It is done! The first significant draft of The Shadow of Arcadia: The Augment Saga Book Two is complete.

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.

About the Writing

Sitting at 114,200 words, the book is currently a little shorter than From the Grave of the Gods, but I know I need to add a bunch of stuff during the editing process which might bring it on par with that first novel in terms of word-count. It has been a heck of a ride, dragging the bare bones of this story out of the first draft of From the Grave of the Gods over two years ago. At that point it had dropped down to around 35,000 words and was in a very sorry state. It has taken months of plotting and re-plotting, re-writing, frustration and hard work to bring it up to snuff as a full story of its own. The midsection of the book dragged in terms of writing, because it was the part that needed the most fresh material, and the part I was least confident in. That section went through a lot of changes while I was writing it. But I powered through and I’m proud of the result. The third act of the book was by far the fastest to get through and I had an amazing time rediscovering my love for writing during it. I was blasting out thousands of words per day, which is a stark contrast to the couple of hundred a week I was averaging in act 2.

The Shadow of Arcadia represents the darkest chapter of the Augment Saga so far. I’ve often described it as the series’ Empire Strikes Back in terms of its tone, and the characters really get raked over the coals. It continues James Fowler’s story and features a much larger cast of characters than the first novel, which means you’ll get to see old favourites and hopefully develop some new ones along the way. If you’ve been following my social media, you may have seen the excerpts I’ve been posting, some of them referencing new characters such as Erin, Nate and April. The book also features more space settings, flying all over the solar system. There’s planets and moons and space structures that were a real blast to write about, and I hope you enjoy them too. The Shadow of Arcadia really ramps up the action, excitement, suspense and intrigue.

A terrorist group with an enigmatic masked leader, born from the events of From the Grave of the Gods, and The Flight of the Aurora, wreaks absolute havoc, and our heroes must find out who it is and stop them.

Meaning this in the best possible way: I sincerely hope The Shadow of Arcadia utterly devastates you.

What’s Next?

The next step is editing!

My usual method is to put the book down for a while - a few weeks, perhaps - to get myself out of the woods and gain a fresh perspective on the writing. Then I will read through it and make notes of the most major changes first. Then I’ll go round again, and again, and again, until it is as polished as I can make it. After that, it’s looking for beta readers and implementing their feedback for a final pass. Depending on my budget I might spring again for a professional copy edit like I did with From the Grave of the Gods. That part remains to be seen.