It’s time to announce my next book launch! It’s been a long time coming. At least, it feels like it to me after so many delays. But I am pleased to announce that the fourth entry in The Augment Saga, and its second full-length novel, The Shadow of Arcadia, will be releasing into the world on Monday 15th July 2024. What’s more, you can pre-order it now!

That’s right, for the first time I’m putting out a call for ARC readers for The Shadow of Arcadia, the second full-length novel in the Augment Saga! With three books already under my belt, you’d think I’d have gotten this publishing stuff figured out by now. But the one thing I’ve always missed out on during the run-up to release is sending out ARCs. And the main reason for that is timing…

I’m thrilled to announce I now have some extra goodies available in my online shop. It all started because I wanted to do something else with the art I had been making to go along with my books. I already had the bookmarks, and someone said that the mission patch would make a great sticker. Plus, I’d spent so much time painting the art for my book covers and then slapping typography over the top that I really wanted to have something where the art itself could shine through…

I am excited to say that I have now completed all the beta reader edits for The Shadow of Arcadia and it is now at the point in the book creation process where it needs to be sent off for a professional edit. The word count currently sits at around 126,400 words, which is a little bit longer than From the Grave of the Gods was. All major rewrite and scene additions are done; I’ve tidied up the prose and typos as much as I possibly can. So now it’s time to turn it over to the professionals…

First of all, I need to update you all on the progress of The Shadow of Arcadia. I’ve made no secret that I’ve struggled writing this book. It has absolutely been the hardest book I’ve ever written, and things have taken a lot longer than I wanted. The good news, however, is that the book is now away with beta readers! I’ve asked for around 3 months of turnaround time, so it’ll likely be January before I get their feedback to incorporate. As you can probably tell, this means the bad news is that the book won’t be coming out this year, something for which I feel I must apologise profusely.

I am beyond thrilled to announce that I’ve finally reached the end of my second full-length Augment Saga novel, The Shadow of Arcadia, and it feels amazing! So mark your calendars! I’ve got something special for you all. I promised on my social media that I would do a cover reveal once the draft is done, and true to that promise, the cover art and blurb reveal for The Shadow of Arcadia will happen on FRIDAY 26 MAY - that’s 7 days from now. Keep watching my socials, as I’ll be posting a new graphic each day revealing just that little bit more of the cover. I’m very happy with the artwork I’ve produced for the book, and I hope you’ll join me in giving both it and the book the celebration they deserve.

In this longer blog post, I hope to take you through a journey of thinking about alternative applications for the speculative technologies in your sci-fi worldbuilding. There are already a lot of articles out there on the internet about the different types of faster-than-light (FTL) drive tech that have been used throughout science fiction. It’s a deep well you can draw from. There’s your warp drives, wormholes, hyperdrives, jump drives, even infinite improbability drives! And all of these have different flavours—such as the Federation’s dilithium-based matter/antimatter engine vs the Romulan singularity-based one… or others such as jump-gates, stargates, slipstream, and frame-shift drives—the list goes on and on.

Progress on The Shadow of Arcadia is still slow. I’m finding this to be the hardest book I’ve yet written, but I am still making progress. It is now past novella-length, and past the length at which I extracted it from the original draft of From the Grave of the Gods, but there’s a lot still to add, and I’m just shy of half the way through. As I write Part Two of the novel, I have a very clear picture in my mind of where it’s heading, and there’s a sequence which I am absolutely dying to write.

You all know by now how much I adore Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing, so it comes as no surprise that I would be over the moon about the prospect of learning more of the art of writing from her. Steering the Craft is a fantastic short guide packed with lots of great insights and writing exercises across a range of different aspects of the craft. Mainly aimed at the kind of writer who’s been doing this thing a little while and wants to hone their craft, it’s an excellent resource for both lone and group work. As such, it doesn’t go over the basics like how to create characters, build fictional worlds etc… But focuses more on style.

The experience of selling signed copies of my books for the first time at craft fairs. At the end of October I bought a stall at the Fairkytes Arts & Crafts Market in Hornchurch. I’d never done anything of the sort before, though I had seen other crafty people in my family exhibit at them. It was certainly a learning experience, so I thought I’d share that with you. I became aware of the Fairkytes Arts & Crafts Market entirely by chance when a family member happened to mention they had seen it advertised on Facebook.

It’s 1st November, and that means it’s the turn of From the Grave of the Gods to have its book birthday! Two book birthdays in a year? Surely not! Now I’m just hogging all the celebrations. But it is true, From the Grave of the Gods, my first ever full-length novel made its way into the world one year ago today. It’s hard to believe. So much has happened since, and so many of you have welcomed my humble series starter with open arms, following along with Commander James Fowler’s remarkable journey. I’m honestly blown away by the reception.

Here we go again, another impending book launch! I am pleased to announce that the third entry in The Augment Saga, The Flight of the Aurora: An Augment Saga Novella, will be releasing to the world on Tuesday 20th September 2022. It is a real honour that so many of you have read and enjoyed my books thus far, and it is my joy and privilege to present this novella to you: another step in the epic sci-fi adventure that’s been rattling around in my brain for decades.

My next novella in the Augment Saga, The Flight of the Aurora, has returned from its beta reading phase and I am busy implementing the changes. I am immensely grateful to my beta readers for looking through my work and providing their invaluable feedback. Thankfully, there’s nothing major to adjust, so after another couple of editing passes, I’ll commence work on typesetting the thing - a process that ought to be easier this time around because I will be using my file for The Re-Emergence as a template.

From 18th - 22nd April, I’ll be partnering with Narratess for the first #indieapril mega sale, celebrating independent speculative fiction authors. April is the month we in the Writing Community celebrate independent authors, and there’s something extra special on the horizon this year. During the third week of the month, I and over 70 other indie authors will be taking part in an absolutely huge sale on speculative fiction books, hosted by Narratess.com.

What I really want is for this post to act as a sort of resource for other new writers who are thinking about self-publishing, particularly when it comes to IngramSpark and Amazon KDP. There’s a lot of stuff on the internet to help with self-publishing, and I’ve read a lot of it over the last two years as I’ve gradually brought my books to release, but there were still a few things that didn’t become clear to me until From the Grave of the Gods went live. So if this helps shed some light for new writers, that would be amazing. So, strap in because this will be a long one.

IT IS DONE! I have finally finished the first significant draft of The Flight of the Aurora, the next entry in the Augment Saga. Hooray! This book takes place fifteen years after the events of From the Grave of the Gods, and continues to follow James and Angela on another adventure. This one is meant to bridge what will be a significant time gap between the first and second full-length novels…

The time has finally come. The Great and Terrible day of Alan K. Dell is upon us. One thousand humans (presumably) have pledged their allegiance - nay, their very souls - to me, in support of my evil schemes. Muhuahahahaaaa! Lol it’s not all that dramatic. But I am so incredibly grateful to all those who have hit that follow button on Twitter to see more of my nonsense on their timelines. I can’t quite believe it: 1000 followers…

It’s been a little while since I shared a writing update on the blog, so I thought, as it’s New Year, it was time to let you all know what I’ve been doing since the release of From the Grave of the Gods. Well, first of all, after I picked myself up off the floor from the absolutely incredible launch of my first novel (which is now sitting at well over 60 sales), I continued working on my next novella, The Flight of the Aurora. If you’ve been following this blog since the beginning, you’ll know that in response to some very valuable beta reader feedback, I had to cut my draft of From the Grave of the Gods into two novels. The first of which became the one I took to publication in November this year.

When I first started my writing journey two years ago (or ten years ago, depending on how you count it), I thought it was a simple case of coming up with a vague plot and writing down the vivid scenes that popped into my head. Of course, after I actually made a start I realised there was a lot more to it than that, especially when it came to worldbuilding. So here’s five things I’ve learned along the way: