Sales of my short stories

Here's one of my trademark wonderful graphics!

Most of the Broken Empire short stories are in Road Brothers. I think the exception are Solomon, Morality Tale, The Bigger Bastard, and Unholy Ghost.

The Red Queen's War stories are in Road Brothers, The Devil You Know collection (A Thousand Years & The Hero of Aral Pass, & The New World).

The Book of the Ancestor short stories are in Tales of Abeth (Bound, The Devil You Know, Thaw)

& The Library Trilogy stories are in Missing Pages (Overdue, Returns, About Pain, Tabula Rasa).

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Line 1s from this year's SPFBO finalists!

This year's SPFBO has produced 10 excellent finalists, and in due course each of the ten blogs will read each of the ten books, producing a champion for us and ranking all the books with a score.

Judgemental? Yes. But that's what draws the eyes that self-published books need if they're to do well.

I thought I would take a look at the first line (or lines) of each of the finalists and give my thoughts on them. Since judgements are what people like, I'm going to order them to find which is my favourite, and then, totally tongue-in-cheek predict the order the blogs will score them based purely on this inadequate assessment.

Last year my choices for 1st, 2nd, & 3rd best opening lines came 3rd, 1st, and 2nd in the contest.

So here they are in the order that their first line captured me (saving the best to last). Just the first line. The second and third etc may redeem or betray the start, but my ranking is based on what leads up to the first period.

Note, that of course while all authors strive to make every line good, a book whose first line, paragraph, or page are not immediately hooking the reader can still sink those hooks to great depth over the long run and prove to be astounding reads.

The reason I focus so much on the opening in my analysis is two-fold:

i) it's easy to do!

ii) modern readers are so easily distracted that grabbing them early can be a very good strategy - too slow and many of them may bail on you. 

Despite my success last year, it is of course, a silly exercise. The authors are at the mercy of grammar among many other factors. Here's how my own debut opens:

“Ravens! Always the ravens. They settled on the gables of the church even before the injured became the dead.”

The first line is "Ravens!". With some judicious commas I might have combined the first 3 sentences into one and at least had some content for such an exercise. But I didn't.

By Blood, By Salt

This is almost weather, and they say (as do I): don't open with the weather. Many writers feel drawn to 'it was a dark and stormy night' but it's a dark and stormy path to take! 'South City' feels generic, but frankly any place name in line 1 is probably ahead of its time. 

The Oathsworn Legacy

Low on content, but it seems to promise a contemplative story, or perhaps one delivered by a narrator who is looking back on a tumultous past.

Runelight

This one is reminiscent of line 1 from The Oathsworn Legacy, though it's shorter and more punchy. Seven decades promises a very old human narrator, or some other race/creature. Still, it's not a lot to work with. It hints at a conflicted, self-critical narrator, which can be interesting.

The Humane Society for Creatures & Cryptids

So, technically, line one is "Damn it!" But I will be merciful. "Coughed" is almost a dialogue tag - "spluttered" could definitely be one. "Damn it!" is dialogue (always good early on) and it carries a sense of urgency/tension. I instantly wonder what the problem is. The place is on fire (shades of the very memorable opener 'The building was on fire and if wasn't my fault.' from Jim Butcher). That's interesting. We have a problem. Problems are great. Our character is in danger but they're being proactive (reaching for the extinguisher). It's a good start.

The Wolf of Withervale

Two similes in line one! But I like them both. Would have put "grass" rather than "grasses". One option with the start of a book is to show off a command of language that promises the reader more to come and displays your literary wares. This does that. 

Gates of Hope

Committing a once immortal race to slow, unstoppable death was never an aspiration of mine, but sometimes we must do what is right, not what is comfortable.

This covers a lot of ground for a single line, and has a number of good points. My own taste is for something personal, and we get that - it's about the first person PoV, revealing some aspect of their character. Moreover we're handed several questions: how is this immortal race to be slowly killed? how is it in the PoV's gift to do so? how is it right? And the structure of the line is nice too. 

Mushroom Blues

“No good day ever started with death before coffee.”

The line carries some humour and gives a feel for what's to come - it's a bold and deliberate opening that doesn't take itself too seriously.

The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage

There's a distance in the two-name introduction, but I do like this line 1. It does what the five line 1s I've read before this one do not do. It prompts questions. Why so long to find? How does she know it's a first draft? What's in it? How did the grandmother die? Questions are good. Obviously we don't need them in line 1, but early on is (I feel) important. You need to make me turn the page.

The Tenacious Tale of Tanna the Tendersword

This feels as if it delivers bags of the oncoming story's character. There's irreverant humour straight off. This Galdifort Quillpen (I excuse the surname as it's informative and also builds his dignity) has an importantish job and now he's on his backside in the mud. The careful choice of words all serves to build and then undermine the character's authority in a very short space.

The 'problem' isn't epic and the questions posed aren't demanding answers, and the prose isn't sublime, but if you're not going the problem or questions or prose route, then giving a strong flavour of the book is another fine choice.

 

By A Silver Thread

This is a hook! It's a short, punchy hook. I have lots of questions. They're nurses, so we immediately suspect that the 'monster' is human. So what makes them a monster? Why are nurses involved at all? What compels them to deal with this monster? What's wrong with the monster? Is it a serial killer in hospital? An actual monster in a fantasy setting. I would read on.

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The Book That Held Her Heart has a cover!

More stunning work from Tom Roberts!

It would be great if you could pre-order it! Ideally from a bookshop - but Amazon links below.

UK

US

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Road Brothers hard copy for America!

Here's me sporting a hardcover and a paper back of Road Brother - the American edition.

These are ARCs (Advance Review/Reader Copies) that Amazon will send an author to check that the end product is satisfactory.

This all happens through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) for authors who are self-publishing something.

I self-publish Road Brothers in the US because it's more profitable for me to do so, and my US publishers have never requested that I let them do it (which is what happened in the UK).

For seven years I just published Road Brothers in kindle format in the US. Formating for paperback and hardcover is a pain in the arse, and I didn't want to learn.

Recently I went through the learning process to publish the collection of Book of the Ancestor short stories, Tales of Abeth. So I thought I'd finally put out hardcopy of Road Brothers. I didn't think there would be a huge demand, but I went for it anyway.

Publishing through KDP is a nightmare. It's very easy to fall into an insanity loop talking to bots that have ridiculous powers to freeze your account and such like.

I submitted the paperback and got an email back saying I needed to prove I had the rights to publish the thing. I responded by noting that they had been publishing exactly the same words in kindle form for seven years and had sold thousands of copies.

A few days later the paperback was released onto the site.

I moved onto the hardcover and got the same email. You can see where we are with that:

The bots want me to produced 14 separate contracts, all a decade or so old, to prove that the anthologies that these stories went into did then release the rights a year or two later.

All while selling the same words in paperback and kindle...

So watch this space, but I absolutely do not have the time to battle through with scans of contracts and shit.

In the meantime, Americans can get the paperback shown. 210 pages of thrills and spills with Jorg and his companions.

And Brits can get the Voyager edition in ebook, paperback or hardback!

Pray for me!

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Bookshop chat & signing!

 https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-john-gwynne-and-mark-lawrence/bath

I don't do signings very often. In large part due to my disabled daughter's health issues. Currently I'm with her in hospital on day 9 of an unscheduled stay.

The only solo signing I've done is for Waterstones in Bristol, on the launch day of Prince of Thorns. Three people came. It was ... somewhat mortifying 😅

Here I am back in 2011, with an impromptu appearance from Stan Lee ... or a body double.

Since then I've signed books at two or three Grim Gatherings, at ComicCon 2023, and at Cymera 2024. That's it ... I think.

At ComicCon & Cymera it was gratifying to have long queues (less so for the folks in them), which I put down to pent up demand, there being quite a lot of Lawrence books out there wanting a signature.

But on a wet (potentially) Wednesday in Bath, as the late addition to John Gwynne's Bath stop, I'll need all the support I can get to avoid looking like Billy No-Mates 😂 So, do stop by with some books for me to sign if you possibly can.

I'm looking forward to meeting John - we've communicated on social media for over a decade, after we were both debut authors back in 2011/12 and both had very disabled daughters. But we've never actually met. So, that will get fixed.

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SPFBOX finalists - SPFBO 10

 300 contestants are being narrowed to 10 finalists for the 10th time!

Finalists for SPFBO 10

The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off finalists are listed and and are being scored on this page.

The process of selection is documented here.

click on any score on the table for the associated review

Scores for the finalists: The Matrix!

	Fantasy-Faction	Fantasy Book Critic	Lynn's Books &  Critiquing Chemist	The Weatherwax Report	Before We Go Blog	Queen's Book Asylum	Philip Chase	Covers With Cassidy	Kitty G Books	Captured in Words
The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage	8*
Mushroom Blues		8*		8.5
By A Silver Thread			8.5*
Runelight				8.5*
Gates of Hope					8*
Wolf of Withervale						7*
The Tenacious Tale of Tanna the Tendersword							8.5*
Oathsworn Legacy		6.5						9*
The Humane Society for Creatures and Cryptids									9*
By Blood, By Salt										8.5*

                   

* = blogger chose this finalist

** = top score blogger awarded

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Booklet of the Ancestor!

UPDATE:  It's live!

UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DF7GTLGC

US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DF7GTLGC

I should really post this next week, but in a desperate attempt to have more than one post a month I'm jumping the gun!

Also, this should make the elite few who actually read my blog get that warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing stuff that others don't.

I've put all three of my Book of the Ancestor short stories into one volume and for the first time I've self-published a paperback!

This was a learning curve but in due course I'm hoping to try a hardback edition, and then, armed with that knowledge, I will do a US paperback & hardcover of Road Brothers, and a paperback & hardcover collection of the three Library Trilogy short stories.

Who knows, I might even find somebody to do a special edition for some of these.

Here's the ARC (Advance Reader Copy) - cover art from Francesca Resta (originally sent to me as reader art!).

The paperback releases on the weekend (31st of August) and the ebook is out already.

The short stories (also available in ebook separately) are:

The Devil You Know (Book of the Ancestor #1.5)

Bound (Book of the Ancestor #2.5)

Thaw (Book of the Ancestor #3.5)

ebook links UK & US

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