When’s the next damn book?
This was originally published in the newsletter in July 2025.
There is an update at the end that brings things up to date.
If you have no interest in how an author’s brain/life works, please feel free to skip this section.
TL;DR—there will almost certainly be a book this year. It may not be the book you expect, but there should be one. The why and the wherefore are longer and more complicated.
This update is almost a short story itself – sorry!
I was a voracious reader myself for 57 years before I wrote a word of fiction. As a reader, my head divides authors into two camps:
1: I like their books but don’t really care what’s happening in their lives. I just want to read their work.
2: I do care and I’m just generally nosy. I care how their kids or grandkids and pets are doing and what’s happening in their world.
The co-creator of the Liaden Universe, Sharon Lee’s daily updates from the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, warm my heart. Ilona Andrew’s yarn, pet and Texas weather-related craziness often have me in stitches. Nora Roberts/JD Robb’s snarky news bulletins from her garden and her travels always make me smile.
And I always want to know when their new books are delayed or on time.
But I have no way of telling which of those author types I might be to you. So, if I’m the first type, please feel free to scroll straight past this entire too-long section. As the TL;DR said, there will be publication news much later this year.But if I’m the second type for you, sit down, make a cup of something delicious—if you didn’t already—and here we go.
The delay between books 6 & 7 was planned
As some of you know—at least those of you in the Voracious Readers Group do—because you’ve seen quite a few videos of the new house. After fifteen years in the same sprawling house in Gretna Green, we downsized to a single-level apartment with a lovely courtyard which we all love.
But there were several unanticipated knock-on effects and one expected one.
The expected one was easy because we’re not complete idiots. Moving house takes time, and the new place needed workmen to come and make it right for us. Then we planned a long-overdue holiday.
The midpoint of the Gretna Green series was the perfect time for me to take some much-needed time off from six books, various novellas, bonuses, and almost four years of uninterrupted writing. I wanted to organise our new nest and just breathe.
I needed time to process that my crazy retirement project had taken on a life of its own.
One unexpected issue was terrifying
Lucy, my real Bichon Frise, who you know as Tilly in the books, collapsed.
She was diagnosed with a serious, life-threatening heart problem, and her vet, Pip—who, astonishingly, she’s very fond of—put her on a load of essential medications.
Those of you with older pets in your own households are probably nodding knowingly, anticipating the next problem. Because her new drugs all came with their own side effects, frequent dosage adjustments and some worrying episodes during the titration of those drugs.
She’s doing really well now, and has almost stopped keeling over from lack of circulation three times a day. But it’s taken nearly eight months to get her from her oxygen tent at the vets on the ‘touch and go’ list, to stable, happy and as close to her new normal as we could. She didn’t sustain any brain damage, so she’s still her formerly stroppy and adorable self, just a lot more vulnerable than she used to be.
The next problem I didn’t predict …
… because I’m an idiot.
What I didn’t know until we moved was how much I loved my old office. The one I’d written about a million book words in?
Yep, that office.
Have you read about those authors who write their masterpieces in coffee shops? That is NOT me!
I’m an antisocial soul with a puppy, a partner I love, and an excellent coffee machine at home. I like to write alone, in a room with only medieval monks in their library copying manuscripts for company.
If any of you are convinced you read that last sentence wrongly, you might not know about a wonderful website. Recommend it to anyone you know who is studying, writing or creating. You can thank me later. Listen here.
I struggled a LOT to find a Happy Writing Space in our new home. Nowhere was quite right and all the windowsills were wrong. I write a lot faster when I’m standing and yes, of course I have a standing desk, but I also get bored easily. The new window sills were too high, too low, too narrow, too deep—just call me Goldilocks 🤱
OK, so those were the unusual problems, but once they were all ‘fixed’, and I actually began productive writing about two or three months ago, I still had all the usual author-ish issues to deal with.
One of those famous 1970-1980s authors, it could have been Sidney Sheldon, Ken Follet, Wilbur Smith, or possibly even Arthur Haley, (the internet has not been my friend to help me pin down where the heck I read this) said that an author’s manuscript should be like an iceberg.
i.e. They should do as much research as they wish, but never put too much of what they know about the subject in question into their books. Their knowledge should be like an iceberg, with the reader only seeing the top 10% of it.
(Yes, I now know it was Hemingway – actual facepalm – whoops! )
I have the exact opposite problem
Sometimes I don’t put nearly enough of the mountains of stuff I know about the realms onto the pages of the books in the early drafts. That can leave readers guessing what I’m on about. That weakness of mine is one of the reasons I value my beta readers so much.
When I had a completed second draft of Orange, I was unhappy with it. But after the problems with the new house and my pup, I no longer trusted my own judgement.
So I sent it out to my beta-reading FABs. They’re called FABs for a reason and they’re ruthless in a good way. I was pretty confident they would give me honest feedback.
They did.
They all let me know that I have not yet got the book I want to write onto the actual pages. Which is a bummer, but I agree with them wholeheartedly.
I may need a few fresh volunteers to read the new, improved beta version of the book sometime in the autumn, because the FABs are rightly sick of it by now.
Currently, Orange is a horrid mess. You won’t get it until it’s the book I want it to be. Quite how long that’s going to take, I don’t know. But I’m guessing that it’s at least nine or ten months from publication.
But in good news …
Before you completely despair, one thing that caused many of the problems with Orange is all the minor fun distractions my books usually have. Orange wouldn’t allow any of that. It didn’t want any diversionary trivia in it. Orange wants to tell the story of the Galicia realm. Orange thinks that includes enough fun stuff already. Orange is an opinionated little shit book!
I consider the “fun stuff” to be the follow-ups on things that happened in a previous book that aren’t yet resolved. The birthday party, the drama around the opening of the Viking parliament, the Slat-draoidheachd and its new wielder, the dragonets. Niki requesting Mabon to accompany her to the Recorders’ cemetery—where we left her at the end of Market Forces. Not to mention how to get That Damn Book to answer her questions about the annoying prophecies from Agnes. (Teeny spoiler, yes, she makes tremendous progress)
Every time I started to write something like that, Orange rebelled. So there’s a bunch of semi-completed short stories, bits of several new novellas and all the fun stuff that Orange won’t allow in. But I’m *pretty* confident that you all want to read it.
The reason I’m pretty confident is that when the problem with Orange’s endless ‘focus on me’ outlook became clear, I asked in the Voracious Readers Group. 98% of them suggested they’d soon be desperate enough to read my grocery list. So, some unexpected novellas would be fab.
These are much too long to be free bonuses. So the various characters and incidents that mostly happen in the gateway between the end of Market Forces and the beginning of Orange, and one or two other things besides might end up in an ‘in-between’ collection.
The working title is Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green. (If you know, you know, and if you don’t, the book will explain itself. ) It will be a more than full-length book made up of shorter stories and novellas.
It will also include House Party, which will be a huge relief to me because I’m tired of answering begging emails from readers who are desperate for a print copy of House Party to complete their collection for their non-virtual bookshelf. They can’t have it—because it’s too short to print. But I could include it in this collection, thereby keeping the bits and pieces mostly in one place.
So, the new book, which is NOT even close to being finished, will cover the two weeks between the end of Market Forces and the beginning of Orange. I’m speaking to my editor about it at the moment.
Which highlights the final problem
My fabulous editor had some health issues in her family.
I never considered going elsewhere, but I also know if Krista had done her usual first-pass edit on Orange, it would never have made it to my FABs in such a state. However, we’re all back to normal now, and it’s going to her for that first-pass edit this time next month.
In conclusion
There will be books.
I am focused.
Violet is nagging at me already. It got me up at 3 a.m. the other night to write the beginning.
I am working.
It is just not quite going as I want it to—yet.
I’ll get there and when I do, you’ll have two books, not one.
There were ten planned in the series. (Details here) This would change that to eleven. But I think it will be a companion book so people don’t read it out of order.
November 2025 update
Thankfully, a lot of time has passed since July, and I have far more exciting updates for you. Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green is in the final stages now and will be released next month on December 26th, 2025.
You can see the page for Spilling the Tea, here.
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