January 2011

To Fans of the Strongbow Saga:

Seasons greetings! The past few months have been very hectic ones for me. HarperCollins, the original publisher of the first three volumes of the Strongbow Saga, took first Dragons from the Sea, then Viking Warrior out of print during the latter half of this year without giving me any prior notice. Ever since I discovered this had happened, I’ve been scrambling to create new editions of both books and make them available again.

New Kindle e-book editions of both books are now available again through Amazon, in the United States as well as overseas, and new paperback editions will be following early in the new year. The links below lead to the pages for the new editions in Amazon’s U.S. and U.K Kindle e-book stores:

The covers for these new editions were designed by Luc Reid, whose website is at http://www.lucreid.com/dbweb. Luc--who is a good friend and has been a part of the Strongbow Saga since its inception, as the first reader of my earliest drafts--applied his mastery of computer programming and graphic design to take my rough ideas and turn them into the wonderfully evocative new covers of these editions.

An added feature in these new editions is maps showing the route of Halfdan's travels during the course of each installment of his story in the Strongbow Saga. During the coming year the maps will also be added to this website, so that readers who already own earlier editions of the books can have access to them, too.

Although I think these recent developments have been very promising overall--Amazon, for example, already seems to be much more effective at making the series available to overseas readers than the original publisher ever was--there has been a temporary downside. Re-editing and re-formatting the books for the new e-book and print editions has been extremely time consuming. As a result, I have had no time to write since early fall. That means the progress of The Beast of Dublin, my current novel-in-progress which is in some ways a prequel to the Strongbow Saga, has been delayed, which in turn has pushed back the date on which I'll be able to start book four of Halfdan's story. I'm very close to having time to begin writing again, though, and will periodically post reports on my progress and projected availability of both books.

Warmest regards,