Ahoy!

Just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to muster a reason to post this month…

One thing I’ve come to realise, going down the self-publishing route, is that you end up relying on many other people’s schedules as well as your own. Editors, cover designers, formatters, as well as whichever platform you’re publishing on, all inevitably have their own timescales which can slow things down. While it’s unavoidable (and, 99 times out of 100, vitally important), it can sometimes feel a little frustrating, especially if you’ve done everything you can your end.

But the flipside of all that is, once in a while, those sliding timescales can pleasantly surprise you, and leave you ready to roll earlier than expected, rather than later.

I received my manuscript’s feedback from the copyeditor several days earlier than was planned, so I was able to get to work on it considerably quicker. The feedback itself was also a lot easier to put into place than I’d feared, which meant that side of things got wrapped up quite a while before I’d realistically foreseen.

Similarly, because I’d done 95% of the formatting work already, when I had my proof copy commissioned (the one I shared on my Instagram a couple of months ago), I found that there were surprisingly few adjustments I needed to make post the editorial feedback, which meant that apparently arduous job went a lot smoother too. The eBook version required a little more formatting attention (as all digital content designed to be adjusted and read on multiple electronic devices always does, as opposed to a static paper-and-mulch hard copy), but given the lion’s share of the formatting had already been done months ago, it wasn’t a particularly demanding job.

And given I’d already gone through the final production stages once before to make the proof copy (getting the manuscript previewed by Amazon for slipups, making sure the front cover size matched the number of pages, etc), getting the final products into an acceptable state to be approved and launched all took a lot less time than I’d feared.

The result of all this, as you can no doubt see below, is a highly-anticipated day – a day that has been almost 18 months in the making since I first started jotting down plot ideas in Lockdown I, or, more honestly, about 9 years in the making since I first tried my hand at writing an actual novel – arriving weeks in advance of my plans.

A surprise, as good ol’ Senator Palpatine would say, but a welcome one.

Yup. There it is. On my very own Kindle, no less. Definitely an out-of-body moment.

So, there we have it. The moment this entire blog has been leading towards. Pretty much the only worthwhile thing I’ve accomplished since the start of 2020.

Legion That Was is now available to purchase on Amazon, in both paperback and eBook formats – or to borrow for free, if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber and/or have Kindle Unlimited.

I sincerely hope that as many of you who want to buy and enjoy the novel do so, and I’d welcome any reviews of it – good or otherwise – you’d like to leave on Amazon and Goodreads.

Needless to say, I’ll be updating all the sections of this website and my other social media to reflect that I am now, instead of a soon-to-be published author… an actual. Freaking. Published. Author.

I’m getting chills down my backbone just typing that.

And on that rather shallow but triumphant note, I will bid you good evening.

Book II ain’t gonna write itself.