I’ve got a whole bunch of news concerning The Dragonswarm, including an update on the KickStarter campaign, an official release date, and a link to a live excerpt from the upcoming book. But before I get to that, I want to make an offer.

Advance Reading Copies

Taming Fire has seen extraordinary success, and The Dragonswarm is already much-anticipated, and that’s because I’ve got some amazing fans. You guys are awesome.

I’m incredibly grateful to all of you. You’ve done a lot to support me and help me become the writer I am today.

And now I’m giving you an opportunity to do more. I want to share some Advance Reading Copies of The Dragonswarm with my fans.

With only six more days to get the thing assembled they won’t be very advance, but at least you’ll get a reading copy. I only have digital copies available, but they should be readable on whatever you’re using to read this blog post.

If you’re interested, send me an email through the contact form. Put “Advance Reading Copies” (or just ARC) in the subject line. You don’t even have to write a message.

Sometime tomorrow (I really, really hope), I’ll have a very-nearly-final-draft ready, and send them out to the first hundred people who’ve contacted me. All I’d ask in return is that you write me a review at the digital vendor(s) of your choice. Blog posts are welcome too, of course.

Now, on to other matters!

KickStarter

Sunday night, with barely an hour remaining on the campaign, the KickStarter campaign to publish The Dragonswarm was funded! That’s incredibly exciting news for me personally, for my publishing house, and for writers in general.

Not that I’m sharing the money with all those people. But as I’ve said before, patronage is a much better model for artists than commodification is.

Long-term, I’m hoping to support artists (and be supported as an artist) through the self-funded Consortium model, but until that’s proven, KickStarter is an easy and convenient way to crowdsource patronage.

That deserves a full post of its own. For now, I just want to say how deeply grateful I am to everyone who contributed.

None of you had to contribute. I didn’t even lean too hard on the mercenary sales pitch. You did it out of love for my work and my goals, and that warms my heart. It’s so much easier to do the work knowing people care.

Publishing Stuff

Before I get too sappy, I should move on to other news. And I have news!

• On Monday afternoon, I finished the rewrite on the novel! And then I got right to work on the editing and publishing of the novel.
• I’ve gotten complete feedback from Joshua, and should hear final opinions from Courtney and Jessie today or tomorrow. I’m hard at work smoothing down the rough edges and putting a final polish on it, but overall the feedback is good.
• As a reward to the contributors at KickStarter, I promised to publish an excerpt from the novel if they pledged at least half our funding goal. They did, I did, and you can get a sneak peek at The Dragonswarm on the publisher’s blog now.
• We’ve also got an official release date! The novel will be available in digital formats on Tuesday, December 20. That’s just six days from now!

Thanks again for your support! I’m so excited about this project.

I’m a huge fan of GMail. Have I ever mentioned that before? I know I’ve talked about Google Docs, and you can probably take it for granted that anyone who raves about Google Docs appreciates the company’s email service, too.

Still. I’m a huge fan of GMail. I never delete anything. Everything goes in the archive, and it’s astonishing how many questions in my life can be answered by searching through old mail.

The other day Joshua was introducing me to a writer friend and pitching a new fiction project, and he needed to dig up some old synopsis he’d shared with me. So I went searching in my GMail, and discovered we’d first chatted about that project back in early June.

I laughed to see that conversation started with him saying, “Good morning! What’s the Taming Fire emergency today?”

Releasing Taming Fire

Taming Fire was set to come out June 21, meaning for ideal publishing conditions I should really have been done with it by May 7. But May 7 rolled right by and I was still rewriting the original manuscript. I hadn’t even given it to my editor yet!

For that matter, May rolled by before I got my first rewrite done. And then I had Jessie and Courtney and Joshua read through and give me feedback, and they all found big problems, and suddenly it was mid-June and my book was supposed to be out next week and I was still frantically trying to finish writing it (let alone getting cover art and promo text and sales pages set up)!

I got it done. The book went out on time. Then I sat back with a heavy sigh, wiped my brow, and stated loud and clear, “Never again!”

Yet here we are.

Releasing The Dragonswarm

That book’s sequel, The Dragonswarm, was on my publishing schedule for December 13, 2011. I wasn’t going to wait until Nov. 1 to have it done, though. I wouldn’t have time. I was scheduled to write a novel this semester (book 3, The Dragonprince’s Heir) for my Master’s project, and another (Ghost Targets #5, Faith) for NaNoWriMo, and all my publishing staff would be busy with NaNoWriMo, too, so I was determined to have Dragonswarm done before school started.

I didn’t make it. My summer turned out busy. Then school started, but I was still determined to have Dragonswarm done before the end of September so I could really focus on the other stuff. I didn’t make it. I didn’t make October, either. Or November.

Right now, I’m six days from the scheduled release of The Dragonswarm, and I haven’t quite finished the first rewrite. Last night I finished Chapter 16 (out of 18). Jessie’s done an edit up through 10, and Joshua’s given me feedback up through 12. So far, it’s looking pretty good.

But once again, I’ll be sitting up ’til after midnight for the days before my launch. I’ll be frantically typing in every desperate spare moment. I’m skipping meals and canceling plans and missing blog posts.

I don’t want to say, “That’s just how it is.” It isn’t healthy. It’s not fun. And yet…it’s such a thrill. I can’t slow down, can’t second-guess, can’t dither over options. I have to do it now, and do it right, and in a couple days the world will be my judge.

It’s good. I’ll tell you that. It’s huge and loud and action-packed. I’ve killed more dragons in the last week than in the rest of my life combined, and there’s still thousands more rushing to the fight.

That’s where I’ve been. Now I’ll go get back to work.