and 100% less critical health issues! We’re going back to WorldCon in 2019—we are most definitely NOT going back to Book Expo America.

 

We learned a lot of lessons in 2018. My urban fantasy doesn’t sell as well as my space opera, so we’re moving away from that for the immediate future. Noble’s Honor will wrap up the Changeling’s Blood trilogy and that will be my last urban fantasy release for a while. Future new novellas will be launched along the Ashen Stars model, not the Spaceships and Spellcasters model.

 

And I’m going to try and breathe a bit more. We have six books definitely planned for this coming year. Scheduling is still tentative, but they are as follows:

Noble’s Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3)
Shield of Terra (Light of Terra Book 2)
Sword of Mars (Starship’s Mage Book 7)
Refuge (Exile Book 2)
Imperium Defiant (Light of Terra Book 3)
Raven’s Peace (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 1)

Terry and I will also finish up the third Bound  / fifth Vigilante novel, Bound By Blood. That will launch sometime in 2019. I have a couple of side projects on the go that I don’t expect to be huge commercial gangbusters as well, so we will probably have eight launches this year.

 

We have set a primary goal for everyone at Faolan’s Pen Publishing of “don’t die.”

It seems like a low bar, but it’s also a good place to start!

 

Happy reading everyone,

-Glynn Stewart

2017: A Look Back

So, to start, it’s still technically 2017 awards season so here’s the list of stuff I put out this year that is at least technically eligible for awards.

*deep breath*

February 2017:    Duchess of Terra
March 2017:       Judgment of Mars
May 2017:         Rimward Stars
August 2017:      ONSET: Blood of the Innocent
August 2017:      Heart of Vengeance
September 2017: Terra & Imperium
October 2017:     Interstellar Mage
November 2017:    Changeling’s Fealty
November 2017:    Oath of Vengeance
December 2017:    Operation Medusa

 

All of these are eligible for the assorted Best Novel of 2017 awards, including Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Dragon, etc. etc. All are between 80 and 120K words.

If you think any of them deserve award consideration, I’d be shocked, stunned and pleased 😀

 

The list of ten novels up there tells you a lot about my year. It was a hectic year with a lot of work done. Once Stay of Execution is complete, I will have written eight and a half novels myself this year and co-written two. It’s been my most financially successful year ever as well, which is all thanks to you crazy people.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

 

This was also the year that Faolan’s Pen grew beyond “the corporation that I self-publish through with some help from my wife” into something a bit more solid and “real”. I’ve stepped back from a lot of the publisher side of things, handing it over to my wife (who is, frankly, roughly six gazillion times better at marketing than I am) and we’re in the process of bringing on an employee to help handle a lot of the back-end stuff.

The hope is that this will give me more time to write. The current plan is to release seven novels next year, including the conclusion of the ONSET series, the second Changeling book, the rest of the Red Falcon series, and the beginning of the sequel series to both Starship’s Mage and Duchy of Terra.

My goal is to hold to six-to-seven books a year for a few years while we experiment with the industry. There’s some very cool stuff we’re poking at that should be winging your way in 2018 and I look forward to sharing the results of some of our behind-closed-doors discussion.

But yeah. 2017 was my second full year as a full-time author. You guys and gals and other folks make it possible for me to support my cats in the style to which they are accustomed AND have an employee…by telling stories.

You are all so fantastic 😀

Happy Reading!

-Glynn Stewart

2016 Retrospective and 2017 Plans

Another year draws to a close. This one was my first full year as a full-time author, which remains utterly mind-boggling to me!

It’s been a busy year. To date, we’ve launched six novels and I’ve lost track of audiobook launches. We’ll hopefully be launching a seventh, ONSET: My Enemy’s Enemy, before the end of the year.

Somewhere along the way, we managed to move provinces and begin getting ourselves settled into Ontario.

It’s been a good year.  Every book except ONSET: To Serve and Protect broke Amazon’s top 500. (TSP may still, but if so I’ll be stunned. With the first book in a new genre, my expectations are more conservative :)). Alien Arcana broke Amazon’s top 100, a first for me!

I’m not going back to accounting anytime soon folks. Thank you.

 

Looking forward now, my plans for next year are even busier. 2016 will see seven books. 2017 should see eight. My goal is to put out a book in each of my four series every six months. There may be some slippage as that is an extremely demanding goal for me, but that is my target.

For now, my plan is to remain all-in with Kindle Unlimited. KU has done very well for me financially and while I’d like to be less dependent on Amazon, I like the cash flow more.

 

The next cycle of books have titles. In order of release: ONSET: My Enemy’s Enemy, Duchess of Terra, Judgment of Mars and Rimward Stars. Titles for everything after those are still in flux, though I have least working titles. And codes for reference.

 

I look forward to 2017 being even better than 2016 and to continuing to write my stories and share them with you.

It really is a dream come true and I cannot thank you all enough for letting me do this!

 

Happy reading folks,

-Glynn Stewart