February 2026,

So this is where I will be putting updates on my works in progress. I will be aiming for updates every two months. At the moment I have three different books in the Hollow Wild Series in progress. They are all at different stages:

Book 1: Gods of the Hollow Wild: this is with my editors at Tor UK and Text Publishing Australia. They will be sending it back to me in a few months so I can do the next round of edits in time for the advance reader copies to come out in about July. After that, it will be the final run towards February 2027 when it’ll be out in every shop in the universe! It’s sitting on about 265000 words. Which is just a touch over the original 150000 words my publisher originally agreed to. But we all agree it’s hardly noticeable when you look at it from the front.

Book 2: The Secret in the Blood: I have written a second draft of this. It’s sitting on 250000 words. It’s coming out in February 2028, by which stage I will have written my third draft and probably made it a little bigger. But not in a noticeable way. From the front.

Book 3: The Return of Memory: I am working on this until I get Gods of the Hollow Wild back for the next round of edits. So far I am about 22000 words in on the first draft. I know all the major beats and have loads of notes but there’s still so much planning happening with this one. The gods are in the detail, so to speak. I’m super excited about what I’ve got down so far and all the different places I’m going to take things. I have the next couple of months to see how far I can get—after that I won’t be returning to it until I have that third draft of Book 2 nailed down.

Apart from that just waiting to find out more about my cover. I’ve seen the cover brief (what my publishers want the illustrator put on the cover) and I am beyond excited to catch my first glimpse of what the illustrator will come up with!

Another update in two months!

Michael