Roughly four years ago I wrote a story called “Isabel and the Elf Knight” for an anthology based on Child ballads that never happened. I liked the story and wanted to do something with it. At the time I’d never been published, and had absolutely no idea how to go about doing that, but I had been playing this game on Livejournal called LJ Idol so I knew a fairly large number of amateur writers of very good quality. My story was a bit noir, so I put out a call to my writer friends for other fantasy noir stories. Then I thought, hey, I guess I need a Press name if we’re going to do this. Got together with one of those writers (Dominica Malcolm), and Solarwyrm Press was born. We published Fae Fatales, made a buttload of mistakes, hopefully learned from them, and went on to put out several other anthologies and a two-monthly journal of fiction and poetry.

Solarwyrm has been in existence now for about four years, give or take, and it has been quite a ride. In about mid 2014, I began to become very conscious that I really had just been making it up as I went along, and that there were a bunch of things I knew I’d done wrong with my first couple of books. I began to wonder what else I was doing wrong. So I decided to do a diploma in publishing to find out. My goal was to identify the gaps in my knowledge and fill them.

I spent last year doing that, only to find by the end of the year that what I now wanted to be doing was well out of the scope of what we’d set up to do with Solarwyrm. Dominica and I had a number of conversations about maybe taking it in new directions, but eventually came to the conclusion that actually we wanted very different things now. I wanted to do something quite new. That new and different thing is currently very much in the works, and I hope to be telling you about it soon.

In the meantime though, I have to announce that I am leaving Solarwyrm. I’ll be taking my own books (including Latchkey Tales) out of print, and redesigning and rereleasing them over the next few months. They will be available for purchase until the end of next week – so if you still want them in their current Solarwyrm format, now is the time to buy them! Dominica will continue to fly the Solarwyrm flag and keep the Press alive. I will be lending all my weight to support her in everything she does with it. I also encourage you to continue to support Dominica with whatever happens next for her and Solarwyrm.

I am a great believer in Indie publishing and in the crowd we create when we work together instead of being competitive. If you’re reading this, you’re part of that. Solarwyrm wouldn’t exist without you, and I thank you so much for your support over the years and really hope you will continue to support Solarwyrm.

But for me, the Solarwyrm journey is over, except as a patron and reader, and I’m in the process of setting up the Next Big Thing for Jax. It’s going to be amazing. If you want to keep up with my new projects – and I really hope you will – keep an eye on my blog, follow me on Twitter or Facebook, and stay in touch. Exciting times!