We never rest here at the book factory.

This bad boy will drop in January.

I like this Northrop Grumman drone for WW 3.1. It sounds a lot like the original Big Eye series from Weapons of Choice.

The flying-wing design incorporates twin counter-rotating propellers mounted on Tern's nose. The propellers would lift the aircraft, move it into position for horizontal flight, and then operate again vertically upon landing.

The shift to drone technology for ISR mission reflects the Navy's strategy of allowing surface ships to conduct surveillance and targeting missions without the aid of land- or carrier-based patrol aircraft. Tern also is intended to support Marine expeditionary missions using long-range, high-endurance unmanned aircraft.

The Navy envisions deploying Tern on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which have several helicopter pads but no runways. Researchers also are hoping that the program can save money by allowing ships to host the aircraft without any significant modifications.

Just signed a deal to give Audible the rights to do the entire Stalin's Hammer series as an audio book next year.

I'm not sure how long it will take them to produce, but I'm very much looking forward to hearing the finished product.

I've been researching print-on-demand options for the collected series. It looks like I'll go with Amazon's CreateSpace in the US, but with IngramSpark everywhere else.

Doing print-on-demand is hella complicated compared to ebooks. And expensive. These things will retail at the same price as any trade published title. And I'll make less on them than I would on a much cheaper ebook. As soon as you start moving atoms around, the costs pile up.

But there are people who prefer print. I guess we'll see whether they're willing to pay for the preference. My guess is mostly not, but it's worth a look.

At the moment I anticipate an early to mid-December launch for A Girl in Time, and if I can ever get my head around the vagaries of IngramSpark, the hard copy should be available for Xmas too.

I'll release this title everywhere. I experimented with Amazon exclusivity this year, and although it does confer some advantages, I don't think they compensate for the lost readers who just won't come at the Beast of Bezos. I seem to have more of them than usual. (Interesting and possibly related data point - over 60% of subscribers to my bookclub are on iOS).

Anyway, I'll let you know when I hear anything about a release date for the audiobooks.

I won't say his name, in the unlikely event that somebody here hasn't finished reading Paris yet. But everybody else will be aware that somebody is back.

This is something that I've been planning for a while. I killed him off when I was still finding my way through the trenches of novel writing, bombs bursting overhead, no idea where I was meant to be.

There have been other characters, killed in other books, whose loss might've seemed just as cruel and arbitrary, but I would disagree. With those deaths, I knew what I was doing, As much as it hurt, and as much as I missed the characters in later chapters and volumes.

Poor Fifi.

The apparent return of everybody's favourite palooka at the end of Paris, however, raises the question of what he's been up to for the last 10 or 12 years.

I know. Of course I know.

But I am curious to hear everybody else's guesswork.

Spoilers ahoy.

I'm guessing that most people will have their copy by now, and that most of you will have read it. It should be safe to open the sluice gates on the spoilers. We can start with a general discussion below, but I'll add specific topics as people suggest them, or they occur to me.

Before we start, I'd like to thank the Beta readers again. They are a large part of the reason you get such a polished product for an independently published book. The do get early access to the story, but what they read is raw copy, not the highly polished article everyone else receives.

Thanks as well to everybody who has taken the time to drop a review. Early reviews are more important than early sales. They make a huge difference to the visibility of the title in the online stores, especially Amazon.

Paris was a fun book to write. So much fun that it restored my interest in the whole series. As soon I've finished the manuscript I'm currently working on (A Girl in Time) I'll be swinging right into World War 3.1, using all of the material generated in the two discussion threads we've had so far. I'm really looking forward to engaging with the story in a proper longform novel again.

I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Paris so much, and why a few readers have commented that it is the strongest title in the series, is because of the care I took in the planning stage. I spent a couple of weeks plotting this book out, and a couple of months before that doing some heavy research into story structure. It would all be a bit Inside Sports Ball to get into here, but I may take some time in the future to explain that process.

It was good to get back with old friends like Halabi and Kolhammer. And of course the only guilty pleasure more pleasurable and guilty than writing as The Dave, is writing in the sexy, sexy POV of Slim Jim Davidson.

We'll be seeing a lot more of them all.

For now, however, beware.

Spoilers follow.

Stalin's Hammer: Paris is out. Everyone who signed up to the bookclub early via the blog – which is most of you reading this – will have received your email on Friday, quietly letting you know the book was available at a much reduced price. That's called a soft launch. It allows me to reward those who most deserve rewarding, but also to stock up the ammo locker for the marketing blitzkrieg which is about to commence.

Thanks to everybody who's dropped a review so far. I've read them all and I am chuffed. I'll try and email a thank you note to everybody who identified themselves in their review. The reviews really are that important. They make the difference between being in this business and re-opening my old crystal meth lab.

I'll be emailing the rest of the list over the next couple of days, and they also get their own discount. By the end of the week the book will go up to its full price of US $2.99. I could make more money by just charging the full whack from day one, but I figure there has to be reciprocal benefit to collecting people's emails. The ability to talk directly to readers is such a huge benefit to me, it's only fair I give something back.

This was a lesson hard learned in the trench warfare of trade publishing where your say in the marketing and publicity ranges from zero to a little less than zero.

I'll open up a spoiler thread for Paris later this week, to give everyone time to read the book.

But right now, I got some books to sell. And so do you. Tweets, Facebook, Amazon reviews. They're all good.