Wicked Problems and Beyond

Good news, everyone!

It’s a drizzling rainy day, oddly warm for early March in Massachusetts—not unbelievably warm, just oddly warm in the way that the house oddly seems to win—and I have an extra hole in my face thanks to the wonders of not-quite-emergency-but-best-get-it-done-as-soon-as-possible wisdom tooth extraction. How nice of it to coincide with convention travel, moving house, incipient book launch, and tax season!

All that said, I had a fantastic weekend at CoastCon in Biloxi MS—great conversations, great games, great food, and a welcoming community. On the morning I left I stood out on the pier across from the hotel for a while, and a brown pelican swooped past, skimming the waves.

Profundities (to the extent I ever engage in them) are beyond me at the moment as a result of dental work, along with most everything that isn’t ice cream and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and Control on the PS5. Last week I thought, oh, I’m off to a con, I’ll send a newsletter when I get back— but at this rate, I don’t want to speculate what next week might hold! There are, however, a few pieces of news that I’m excited to share, and, I believe, I finally can.

• There will be audio editions of the Craft Wars books! Thanks to all of you for your patience and continued interest as we made that happen. The early reader samples I’ve heard sound great, and I’m happy to be able to share the books with audio fans. When I know more about release timing, I’ll let you know. We’ve sold rights to all the remaining books in the series—so once production catches up, we should see audio / print / e-book release times sync.

• Speaking of releases—I’ll be hosting a book release event for Wicked Problems at Brookline Booksmith on April 23 at 7pm US Eastern. I believe the event will be live-streamed on the Booksmith’s Youtube page as well, for those of you who can’t make it to Boston. Not the best time zone for those of you over in the UK, unfortunately, but we do what we can.

• In the run-up to Wicked Problems, I think it’s time to share the launch schedule for the rest of the Craft Wars. Here we go:

  • Book 2, Wicked Problems, April 9, 2024

  • Book 3, Fall 2025

  • Book 4, Fall 2026

• Oh, right, speaking of which: there’s going to be a book four!

Here’s what happened: I wrote Wicked Problems in a fugue state during the Pandemic, mostly waking up at 4:30 to get a solid day’s writing in before our kiddo woke up. In that year, any attempt at planning seemed to be an exercise in futility. Anything less than pure immersion and the exhaustion and distraction of the moment would overwhelm. The only way forward was to write a story that tugged me along with demonic energy.

There’s a funny thing about writing longhand, though: you don’t know quite how much you’ve written. It’s longhand, right, so it must be shorter than if I were typing? Which works fine until you sit down to type it up.

On the one hand, I found myself a manuscript of Tad Williams-esque length, enough to strain Tor’s budget for ink and paper, not to mention the material limits of binding glue. On the other—there was a clear break point two thirds of the way through the manuscript, and the back third had a really fun core concept that I had known, even as I wrote it, did not have enough narrative room to unfold to its most perfect shape in that draft—even as the first section bulged oddly where I set up characters and setting for the second. So, really, I’d written two books, neither of which was quite done.

I’ve spent most of the last year finishing them both, so they’ll land as a one-two punch, each full-formed in its character. I’m re-reading Book 3 right now and it’s great—more full, unified, pacy, and deep than it was in first draft. And once that’s off to Tor, pretty soon… Whew! Book 4 will be a wild ride. I can’t wait to share it with you.