The Scourge Maiden Cometh

Can you feel the heat in the air? Is it summer creeping up on us? Or could it be the first trace of a hemorrhagic fever, the likes of which caused untold devastation amid the Red Death? The answer might actually be both, because A Scourge Upon Them, the second volume of the Into Vermilion trilogy, is releasing in just two weeks!

That’s right, after endless delays due to the ongoing global pandemic, A Scourge Upon Them is finally releasing on July 1st! And after spending what felt like a lifetime on the Warren Brood’s second edition, it feels super exciting to finally be letting something brand-new free into the world. This brings me to a second piece of news…

Into Vermilion, Second Edition?

Well, not really “news”, per se. More like “a thing that is happening, newly”.

Due to my (very non-new) relocation from Japan to Sweden, it’s not really feasible to continue using the original lot of ISBN numbers I purchased. The maintenance of the metadata would be a massive ordeal, and that’s if it wasn’t already horribly out of date. So, for sanity and consistency, I am going to be moving over the existing Into Vermilion books to new ISBNs. And this sort of technically puts All Bleeds Through and A Rose to the Torch on a new edition, even though they’ve seen only minor updates since they were originally released. But, if I were to increment the edition numbers of the existing books, that means A Scourge Upon Them would release as First Edition while the prior two would be Second Edition. And I’m just OCD enough that this bugs the shit out of me.

So, rather than bump the edition number for a couple small edits and then forever have the series out of sync, I’m introducing a bit of calendar versioning to ease my madness. In short, All Bleeds Through and A Rose to the Torch will remain “Revised First Edition” in the front matter. In order to differentiate them from the prior release—and to unify the series under a single identifier—they will also gain a version tag beneath the edition, starting with “2022.6 Redribbon“. This way, even if future releases come after significant updates (along the lines of what the Warren Brood trilogy saw), the version tag will identify all books as being part of the same series-level release. Check and mate, OCD!

Friendship with Amazon Ended

Finally, the release of A Scourge Upon Them seemed like a great opportunity to bring the rest of my catalogue to wider distribution. On July 1st, along with A Scourge Upon Them, All Bleeds Through and A Rose to the Torch will be re-launched simultaneously on most platforms where ebooks are sold. As of the time of writing, you should even be able to preorder them on select retailers. Coinciding with this, “2022.6 Redribbon” will be pushed as the primary version on Amazon, meaning no matter where you buy your ebooks, you’ll get the same Into Vermilion experience!

Mark your calendar for July 1st, friends. Whether you’re a returning hemo-hunter or just setting foot into the world of Into Vermilion for the first time, you’ll find something exciting waiting for you.