I’ve now received official news that my next book will be published early next year! It’s currently in editing, and there’s a pile of stuff to be done in the lead up to publication.

As many readers and writers know, getting the word out about a new book is a time consuming process, with much of the effort involving both the author and the publisher. Gone are the days of massive advertising budgets and world tours, even if you’re with a large publisher.

I’m (very happily) published with small press. Hague Publishing has been very good to me over the last seven (seven!) years. I can still remember coming home from our daughter’s year twelve trip to discover the acceptance letter in my email. I woke the entire (very jet lagged) family up to tell them. And they still love me….

The new book will be called Amethyst Pledge (Book 1 in the Chronicles of Albatar), and grew out of a writers group prompt of ‘purple.’ In our group, we write 500 words using a randomly selected prompt, and then bravely read it to the rest of the group, as they read along on copies of the writing. Then we gently (and I do mean gently) critique each other.

I dashed my five hundred words off, and was very happy with them. So happy in fact, that I wrote a whole novel as a result, using those five hundred words (which are still nearly verbatim – what a miracle!) several chapters in. From those words, I built a whole world, a cast of characters, and even a couple of rather nice horses along the way, as well as some rather nasty monsters.

Tonight, I plan to reveal Amethyst Pledge’s cover. It’s fantastic, and grew from concepts provided to Jade from Steampower Studios. Fascinatingly, it ended up nothing like I’d ever imagined, in a style I’d never contemplated as being the kind of thing I’d like. And I LOVE it!

So stay tuned, because I’ll pop the cover up on my facebook page, and this blog, this evening!