QUARTERLY UPDATE - WINTER 2026
Things have gone from 0 to 160.9 over the last three months...
(That's 0 to 100 when converted to miles per hour.)
Basically I've gone from spending most of my time twiddling my thumbs and staring aimlessly into the distance to suddenly everything happening at once with no time take a breath unless it's been carefully scheduled two weeks in advance.
Well... that was until suddenly I hit a major roadblock and then everything stopped again.
Confused? Let me explain as best I can...
WHAT IS ALEX WORKING ON?
Lots of things.
Here are the progress bars on my website as they currently stand but this doesn't even begin to tell the full story:
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There are at least two things that need to be added to this list. The first is the 5.0 draft of Then Came the Night of the First Missile (which is really just the final proofread) which I'm making extremely slow progress on.
The other is the 3.0 draft of The Monadic Broadcast which I had really hoped to finish by mid-July... instead, it's not even on the board and might have to be pushed out to next year. Which I'm bitterly disappointed about.
On the plus side, the 2.0 draft is done which means I am willing to let people read and critique it. In fact I desperately want people to do that, before I get on to the next draft. So why not apply to be a Beta Reader? Then you can laugh at all my typos and berate me about all the plot holes and meandering ideas that don't go anywhere... and this time I'll actually listen to you!
WHAT'S THIS ABOUT A TOP SECRET PROJECT?
Top secret project? What?
I have no idea what you're talking about...
WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE eBOOK ISSUE?
Oh. That.
I did seriously consider writing a long blog post explaining exactly what went wrong, who let me down and up exactly which of their orifices I'd like to stick my foot... but I've decided to be the bigger man and just let it go. For now.
Basically, two of the evil corporations that I was doing business with decided to do exactly what evil corporations do, leaving me in the lurch and with unpaid royalties.
It's all sorted now, I got my money and in future I'll be steering clear of those two companies. The downside is that Joie de Vivre (and future books) won't be available on as many platforms as I'd have liked. It's not the end of the world, but it's also not ideal.
It is what it is.
WHAT'S NEXT?
That's a really good question. The honest answer is, "It depends".
I'm not actually where I want to be at this point in the year - busy as the last three months were, a lot of it was quite fruitless work and as a result I've fallen behind on a few key projects. Plus, you know, I have a life outside of writing too which has an unwelcome habit of getting in the way...
At the moment, a lot of what's next depends on other people and whether or not they get back to me or do what they said they were going to. I've already had a few let me down, so I'm not getting my hopes up.
In all likelihood I'll be working on the final proofread of Then Came the Night of the Missile, which I'm now 100% adamant will be published in 2027, come hell or high water. That book has been an absolute f***ing nightmare to produce, from start to finish, but I'll talk more about that at a later date.
In an ideal world, I'll also get at least another draft of The Monadic Broadcast done (as I'm also planning a 2027 release for that book), however this is now looking unlikely and probably won't happen until November at the earliest.
July is also typically my "transition" month - in that, my focus shifts from refining to creating. I plan to prewrite my next novel, which I also plan to start drafting some time in August. I don't think it'll be a very long or complicated novel, but then again I said the same thing about The Monadic Broadcast before I wrote it and that ended up clocking in at over 100,000 words, so who knows what I'll end up writing?
And I think that's where I'm going to have to end this update. I apologise that I haven't been particularly detailed - there is a lot happening behind the scenes that I can't really talk about right now, but hopefully everything will make more sense this time next year.
I also happen to be typing this while violently ill - I've had to stop writing twice to go and throw up, and right now it's not a good idea for me to be more than two metres away from the toilet. I don't think it's anything life-threatening (just the result of me eating my own cooking), but if there's no update on September 30th then I suppose we'll know I was wrong...
Anyway, thanks for reading and I'll be back with another update in the southern hemisphere spring, gastrointestinal illnesses notwithstanding. Be bad and stay dangerous!
- AEW