hrj

No, Mother of Souls comes right after The Mystic Marriage. Writing goals are a tricky thing. Once upon a time, I had a goal that I'd have the manuscript for The Mystic Marriage turned in around the time that Daughter of Mystery came out. I was "late" by over 6 months, and I'd gotten a fair headstart on it during the revisions cycles for DoM. I took a bit of a break after turning in The Mystic Marriage -- spent some time nattering at the plots of the next two books, and wrote a whole slew of short fiction (five pieces, including something almost a novella). Although date-stamps on files indicate that I'd started creating some text (or at least notes) for the first half-dozen chapters of Mother of Souls back in October/November 2014. But I didn't seriously set myself a program of working on it steadily until after The Mystic Marriage was out in April. It is barely possible that Mother of Souls might come out before the end of 2016 if Bella has an available slot at the end of the year and are willing to trust my delivery estimate. (For MM I didn't send in the official proposal until I had a first draft complete because I had no way to know how long it would take.)

The next two books after that should come more quickly as they're planned to be shorter. And somewhere in there will be another piece of short fiction in the series I've come to think of as "The Memoirs of the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac", but although I'll be offering it as a freebie, it can't come out until Floodtide has been published.

So, yeah, it's a bit of a wait for your next Alpennia fix. Eventually I hope to get on a solid one-book-a-year schedule but I'm still finding my rhythm.