April 9, 2015 update: Official release date is announced!!! On Thursday, May 14, Paladin will be available for purchase as an ebook and paperback on Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Mark your calendars!
February 21, 2015 update: Paladin is now available for pre-sale!!! A special limited-edition, HARD COVER, and SIGNED copy can be purchased on my brand spankin' new website:
http://www.sallyslater.com
February 1, 2015 update: Hi guys! I'm on track to publish this spring! Hooray! I'll share more details as soon as I have them. In the meantime, I'm giving away some prizes as part of Wattpad's Annual Wattpad Block Party, including autographed covers of Paladin, and best of all, an advanced reading copy of Paladin (the final, published version). If you want to enter the raffle, click on the external link.
Hello, Paladin Readers!
A lot of you-especially those of you who finished Paladin back in 2013, when I first marked it as completed-are probably wondering where the heck I've been, and what has been taking me so long with my rewrite and sequel. I owe you all an update, and more than that, my gratitude for remaining interested in my story.
If you read the FAQ at the end of the previous chapter, you saw that I was working with a literary agent to write a new and improved version of Paladin. There were flaws in Paladin that made it unpublishable by traditional publishing standards. That meant making big, big changes to the story arc and even to the cast of characters.
Many of you expressed concern about these proposed changes because you said you like Paladin the way it is. You told me you liked the character dynamics, and the current twists and turns.
And I ignored you. I told you I knew better. That the rewrite I was writing would be better.
I wrote 50,000 words of this new version of Paladin, starting several years before the current story up on Wattpad currently begins. I wrote about how Sam spent her time at Haywood, her relationship with her father, went in more depth about why she chose to run away from home, talked about how she ran away from home.
50,000 words, and she hadn't yet met Braeden.
Eventually, I got stuck. I couldn't keep writing. I thought, at first, that it was because I was distracted by life, that writing just wasn't my top priority. In the months that I've been silent on Wattpad, I've found my Braeden. And those of you who have read my article on Huffington Post know that I've been dealing with some other issues that have made writing more challenging.
But I came to a realization: it wasn't that I couldn't write, or that I didn't want to write. I just couldn't write this story. This wasn't my Paladin. This wasn't your Paladin, either. Somewhere along the way, I had lost the heart of the story. You guys were right, and I was wrong.
That isn't to say the story you've read is perfect. Paladin is still flawed, has issues, and needs to be re-written. I'm working on that now-but I'm taking a far less dramatic approach. When I'm done, I want Paladin to still be recognizable-just better written and more complex.
All that said, I decided to part ways with my agent and go the self-publishing route. I'm hoping to wrap up my re-write in the next 1-2 months and self-publish around April. Of course I'll keep you all posted.
And after that, of course, I will finally, finally get started on the Paladin sequel.
Thank you all for your continued support. Paladin is as much your story as it is mine-I never would have written beyond the third chapter if it hadn't been for Wattpad. Love you guys.
--Sally