Glynn Stewart

Science Fiction & Fantasy Author

Release Schedule

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

An April Update

This blog post was published on and may be out of date. Visit the books page for up to date links and releases.

We are beginning the process of redesigning the website, so a lot of content on here has fallen a bit out of date. Working on that in the interim, but my priority is always the books.

Speaking of which: Rimward Stars is a bit over sixty percent done, trucking along on schedule for a target mid-May release.

Next up after that are ONSET 3: Blood of the Innocent and Terra and Imperium, both planned to be out this summer.

There’s a Secret Project (SP: V let’s call it) that should also see a release either late summer or early fall, plans are still in the process of assembly.

 

I will be moving this summer as well, but that’s already built in to the schedule for ONSET3 and DT3. I hope, anyway!

 

After Terra and Imperium is the slot for a Starship’s Mage novel, and I’ve decided to do something… well, frankly, something a bit risky. Instead of immediately beginning the UnArcana Rebellions series, my sixth planned release for 2017 is a Captain David Rice novel, tentatively entitled Interstellar Mage, kicking off a planned series of 2 or 3 books bringing Rice’s storyline up to the Legatan Secession.

(David, along with several others from along the way, will show up in UnArcana Rebellions, and I’m hoping some people want to see just what he’s been up to in the intervening five years!)

The Castle Federation series will probably wrap up this year with its sixth book, opening a “slot”, so my intent will be to finish Rice’s series and begin UnArcana Rebellions in 2018.

Next year will also see my other Secret Project (SP: E, let’s call it), though that’s a longer-term affair, and the sequel trilogy to Duchy of Terra.

 

(For those keeping track, yes, my writing time is now scheduled through the end of 2018. Mewp.)

 

Happy reading!

-Glynn Stewart

Release plans and Moving

This blog post was published on and may be out of date. Visit the books page for up to date links and releases.

As of this writing, The Terran Privateer has been bouncing around the #200s on Amazon.com for a week. Suffice to say, I am extremely pleased with the success of the book and am glad everyone is enjoying it!

Since the question has been asked: yes, there will be an audiobook. I’ve signed a contract, but details are still taking shape.

Since The Terran Privateer was clearly labelled as book one of the Duchy of Terra series, I’ve also been asked when the next one is coming out. Some folks would clearly like the answer to be “tomorrow” but I do have other series to work on.

I intend to have book 4 of both Starship’s Mage and Castle Federation out before I return to Duchess Bond.

 

You may have noticed that the schedule on the main page has undergone some changes, including the dates past Alien Arcana becoming very vague.  For reasons of my wife’s health, it has become necessary for us to move and we are relocating from Alberta to Ontario near the Great Lakes. Our new city is much more temperate and doesn’t have the spectacular weather shifts of our current home, which so far has been very promising for her migraines.

This is a huge endeavor and one we’re putting together with very little time: we made the decision July 10th and we are moving August 15.

Right now, it is impossible for me to judge how long it will take me to get back up to speed after the move so I am hesitant to commit to schedules past the release for Alien Arcana (Alien Arcana is complete, but still needs editing and covers and so forth).

 

My current plan is that I will release Alien Arcana, Q-Ship Chameleon, and then will likely detour back to ONSET, my urban fantasy thriller project, before returning to Duchy of Terra. I want to release two ONSET books close together as I’m trying to break into a notoriously difficult genre.

Once I’m back in the swing of things, I’m  aiming to have four series running: Starship’s Mage, Castle Federation, Duchy of Terra and ONSET; with each receiving a release in each six month period.

Reality may ensue, but that’s the goal. Assuming we survive the move!

-Glynn Stewart

Looking Forward – 2016

As I mentioned previously in my post Looking Backwards, 2015 was a mind-boggling year for me. I released four novels (City in the Sky, Space Carrier Avalon, Hand of Mars and Stellar Fox), made a deal with Tantor Media to release audiobooks of my main-line books (Space Carrier Avalon, Starship’s Mage, and Hand of Mars have all been released as of this blog post), and in general have watched my mostly forsaken dream of being an author explode into reality.

So what’s coming in 2016?

My target is 50,000 words a month, totaling 600,000 words for 2016. Those words include outlines and worldbuilding documents, so you won’t see all of those words. We have some plans that may see some world-building content cleaned up and released as bonus content to the mailing list, but that will be late 2016 if it manifests.

In terms of release schedule, the following are all-but set in stone (though titles are subject to change)

March 2016: Voice of Mars  (Starship’s Mage 3)
June 2016: Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation 3)
September 2016: Alien Arcana (SM4)
December 2016: Still untitled CF Novel 4

 

Current working title of CF4 is To the Touch, but I don’t like that a lot more than I liked Deep Strike or Shadow Raid (both earlier working titles)

Those four books in my two main series will be written, though names and plots may change as time progresses.  Including attached outlines and world-building, though, those books will probably total 400,000 words.

The other 200,000 words I intend to ‘play’ with – and by ‘play’ I mean ‘throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.’ While my two series are both Space Opera, they’re different enough to require different ideas and mind-sets to write, which helps keep my brain fresh. Nonetheless, I’d like to branch out into other genres.

I haven’t completely made up my mind on just what I’m doing yet. I have two Urban Fantasy settings I’d worked on when I was trying to get traditionally published. Either of those could be polished up, have a sequel added, and get me two novels for the price of one… but UF is a hard genre to work in. While the type of UF I like and write is hard to find, the genre itself is over-saturated (mostly with books I can’t tell apart from paranormal romance), so breaking out is hard.

I also have ideas wandering around the back of my mind, with outlines already written, for a western gunslinger style fantasy and a steampunk-esque dark fantasy (the final days of an empire built on golems and magical armor). My brain is also known to regularly ambush me with ideas for urban fantasy stories… and also for further Space Opera stories.

The most I can say at this exact moment is that I will release at least one non-mainline-series book in 2016. Right now, it’s planned to be the The Last Iron Legion (that steampunk dark fantasy) but may end up being urban fantasy or even a stand-alone Space Opera novel.  Given that it will probably be June or so before I’ll touch anything that isn’t Starship’s Mage or Castle Federation, I could easily change my mind XD

But there will be two Starship’s Mage and two Castle Federation books in 2016, and I will be releasing a novel in one of those series every three months.

Speaking of which, Stellar Fox came out ten days ago and the Hand of Mars audiobook came out Tuesday. Do you have your copies yet?

Happy reading!