Progress Report - February 2026
- Jan 14
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 9
The new year well and truly blurred past me. January was a strange hectic rush of tons of things, while also not much at the same time…. We’ll be getting into the meat of all of that below, especially on the topic of Songs of Chaos #5, after some other important updates.
The first thing to mention is where you’re currently reading this report. I thought it would make more sense for me to host these things on my website, rather than having several different versions scattered over multiple other platforms. This way the reports will be easier to find and reread (if such a thing tickles your fancy), and I’ll be able to make use of this website blog feature for other big announcements, and potentially the odd in depth topic which doesn’t suit a 100 post on social media.
If this is your first time visiting my website, then hello and welcome! You may have seen a pop up asking if you’d like to join my mailing list. If you do join, you’ll get two novellas sent to you for FREE in ebook AND audiobook too.
Let’s start with something I managed to complete in January and that’s a new short story which I’ll be contributing to an anthology called Featured Creatures (name TBD) hosted by Andy Peloquin, Ben Galley and Sebastien DeCastell.
NOX SHORT STORY
This will be another Songs of Chaos piece, this time from Nox’s POV. In some ways it’s an addendum to Reckoning, taking place just a few days after the end of Osric & Nox’s story. Osric is about to begin forging his new dragon steel items, but little Nox is struggling physically with her side of the process. What will she do to overcome this, and what deep insight will she unearth? Well, you’ll have to wait to read it! But I’m quite happy with how it turned out.
These blacksmithing scenes are some of my favorite to write in the series. They’ve become a perfect vehicle for deep character introspection and development, while also giving the characters a cool fantasy weapon forging process to work through at the same time.
The anthology will run as a Kickstarter later this year – much more to come on that front!
And speaking of anthologies…
UNAVOWED EBOOK
You might remember that I contributed a story to the Unavowed anthology run by Grim Oak Press. Those who backed the Kickstarter should have received their ebooks, and now everyone else can pick it up as well!
Unavowed is now available to buy in ebook directly from Grim Oak Press HERE
It’s also available on Amazon and is part of Kindle Unlimited HERE, so those with a subscription can check out my Songs of Chaos short story along with the other incredible contributions for free 😊 You can find it HERE
February Kindle Sales
I also need to shout out the fantastic UK ebook deals on Amazon this month.
First up, The Dragon’s Blade Trilogy Omnibus will be 99p for the entire month of February. That’s the whole series for just 99p so it’s basically a steal.
Coming up in the Spring we’ll have our extremely epic Dragon’s Blade 10 Year Anniversary Editions (more on that below) so if you haven’t given Dragon’s Blade a try yet, now would be the perfect chance to dive in on the cheap.
Grab the omnibus HERE
Songs of Chaos will also be getting a UK ebook deal. From February 9th to 13th all the Songs of Chaos ebooks will be 99p on UK Amazon. Maybe you haven’t yet grabbed Defiant or Reckoning or such. Maybe you’ve just picked up Ascendant and have been thinking about book #2 – well, this would be your chance to swoop them all onto your ereader for less than £4
AMAZON ALLOWS EPUB FILES
I say ‘ereaders’ above and not ‘Kindles’ because Amazon is now allowing readers to download the ebook file type of their choice, meaning if you use a Kobo or another ereader device you can still buy the ebook on Amazon and receive a file which will work for you. That’s pretty neat, I think.
With this change and with my ebooks also available on Library apps, no one who wants to read my books should be left out.
BABY INCOMING!
Part of what made January a blur is the build up to the imminent arrival of our first born. He’s expected around Feb 12th but it could be anytime now! There’s been lots of crib building, long check lists of supplies, and much squinting at the instruction manual for the pram (I swear its part pram, part transformer) and generally bracing ourselves.
Babies famously slow people down, so I’m not expecting to have an ultra productive Feb and March, but it’s all for a good reason.
By way of making up for the slow down, I hope to do much more in person this year than I have before, both in the UK and abroad. While my full schedule is still TBD, I can safely announce that I’ll be the Guest of Honor at two foreign festivals this year!
Conventions 2026 Schedule
Isle of Wonders in Cres, Croatia, June 26th to 28th
Link to full details of the Festival HERE
Fantasy Festival in Esbjerg, Denmark, September 19th-20th
Link to full details of the Festival HERE
Other Cons I Hope To Attend
MCM ComiCon London (May)
Cymera Festival Edinburgh (June)
For The Love Of Fantasy, London (August)
British Fantasy Con, Glasgow (October)
DragonSteel Nexus, Utah (December)
COMING UP SOON!
Aberanth Plushie
Our next plushie from YouTooz will be our favourite, finicky mad scientist: Aberanth!
JUST LOOK AT HIM!!!!
Aberanth will be going on sale from YouTooz from March 10th to April 10th. As ever, YouTooz operates as a limited order window, so if you want to get Aberanth for your shelves, you have to order one during that month of time. Once he’s gone, he’s gone!
P.S. - A note on the Rake plushies – if you check the YouTooz page it now says they will ship from February 1st to 15th. Given all the issues in the world right now surrounding trade and shipping, I hope you can appreciate that things are much slower and more difficult than they used to be.
Anniversary Editions
Probably the most exciting new project this year for me are the gorgeous Dragon’s Blade Ten Year Anniversary Editions coming from our friends at The Broken Binding!
These will be a celebration of Dragon’s Blade, yes, but also for 10 years as an author. Somehow, I’ve made it this long.
These editions will have some serious specs:
New Cover art with foiling by Jeff Brown
Gorgeous gilded silver edges
New foiled board designs
Coloured endpapers by Marco González
New full colour map by Joshua Hoskins
All signed by me!
I’m hoping to squeeze in one last feature as well, so fingers crossed I can make that happen. To whet the appetite, here's a teaser of one of the endpapers!
Anniversary Edition Release
The plan for the release of these is still ‘Spring’, which is vague, but we’ll sharpen that up once we have all the artwork in place. We’ll then have a nice long build up to the release, so you won’t be caught off guard.
Songs of Chaos #5
As ever, I’ve saved the main update to last (you didn’t skip everything else, did you?!)
For those hoping to hear I’m 50k words into the draft, I’m sorry to disappoint. With a lot happening in life (on top of baby stuff, we’re also trying to move house) and suffering a severe period of burnout at the end of 2025 (a topic worthy of its own blog post when I feel able to gather my full thoughts), it’s been hard to make a start on book 5.
I’ve mentioned the time skip needed between Reckoning and #5, and trying to grasp what happened in that gap, and how best to open book #5 has proven difficult. Usually, my books flow into one another, with short gaps at best.
I have a good sense of where I want to end the book and series, and I have great ideas for critical epic set pieces, but how to begin… that was causing me a lot of problems.
I say ‘was’ because, hopefully, I’ve discovered a way in now. What Holt & Ash and the gang have been doing during this time skip? I think I’ve got it, which makes opening the book easier.
I’m now working to have Holt and Talia meet up as quickly as possible. In doing so, I hope to make book 5 more of a solid, single trunk of story with all the characters focused on the same big plot. Being together again, this should be doable. Yes, there will still be B plots and C plots relating to character work, but the main story should be something every character and every chapter is progressing.
Lest anyone is worried out there, I will absolutely be working on Songs #5 as my main priority this year. Yes, baby will slow it down. Yes, the house move will slow it down. Yes, a busier convention schedule will slow it down. But all of that is vital for me and for the books, and I can only ask everyone to be patient while I beaver away in the background. The ending must be right.
For perspective, I had a 6 month gap between ending Defiant and starting Reckoning. So this being a 7 or 8 month gap between finishing Reckoning and beginning #5 isn’t too outlandish – somehow it just feels like a longer gap.
I’ll continue posting these monthly updates, and once I start, there will be a progress bar on the website homepage you can check for a quick reference.
Signing Off
Happy Reading,
Michael
P.S. Remember, you can grab two FREE novellas in ebook & audiobook form by joining my mailing list. You can also join my Discord server to chat to other readers about all things books, games and nerdom.