After ten weeks of sale, City of Light just hit 20,000 sales!

They grow up so fast, don't they?

This is actually a significant plateau. When people are talking about book sales, 20,000 is a big milestone. So thanks again, everybody! We're going strong!

Ladies and gentlemen, as of a few hours ago, over one hundred thousand copies of the Traveler's Gate Trilogy books have sold on Amazon.

I don't really know what to say.

One year ago today, I was hoping to sell five hundred copies of House of Blades in the first month. It would be hard, I knew, but my high goal was five hundred. I ended up selling five thousand.

For the year, I was really hoping for fifteen thousand sales, but I knew I could get by on ten thousand without getting another job. I didn't expect to sell that many, but it was a lofty goal to work toward.

And the reality was an order of magnitude greater than anything I'd hoped for.

So thanks to all of you. Everyone who bought the books, or recommended them, or sent me an encouraging email, or comments on and follows this blog...thanks. Because to me, the sales weren't the craziest thing to happen this past year. Sales are great, but they really serve as a way to measure and quantify what's going on with the books.

People have enjoyed my books. A lot of people.

And that's a cool, humbling, unbelievable thought.

I always need some time off when I finish a book, but now I'm back and ready to get back to work!

First on the agenda: some quality of life improvements to House of Blades. The first half of that book is pretty rough, so I'm going to add in some scenes, fix up some others, in generally edit the story to bring it up to the level of Crimson Vault and City of Light.


That should be complete in the next week or two. I should have the City of Light paperback and House of Blades audiobook online shortly after that.

In the meantime, I'll be starting on the next story!

I'm really excited about that: making the stories is the fun part for me. Bringing ideas together, coming up with names, making it all work. I've been enjoying it so much that I've started, like, three different stories while on vacation.

So where will I end up? I don't know. But we'll get there by this fall, I can tell you that!

Several things to cover today, but first: if you'd like to discuss heavily spoiler-related topics about City of Light, do so in these comments!

Honestly, if you're trying to avoid CoL spoilers, you should probably not be messing around in the comments sections of any recent blog posts. But I thought I'd give you a place to speak freely, anyway.

Second, an update on my status--I'm in Santander, Spain! And also sick in bed!

It turns out that pushing myself to release a book, and then immediately leaving for a convention in Boston, and then turning right around and flying to Spain...well, it wasn't the healthiest idea. The morning of my flight to Spain I woke up with a high fever. I choked down medicine and went anyway, because the tickets were non-refundable, but I've been bedridden and recovering for about 24 hours.

This is one of the reasons I haven't been responding to comments since CoL was released. Reason #1: I needed a break. Reason #2: I've been both incredibly busy and sick.

That's the bad news. The good news is that City of Light has already sold about 4,500 copies! It's selling hundreds of copies a day and staying pretty steady in the Amazon Top 200 Best-Sellers, which is mind-blowing. It even cracked the Top 100 for a while, rising as high as #86 on the Amazon Best-Seller Charts, and I can barely believe that. If you had told me last year that I'd be on the Amazon Top 100, I'd have said something like, "No, not in the next year. God willing, maybe in the next ten years."

But you guys came through. You're all my favorite. Personally and individually.

So anyway, the total novel sales have risen to roughly 76,000. I'm hoping to crack 100K by June 2nd, because then I could say I sold a hundred thousand books in my first year, which would just be fantastic. I don't think I'd be able to tell that to anyone without cackling like a mad emperor.

Anyway, I'll be putting up some more posts pretty soon regarding the future of the Traveler's Gate universe, my summer plans, the new series I'll be starting this fall, etc. Once I recover, hopefully.

In the meantime, discuss City of Light in free, spoiler-full terms! 

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Those Who Refuse To Be Categorized:

Early this morning, I crossed over 50,000 sales!

That's a huge deal! Mostly because so many people have read my books, but also because now I can say "Hey, I've sold fifty thousand copies!" and that sounds like a lot. It's a milestone: now my high sales numbers SOUND high.

As always, thank you for reading the books! Thanks for telling your friends! Thanks for reading the blog! Thanks for cutting four-leafed clovers by moonlight, and burning them to send me your luck! Thanks for leaving me reviews, and thanks for ganging up on would-be trolls and burning them at the stake like witches!

You all are awesome, and it's been an honor to interact with you on this blog.

Stay classy, San Diego.

-Will