February Part TWO
RETURN TO FOREVER
Your inbox is not playing some kind of funky trick - this is, in fact, the second update I'm sending out this month. If you missed the first, check your inbox or click this link (but make sure to come back here after!)
This one's mostly about THE ENDLESS VESSEL, my next novel, out JUNE 6, 2023. There's a lot going on with this one, and today's big news here is the announcement of one of the things I'm doing for those brilliant readers who order the book ahead of time - aka the pre-order bonus. I love this kind of thing; I did special stuff for my kind, noble pre-orderers for both THE ORACLE YEAR and ANYONE, and for the new one I'm going all out. If you want to go big on this book, and get a truly robust experience with all kinds of things to dig into... you'll get to.
IT'S THE JOURNEY
THE ENDLESS VESSEL opens up a huge world - it's (in part) about a ship that's been voyaging non-stop for two hundred and fifty years, filled with brilliant people and all the brilliant things they devise. That gave me lots of ways to make things exciting for those of you who want to really dig into the story in a fun, deep way.
In short - I MADE A MAP! Actually, it would be more accurate to say "I commissioned a map." I teamed up with master cartographer and artist Marco Bernardini who, has created a truly astonishing map that tracks the journey of the "endless vessel" in the story. It's designed as a period-accurate artifact, begun in the early 19th century and updated as the ship travels from here to there and has incredible adventures. It's full of easter eggs for the novel, and a truly intense, wonderful level of detail. What Marco did here exceeded my hopes and expectations by many orders of magnitude.
There will be a few ways to get a copy of this beautiful artifact. The first is pretty straightforward. If you pre-order the book using any of the methods below, and send us your proof of purchase, name and mailing address to this email address, you'll get a page-sized version of the map (around 6x9, I think, though the dimensions are being locked down), signed by me, free of charge! This is just a thank you for jumping on the book early.
You will also have an opportunity to get a larger, more, uh, "map-like" version of this thing, with all the incredible detail crisp and clear, suitable for framing. That will probably have to wait for the next update.
Here are some zoomed in screenshots of the map, showing the incredible detail and care that Marco has put into this. We will be doing a full reveal soon, so keep an eye on your inbox!
Beyond the map, I've been working for a while on another project tied directly into The Endless Vessel. I can't announce it just yet, but if you're at all excited for this story, and like when novels go beyond the book itself, keep an eye on this space. March will be a very fun (and busy) month.
AND YET HELL STILL REMAINS UNPAID...
In case you missed the last update, Hell To Pay is coming to a screen near you (along with the other six stories that comprise The Shrouded College, a big, interconnected set of graphic novels I'm building with my good friend Will Sliney!)
If you're looking to catch up on the series, I have every single issue and variant of HELL TO PAY up on my site right now - Issues 1-3. Issue 4 will be out in April, and then I believe 5 is late May and 6 is in June. And after that, it's the second series, THE BLOODY DOZEN, which you'll hear more about soon. Hit the link below if you're interested in any HELL TO PAY you might have missed.
As a lot of you already know, Will and I had been teasing that the individually numbered, limited edition of six hundred and sixty-six Hellcoins would be "spendable." Most of them are long gone, since we sent them out alongside a cool variant of the first issue as an incentive for people to check out the book, but the ones we have left are available here. I included a rundown on how you can spend your coins in issue 3 of Hell To Pay, but in case you missed it...
If you see Will Sliney or myself at a convention, you can trade your coin for a roll of a six-sided die. If you roll a 1, you get a beautiful custom sketch drawn by Will and dialogued by me, worth more than what you paid for the coin - it’ll be a really nice piece, or a 1/1 artist proof of a page from the book. If you roll a 2 through 5, you get your coin back and you can never spend it again. But if you roll a six… you lose your coin. Talk about a Devil's Bargain, eh?
#HotMetalSummer
Because it is nearly impossible for me to send out an update lacking Star Wars updates - check out this teaser image for the big Summer 2023 Star Wars event. I'm writing it, but it will touch on all the main line titles in Marvel's Star Wars comics line. This is a big one, connecting many storytelling elements we've been playing with since this version of the line debuted over three years ago. It's dark, I'd say - very tonally intense. I've written a LOT of Star Wars over the years, and wanted to try something different here. I can't wait to see what folks think.
AND...
There's more - there's always more. Just this past week: I went to Seattle to attend Winter Institute, a very cool conference for indie bookstore owners, where I talked up ENDLESS VESSEL to the people who will hopefully talk it up to you come June. (Here is a photo of me doing that which I stole from a nice indie bookseller's Instagram account - you rock @belcantobooks and I feel bad for stealing your awesome photo!)
I caught up with Ryan Browne briefly in Chicago, where we schemed about genies and other goofy stories to come. I realized that I'm almost certainly going to San Diego Comicon this summer for the first time in four years. I saw (and enthusiastically approved) this year's version of the High Republic pin I'll be giving away to THR cosplayers I see in London at Star Wars Celebration in August. I exist in a constant state of excitation/exhaustion these days - but I would not trade it.
See you soon. March has some huge stuff on the way.
--Charles