The Christmas story is finished in first draft. It ran a bit longer than I thought, it tops out at over 5300 words but I think it turned out well. A lot of tradition in it, at least Necris tradition.

We’re going through the editing process now. In fact, Yvonne has finished her first pass and there’s very little red on it.

Working with Yvonne Marrs has some interesting effects. One thing we don’t agree on is capitalization. That seems to be another difference between British and American. For example, in the US we would write “The captain called the dean at the university.” The British version would be “The Captain called the Dean at the University.” In my view that’s a little too capital crazy. Although I’ll have to admit that I’d really like to see something in between…maybe Australia or Canada???

As I mentioned before, if you want a pdf copy of the short story, send an email to

ravenofiskandar@gmail.com

Otherwise, the story will go up on Amazon, probably for 99 cents and be only available for kindle.

Of course, I could probably do the conversion myself and offer it to you as an epub or mobi. Something to think about.

You can tell I’m getting close to finishing the first draft when I start crafting the cover.

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The background image is from the website Unsplash where photographers can upload images royalty free. Here I’m going to give credit to this wonderful image. The artist who created the background image is Alexander Andrews.

As if I didn’t have enough writing to do, I plan to complete a Christmas short story involving the Raven of Iskandar Universe.

The working title of the story is Christmas 2226 and will involve Raven (Denise Angwin) when she was 8 years old. Those of you who’ve read the series might recognize that Raven’s 8th year was an important one for her. That’s about as much as I’m going to say.

If you want the story for free, pdf format, send an email to ravenofiskandar@gmail.com. Yes, I will be collecting emails but they will not go anywhere else. Nor am I going to spam you. Benefits will include getting a free copy of any short story I happen to write (even if it’s not Christmas), advance notice of when I have a free kindle book giveaway (I’m probably due for one) and probably even some spoilers as I’m writing the next book. I’ll put ‘Spoilers’ in the title in case you want to avoid them. Of course, you can always contact me at that email anytime.

The story is almost finished in first draft and I expect to have it ready for the email list in early December. After that, the story will be released on kindle only on Amazon.

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I don’t remember the name of this comic strip, but as a Doctor Who fan, I find it hilarious.

Those of you who have read the Raven of Iskandar Books (Raven: The Call from Central; Raven: Mirabelle; Raven: The Triballi Incident) would have noticed that the preface of each book is a continuing story of 102 year old Raven.

Raven: Necris continues the story, however, by the time I’d gotten to the end, I realized I would left things hanging until the next book. The last line of the preface (not much of a spoiler) is ‘She opened the letter’. I didn’t think it a good thing to let my readers have to wait for the next book to find out what was in the letter. So, book four will also have an Epilogue which will continue the story. However, it will result in a really sad finish to the book. Just a warning.

And no, I’m not killing off any major characters.

Approximately the last third of the book will be a little bit of a shock, it was to me when I wrote it! I had mentioned before that the series does have a story arc and in the first 3 books, it is mentioned so subtly that I don’t know if I’d even pick up on it. In Raven: Necris, it will hit you right in the face. It’s all part of a series of incidents that will lead to something already hinted at in the previous prefaces.

I hope that sounds mysterious enough!

All the Books of the Raven of Iskandar series are available on Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback formats. Just search on ‘Raven of Iskandar’ and they’ll come up right on top. Amazon still hasn’t straightened out that it’s a 3 book series so far, so you’ll see references to a ‘2 book series’. Phht!