Well, this will come as no surprise to many of you, but I won't have The Crimson Vault out by the 10th.

There are many reasons for this, but here are the main two:

1.) House of Blades was far more successful than I expected.
        As a result, I've had way more work to do. When I set the August 10th release date, I expected to have sold maybe 1500 copies by now. Instead, I just crossed thirteen thousand. It apparently takes a lot of work to maintain a successful book. Who knew?
        This also means that your expectations are higher. People liked House of Blades more than I thought they would, which means The Crimson Vault has to be as good as I can make it. At this point, rushing it out like this just wouldn't cut it.
        So, because of House of Blades, I had to effectively write a better sequel than I anticipated in less time than I expected to have.

2.) The Crimson Vault is longer than I anticipated.
        If The Crimson Vault was the length I had expected it to be, I would have finished writing it four or five days ago. Instead, I'm still not done. In fact, I had to almost completely re-write the last third of the story so that it didn't feel rushed or abbreviated. A lot of people felt that I skimmed too much in House of Blades, and I'm trying to avoid that here. After editing, I'm not sure whether it will end up longer than the first book, but it's certainly longer right now.

That said, I will have the book out before the end of August. It will not be September when this book is released. I don't care what stage of the editing process the book's in at that point; if I have to release a draft that still has my margin notes in it, I will do that. If I have to release extra chapters later as free DLC, I will do that.* But I will 100% have it to you this month.

Believe me, I hate to wait for new releases as much as you do, so I'm committed to making your wait as short as possible.

If you have further questions, or would like to tell me what a horrible person I am, please leave a comment or send me an email: <Will@WillWight.com>

Now, in a totally unrelated piece of news, a very helpful reader has informed me that the latest draft of House of Blades went out with the text entirely in bold. So if you bought the book in the past four or five days, the text was bold.

That's extremely annoying, and I apologize for it. I've changed it in Amazon's database, and it should be fixed within the next few hours. If this has happened to you, please email Amazon with the problem, and ask them to let you download the new version (as far as I know, this is the only way to get updated drafts of a Kindle book).

Once the upload is available, I will be trying to contact Amazon and have them re-release the latest draft for everyone who has bought House of Blades, so that you all have the newest typo-free--and hopefully un-bolded--version.


*NOTE: These weird things won't happen, I just use them as an illustration of how committed I am to getting it out in August.

I have returned to the surface after weeks of total immersion in The Crimson Vault to make an announcement: House of Blades is now available in paperback!

You can order it on Amazon, just like the eBook, only it's not an eBook. It's made of paper and everything. If you see me in person, I'll sign it.

On another note, we've hit 11,000 sales for House of Blades (w00t!), and I am almost done with The Crimson Vault. If I keep up my current blistering pace, I'll be done writing it this weekend.

Of course, that still leaves it to be edited. But don't worry; I'll keep you apprised of my progress.

And that's it for today. I'm spending all of my time working on Crimson Vault, so I'm sorry if I haven't responded to your comment or email. I promise I will get to it eventually, it's just that somebody around here promised a book in two months, which means I have to work like a madman.

As always, thanks for reading!

Hey, I'm back!

Also, while I was gone, we crossed the 8,000 sales threshold! Woo-hoo! At this rate, we'll hit 9,001 copies sold in less than a week, and then I can make an OVER NINE THOUSAND joke. My sickly heart craves outdated memes.

At this point, I estimate that I'm about 1/3 of the way done with The Crimson Vault, and I'm still working like a fiend trying to get it out for August 10th. I really want that to happen, because August 11th is my birthday, and then I can spend my birthday doing everyone's favorite post-book-launch birthday activity: sleeping. And, ideally, playing Cube World. Simultaneously.

Now that I have returned to the civilized world of Wi-Fi and 4G phone service, I will be investing my precious writing time into responding to your comments and emails. Look forward to my correspondence, friends and allies!

As always, thanks for your support! I channel your positive energy and feast upon it, swelling my writerly powers. Soon I will shed my mortal shell like a chrysalis, and ascend to a higher plane of existence.

No? Too weird? All right, I'll take it down a notch.

Here's a similar question to last week's: what was the most recent movie you've seen that was surprisingly good? I liked the Lone Ranger reboot (not counting the Tonto/Little Kid frame story, which needed to be edited out), which surprised me, because I expected it to suck.

Anyway, how about you?

As we speak, I'm sitting cross-legged on a desolate mountain peak, doing nothing but meditating and writing The Crimson Vault.

Parts of the above statement may or may not be true.

I am, in fact, on a trip to the mountains, and I am working diligently on Book 2. I have the first few chapters done, and over the next few weeks I expect to finish a big chunk of this draft. I'm well on my way to having the book out in August.

Plus, the cover is approaching completion. I'm excited about that. The two awesome and talented graphic designers I hired (Chelsey and Caitlin Bateson, available at www.designosaurus.ca) are hard at work on the second cover, and yesterday they delivered their rough version.

It's like someone squeezing lemon juice in your eye, only instead of lemon juice, it's pure awesome-juice. I am the king of analogies.

Anyway, I am in the mountains for the next two weeks, so I won't be as punctual when replying to your comments and/or email. Don't worry; when I return, I will do my best to respond to each of you.

Now, my question for you: what was the last incredible fantasy novel you read on your Kindle (not counting House of Blades)? I finished I, Minion by Lewis Dix a few days ago, because he commented on this blog, but it was a great read. So is Nyx by D.M. Livingston, a fantasy novel that was free on Kindle yesterday (and may still be today, I don't know).

Anyway, I want to know what you've read that's good. So let me know in the comments!

At some point today, June 28th, I will hit 4,000 sales. I believe the appropriate expression is "w00t!"

As I may or may not have mentioned before, before the book came out I had set a high sales goal for the entire month of June: I was aiming for 1,000 sales. I was hoping to really work hard on marketing, and that maybe I could hit that 1K sales goal. And now I'm about to hit four times that.

It's a crazy world.

But this is all thanks to you folks, who bought the book, read it, reviewed it, and told your friends. You're the best! You're like a moist, triple-layer cake that tastes like awesome, with rainbow-flavored icing and sprinkles made of raw joy. That's what I think of when I think of you, specifically.

The convention last weekend in Jacksonville was exciting, productive, and exhausting. I loved it. I'll probably be going to Tampa's MetroCon in a few weeks, and I'll certainly be at DragonCon in Atlanta on Labor Day Weekend. Will I have a booth? Who knows? But I will be there in some capacity, and it would be awesome if I ran into some of you.

I'm also on a retreat-sort-of-thing right now, writing The Crimson Vault (Book 2). What are you guys looking forward to in Book 2? What should I definitely include?

Let me know.

So House of Blades has been available on the Kindle store for over a week now, and it's ranked #3,779 out of all Kindle books for sale! Not only that, but I'm projected to hit two hundred sales any minute!

That's incredible to me, and it's all thanks to you guys.

I'm hard at work on Book 2, The Crimson Vault, since SOMEbody promised it would be out by August 10th. Some crazy, handsome madman with a penchant for setting unreasonable deadlines. But I'm doing all I can to keep promoting the first book and getting the word out everywhere.

And, apparently, so are you! I beg you, keep it up: leave a review on Amazon, plague your friends with references to House of Blades, post on Reddit, whisper into the ear of a moth so that he will spread the word to the Great Eagles. Any and all help is appreciated.

But again, I've been really happy with the book this week, especially considering how well it's done in the past 24 hours. You guys are the best! (Especially you, reading these words right now. Yes, you. Everybody else thinks they're the best, but I'm really talking to you, personally. You're welcome.)

So thanks again! And let me know in the comments: what's the weirdest--yet still possibly effective--thing you could do to promote a book on Kindle?

Thanks for reading!