What's up with Author? Haven't seen a word in close to 2 months. I'm anxious to try it out.

As the application is still far from ready the discussion takes place in the mailing list "calligra-author". You can subscribe here or read it in the archive.

Right now there is no difference between words and author, but both got some new export filters (epub/mobi). You are welcome to test it and give some feedback. Probably the best way to install calligra-author is to build it from sources: http://community.kde.org/Calligra/Building