That headline is necessary after last year 😀 No cardiac incidents at all, in fact. (The follow up to my supraventricular tachycardia incident last year was “yup, you’ll eventually have this recur and we’ll deal with it then”).
On the other hand, I tore my Achilles tendon in June and spent three months in a cast, including WorldCon 2019.
I don’t recommend conventions in an aircast and I most definitely do not recommend relying on Heathrow airport’s disability services to get you to a plane on time.
WorldCon 2019 itself was a blast and I loved Dublin, but being laid up in the cast was a major limitation for, well, everything. Got to see some interesting panels, met some authors I’ve loved for a while, had dinner with CE Murphy. It was a great trip. Unfortunately, we eventually concluded that New Zealand was just too far for us to haul a team of three-to-four people and we’ll be skipping WorldCon 2020. Have a blast for us if you’re going!
The other con we went to last year was the 2019 Nebulas in LA. That’s a much smaller and more pro-focused event than the WorldCon and was probably more useful for me in terms of networking and so forth. We’ll be back in 2020 and I’m trying to puppy-dog-eye my way onto the programming. We’ll see how that goes 😀
2019 was a middling-along year in a lot of ways. We published eight books and since you might want to know what they are, here’s the links:
- Noble’s Honor (February 2019) – this wrapped up the Changeling Blood trilogy, which I’m a bit sad to see go!
- Shield of Terra (March 2019)
- Bound By Blood (April 2019) – this one wrapped up my co-writing project with Terry Mixon, which was a lot of fun.
- Sword of Mars (June 2019)
- Refuge (July 2019)
- Imperium Defiant (September 2019) – this wrapped up the second Duchy of Terra trilogy. Sensing a theme to the year yet? 😀
- Raven’s Peace (November 2019) – first book in a new series
- Crusade (December 2019) – this wrapped up the Exile trilogy
Along with the novels, we re-released two of the novellas from Spaceships and Spellcasters as stand-alone e-books and turned Spaceships and Spellcasters into a print-only collection. The novellas:
We also launched our Patreon, a new endeavor for me. By signing up for the Patreon, you get access to all of my books one to two weeks before they go live. We’re using Bookfunnel for this, which means the process for loading onto your device should be relatively straightforward (or at least well-explained. Bookfunnel are fantastic at supporting this process).
Currently, the only exclusive Patreon content is a single short story I wrote during 2019 that didn’t really fit anywhere else. It’s free if you sign up though! Next up for the e-ARCS is Conviction, the first book in another new series.
The general theme of 2019 was wrapping up earlier experiments. By my math, I permanently closed off three universes and ended a trilogy in a fourth. We also brought our long-running experiment in keeping certain series out of our exclusivity deal with Amazon to a close. We were simply leaving too much money on the table by not being in Kindle Unlimited—it’s the unfortunate truth that the KU market alone is now larger than all non-Amazon e-book vendors combined. Keeping future books available to that audience is one of the reasons for the existence of the Patreon, as those books are universal (but also of limited availability. Once the book launches on Amazon, it is no longer available through the Patreon).
I launched the Peacekeepers of Sol series in 2019, which I’m looking forward to sharing with you guys going forward, and wrote the first book in the Scattered Stars: Conviction series as well. Those will join Starship’s Mage and the Shadow of Terra trilogy as my four ongoing series in 2020.
Some things changed in the background and in November of 2019 we welcomed our newest employee aboard. If you’re in the Facebook reader group you’ll have seen her posting there. Robin comes to us from a Canadian publisher and brings our little publishing house up to four people and a small army of contractors 😀
As of writing this, the first two launches of 2020 are already complete (the Conviction novel for January and a Castle Federation novella for February) and I’m elbows-deep in the next Starship’s Mage novel, targeted for March. We have eight novels targeted for release again next year, including more Peacekeepers, more Conviction, the first two books of the Shadow of Terra trilogy and two Starship’s Mage novels.
I like the plans I have for all four series and look forward to you guys getting to read them and enjoy them.
For now, I wish everyone the happiest of holidays with your loved ones and a happy new year.
(And note that paperback copies of the Exile trilogy would make a great Yule gift ;))
Happy Reading!
-Glynn Stewart
We really enjoyed meeting you and your team for lunch at Worldcon. Perhaps we can do it again. I highly recommend 20booksto50K- Vegas or if not, WorldconDC in 2021.
Best wishes for a prosperous New year!
I’m glad you didn’t die. I love your books and look forward to each new release. I read Raven’s Peace and really enjoyed it. Stay healthy, please. You’re one of my favorite authors!
As someone who is just getting into the Castle Federation series, and loving it, I was wondering if 6 is the end? I see you are mentioning a novella, but are 6 novels all we are going to see of Kyle Roberts? I’m through book 2 and trying to avoid spoilers, hence why I’m asking rather than just flipping to book 6 and seeing if its the end.