Hello, everyone!
I’ll skip the preamble and get straight into some updates.
Arcane Ascension 4‘s first draft is at roughly 75% completion. This is estimating a similar length to Sufficiently Advanced Magic as a basis — as always, the length can drift as I continue to write and decide to add/remove scenes, through editing passes, etc.
At present, I think the story is coming along pretty well, and I expect that people who didn’t like the more slice-of-life vacation style of Arcane Ascension 3 will probably be happier with this book, especially toward the ending. Structurally, the book is most similar to Arcane Ascension 2, although the overall content mixture includes elements from all three previous books (and some new stuff).
In terms of expanded universe projects, I’m about ready to start looking at the beginning of the second expanded universe book. The author is already making a good pace on that and I’m excited that we’ll probably be seeing the first one out this year (but there isn’t a release date yet). I’m also still actively in talks with a couple other authors on the subject of expanded universe books and may be getting some off those up and running in the coming months, but I’ve depriortized those discussions to focus as much of my time as possible on writing AA4.
I’m basically in “buckle down and write AA4” mode in general, and as such, I have not made any meaningful progress on any other books during the last month.
I’ve continued discussions with publishers for some other types of media – and one of those projects is still actively in progress and super exciting – but there’s nothing new and exciting to report just yet. My hope is that we’ll have a formal announcement for one of these big projects within the next few months, but it’s been hard to evaluate the timing on it. I think people are going to be very excited, though, and I’m happy with what I’ve seen in terms of the quality of what is being worked on. I wish I didn’t have to be so vague, but hopefully the surprises will be worth the wait.
In terms of AA4’s actual completion and release, it’s still too early to estimate that with any degree of accuracy, but I’m comfortable giving some general thoughts. Assuming I continue writing at a similar pace to my last couple months and end the book at a length similar to what I expect, the first draft should be completed around the beginning of August. At that point, it will likely take me about three to months for beta reading and editing, based on how long the previous AA books have taken. This means we’d theoretically be looking at a launch window around November/December. I’d love to get it out sooner – and it’s hypothetically possible that I could end up doing that if I write or edit faster than expected – but that seems like a pretty realistic timeframe. It’s also possible that it could get pushed back if, say, I decide to make the length closer to AA2/Soulbrand, or if I run into major problems with beta reads/edits, life gets in the way, etc.
Assuming the book releases around the end of the year, audio is usually about 6 months after that. There’s no recording date set, so this is purely an estimate based on my previous books – it could be longer or shorter.
Hope this helps give people a bit better idea of what to expect. I’m very excited to share Arcane Ascension 4 with readers as soon as possible – we’ll just have to see when it’s ready.
Best,
-Andrew
Andrew Rowe 