"The Professor and the Siren" Update

I love my alpha readers. They are great. So generous with their time and their story appreciation talents.

But, man. They just shook up my plans for 2017. 

"The Professor and the Siren" was 40k words when it was sent off to Alpha readers, and I knew I needed to add about two more chapters. This would be a very long novella, but still, just a novella. Hitting the February 14, 2017 deadline was always a push, but we were still on track for it.

The good news is that the Alpha readers loooooved the draft. 

The bad news is, there were a couple specific critiques that made me realize the only way to truly do the story justice was to push past the 50k mark and send the story into novel-length territory. 

The good news is that y'all are going to get a much deeper, more fleshed out story, and I think it is going to be well worth waiting for. 

The bad news is, it's not coming in February. (I don't have a release date yet, I need to get the second draft done first.)

This also means that "The Professor and the Siren" will officially become book #2 in "The Song of the Fay" even though the story takes place chronologically prior to the events of "The Mermaid and the Unicorn." In the end, I think this will be a good thing because it will ensure that most readers don't even think of picking up this one first (it would spoil "The Mermaid and the Unicorn" almost completely if they did). It'll be a little unorthodox, but I think it should work out from a narrative standpoint.

It's been a difficult decision to make, in large part because I am so excited about the Scotland book ("The Selkie and the Queen") and I'm dying to work on that, but there is some really important stuff I am writing about in "The Professor and the Siren" and it is worth taking the time to do it right. 

"The Professor and the Siren" will probably still be much shorter than "The Mermaid and the Unicorn", which I hope means that you won't be waiting too long for it.

(Hoping to give "The Mermaid and the Unicorn" as a Christmas gift? The Amazon page features a helpful notice on their product pages, indicating if it will arrive before Christmas. "Mermaid" is printed on demand, which means that it should be safe to order up until Wednesday, depending on how weather affects mail routes.)