Many of you know I have a new series coming up called the Champions of Saint Euphemia. Some of you have pre-ordered book #1, The Crusader’s Bride, and you may have noticed the date slipping out. I thought we’d talk about that today.

My original plan with this idea was that these four stories would be novellas, of about 25,000 words in length, which would be published in rapid succession – one a month over this summer. May, June, July and August would have been the release months under this plan. The problem became clear in April however – Gaston and Ysmaine were not going to have their story told in a mere 25,000 words. I was past that word count and they were still working it out.

I revised my plan, certain that these would be four short books, of about 50,000 words each. I moved the publication date of book #1 to June, and was planning on releases every second month – so the others would follow in August, October and December. It was a good plan, but Gaston and Ysmaine still refused to have their story rushed.

The Crusader’s Bride is a full length book and has gone off to my editor. I suspect that when the edits are done, it will be 100,000 words long. It will be published on July 28. I’ll be writing full length books for the other stories in the series, too, which means that monthly or even bimonthly releases are out of the question.

I am writing more quickly this year, which was my goal. I had hoped to write the equivalent of six full books this year instead of three, and am right on schedule – it’s June and I’ve written the equivalent of three full books already. (Remember that Firestorm Forever was double the usual book length.) Three more books by the end of the year means finishing the Champions series, or maybe the next two in that series and the first DragonFate book. Maybe I’ll manage four more books by the end of the year!

This week, I’m putting the other Champion titles up for pre-order at Kobo and iBooks: The Crusader’s Heart for October 20, The Crusader’s Kiss for January 19 and The Crusader’s Vow for April 19. The Pinterest pages are live for the first two books (I’m still compiling the other two) so click through and have a peek. This puts me back into a more familiar rhythm, similar to the one I’ve followed for twenty years or so, and makes me think about alternating between knights and dragons, maybe starting in the fall.

I’ll keep you posted on that!