Progress Report - April 2026
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Another month gone. This one quite productive, all things considered.
Cutting right to the chase, I’ve made a start to Songs of Chaos #5
You can read all about it below, but first the big ticket item coming in May…
The Dragon’s Blade Anniversary Set!
At long last, the full majesty of this amazing set from The Broken Binding has been fully revealed! I started working on this project with TBB back in January 2025, with many blind alleys explored before we somehow came up with this showstopper of a set.
The spine designs are going to look just incredible on the shelf.
Featuring:
New Cover art with foiling by Jeff Brown
Continuous foiled spine design by Jeff Brown
Gorgeous gilded silver edges
New foiled board designs by David Hawkins
6 x Coloured endpapers by Marco González
New full colour Map by Joshua Hoskins
Signed by me!
Pricing and Release
£120 per set
General sale begins Sunday, 17th May at 12pm BST
What an unlikely road
This little trilogy of mine has gone through the weirdest journey. I’d be curious to know if there’s a stranger one in the genre over the last 10 years. From barely moving to a breakout hit via an ebook omnibus, to a second wind as an audiobook omnibus during COVID, The Dragon’s Blade has stubbornly kept going.
These days I’m known for Songs of Chaos yet Dragon’s Blade has its audience. Almost 250,000 copies sold, and most of those are the omnibus version, meaning those are individuals buying 1 copy, not 3 books in the series.
For a trilogy I began writing aged 22 and finished at 24, I’m very proud of it. For a debut series it was ambitious, and I think I pulled it off as well as I could with my skills at the time. Dragon’s Blade was my passion project and my apprenticeship as a writer. It’s with a massive sigh of relief that it worked out.
And ten years later, it’s still getting the chance to do cool things!
You can check out the official review from Broken Binding at the link below:
The Dragon’s Blade Ebooks are FREE for 5 days!
To celebrate the reveal of the Anniversary Editions, I’ve made the ebooks of the series FREE for a full 5 days. This is WORLDWIDE across Amazon with no country restrictions. If you have an ereader and an Amazon account, you should be able to download all three books for free!
You should have time to wade a good way into the trilogy and decide to treat yourself to the new anniversary set!
Help Choose Our Next YouTooz Plushie
The Aberanth plushie sold more copies than Rake (although don’t tell Rake that!). I knew you were all a bunch of mushroom lovers.
You can help me decide which character will come next by voting in this poll.
Our next YouTooz plushie should be?
Nox
Pyra
Thrall
MCM ComiCon May 22nd to 24th
It’s come at the last minute, but it looks like I’ll be going to MCM in London in May. I’ll have a table in the Writer’s Bloc area selling paperbacks, and I’m always delighted to sign books you bring as well. I should also be doing some promotion for the Anniversary set with Broken Binding, who’ll be there in force.
If you’re heading to MCM, don’t be a stranger! Come say hi if you find me.
NOTE: as this is last minute, I probably won't appear on their website, but don't worry, I'll be there.
Phoenix Editions are out in the world
The Phoenix Editions of Ascendant and Unbound have made their way out into everyone's hands.
I knew I would enjoy receiving more cool editions of my books, but I was taken aback by just how much I like these versions.
The cover for Unbound is the coolest, vibiest art of Holt & Ash yet (maybe the Defiant cover just beats it... maybe). The interior artwork is great, and I love the copper foiling. Anything unique and not standard gold, I think, is rather cool.
Phoenix will be opening up as a regular subscription box soon, tackling all manner of epic and high fantasy favourites. It was an honour to be their inaugural series.
Good news for those who ordered these, Phoenix would like to release their versions of Defiant & Reckoning in the spring of next year. I'm not sure yet if they'll open orders for books 1 & 2 for those who missed out. More to come on that, likely early next year, once the decisions have been finalised.
Most unlike me, I filmed a video running through all the features and gushing over my favourite piece of art inside Unbound.
Songs of Chaos #5 – I’ve started!
Finally! I don’t need to feel so shame faced and guilty anymore. Songs of Chaos #5 has begun.
I’ve drafted up all the components of (for want of a better term) will be the prologue. Similar to Reckoning, SoC #5 will open with a long’ish sequence before jumping over to our heroes. It’s comprised of an opening scene with Dowid, followed by my first Abercrombie ‘Little People’ inspired chapter, ending with a Speaker scene. This will be her only scene in book 5, and I’m happy to let that ominously hang…
Fear not, Holt & Ash are a part of this too!
Altogether, it’s around 8,000 words. It could go longer; it could be tightened. For now, I’ll be moving on with the draft.
Over the last few days, in between working on the Anniversary set reveal and promo, I’ve been gathering all the material I need to start on Talia’s scenes. She’ll be opening the book for two or three chapters before Holt & Ash join her. I’ve mentioned this before, but my hope is SoC 5 will feel closer to Ascendant with our heroes together for most of the book. The story in books 2 – 4 necessitated expansion and dealing with a host of other powers and issues in the world. Defiant was the biggest book in the middle, Reckoning was slightly shorter, and SoC #5 will hopefully be shorter again. Not because there isn’t a lot going on, but because we’re honing toward the grand finale.
So, we’re off! Taking care of baby, selling our flat/moving, and business time constraints notwithstanding, I’ll be making as much progress on Songs 5 as I can from here on out.
‘Little People’
You might be wondering what the heck this is. In Abercrombie’s Age of Madness Trilogy, he provides us with extended action sequences from many short POVs. They aren’t the major characters or the high born. They are the ‘Little People’ caught up in whatever is happening.
Why add a sequence like this? Partly because I thought they were terrific in Abercrombie’s Age of Madness trilogy. Partly as a means to convey a lot by SHOWING you rather than telling you. Partly for the writing challenge.
I’ve been working on SoC for over 7 years now, and most of the main cast has been established for 5 or 6 years. There has always been a need to conjure new players here and there, but a sequence of shorter POVs forces you to work doubly hard to make each one feel distinct and memorable in about 1,000 words before they’re gone forever. It’s been a nice way to warm back up to things after the burnout and longer break.
The sequence I just drafted is named ‘The Low’ and they are very much the ‘little people’. There are currently four of them spreading from Ahar to the unexplored lands of Lakara.
I’m thinking of having at least two additional sequences like this in the book, each one distinct in its thematics and what type of people it follows. Suffice to say, these won’t only follow the ‘little people’.