After John C. Wright, author of The Golden Age & The Phoenix Exultant, commented on my brief review, he and I exchanged a few emails. I thought other fans of his work would like to read the information and news. With permission, I quote from our emails.

I wrote:

Thanks for posting on my web site. I usually write brief reviews of the books I read, but this is the first time an author has commented. Last night I posted my brief review of The Phoenix Exultant.

I finished the book this weekend sitting outside keeping an eye on my daughters playing in the pool. As I turned to the last page and realized that you once again left me in a cliff hanger, I loudly said, 'Damn!' My daughters looked up concerned and I had to reassure them it was a good damn and not a bad damn.

I hope your books get the recognition they deserve and the sales roll in, prompting you to write many, many more books.

Mr. Wright replied:

My dear Mr. Pusateri, naturally, I am dismayed that any exclaimation caused by my cliffhangers startled your daughters!

Allow me to shift the blame to my publishers: I wrote and submitted GOLDEN AGE as one manuscript, but my editors (wisely, I think), decided no reader would pay forty dollars for one monstrously thick novel from an unknown author, but might buy the same tale in two or three slimmer volumes.

The original plan had been to break the story into two volumes, not three, and so the author's note at the end of GOLDEN AGE, promsing that the story would be "concluded" in PHOENIX EXULTANT, went to print before the decision was made further to separate PHOENIX EXULTANT into two volumes, and the promise was made false.

However, the end the story is written, and I sent off the final galley proofs yesterday, so even if I am run over by a street-car, you will still find out how the tale concludes.

Last I heard, the planned release date for GOLDEN TRANSCENDENCE is November of this year, not March of 2004.

I also wrote and sold a fantastic novel set in the modern day, LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS; I am told my publisher has also decided to buy ORPHANS OF CHAOS, a tale about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. If all goes well, over the next two years, these books may grace the bookstores to tempt any future readers who may be amused by my humble works. These are both fantastic books (and may not sell as well as science-fiction), but I am writing another SF space opera even now, a tale of war and intrigue set among several very alien species, set in the same background as two of my short stories.

Rest assured that I intend to write many books, whether the sales are generous or niggerdly; but my creditors, and my beloved wife, would prefer the sales be generous. Thank you again for your encouraging words.

Yours, John C. Wright

From what I can tell you can pre-order The Golden Transcendance. I don't think that The Last Guardian of Everness or Orphans of Chaos are available anywhere to pre-order yet. The publisher, Tor Books, doesn't have any info. Perhaps a phone call is in order.