So do plans. In my post a few days ago, I explained how some unanticipated events had thrown my writing plans for this year behind schedule. I had intended that I would complete and publish The Beast of Dublin by late spring of this year, then in the fall begin the fifth and final book of The Strongbow Saga, but that did not happen.
Fans of The Strongbow Saga have been waiting too long to receive the conclusion of Halfdan’s story. I do want to risk not getting it to you by next year. Therefore, I am once again setting The Beast of Dublin aside for a time, and am turning to the final installment of The Strongbow Saga (tentative title: To the Edge of the World) with an eye to publishing it, if all goes well, in the first half of 2016. Thank you all for your patience and loyalty.
I guess I’m confused by the timeline for Beast of Dublin. It’s almost March, 2016 Could you tell me when you anticipate finishing it? Thanks.
I can certainly understand your confusion–thanks for asking. The Beast of Dublin has had a convoluted path. I began working on it in 2009, during a period when HarperCollins, the original publisher of The Strongbow Saga, had decided not to buy a fourth book, but had all of the rights to the series locked up legally. I came up with the idea of writing a stand-alone historical thriller set in the Strongbow Saga world and including some of the same characters, but not a part of that story. But Ireland during the 9th century is pretty tough to research, and the writing went slowly.
Then, in 2010, HarperCollins began releasing the rights to the Strongbow Saga back to me. I published what I had so far of TBoD on Kindle as a preview of a book-in-progress, and focused my efforts on republishing each of the first three Strongbow Saga books in e-book and print editions as they were released back to me, which took the rest of 2010 and most of 2011.
In early 2012, my wife and I moved to western Oregon and purchased a small farm there. That entire year was lost to the move and getting the farm up and running.
By 2013, it had been five years since book 3 of the Strongbow Saga had been published, so I felt I really needed to focus on writing and publishing book 4 of that series, The Long Hunt, which was released in December of that year.
The first half of 2014 was primarily devoted to getting audio editions produced of books 1 through 4 of the Strongbow Saga, which proved to be a much more time intensive project than anticipated. In the summer of that year my wife and I spent over a week in Ireland, doing on the ground research for both The Beast of Dublin and book 5 of The Strongbow Saga. The demands of running the farm used up the rest of my time that year.
I had intended to complete TBoD in 2015, but although I spent some time working on it, the writing was not flowing, and I found my mind more often back in the story of The Strongbow Saga, so I ultimately decided to switch to working on book 5, which will complete the Strongbow Saga story. I intend to publish it sometime this year, and focus on getting the audio edition made after its publication, then start trying to sell the entire series to foreign publishers. All of which means I don’t expect to get back to working on The Beast of Dublin until sometime during the latter part of 2017, so realistically, I would not expect it to be released until 2018.
That was probably a much longer answer than what you were wanting.