The numbered edition can still be pre-ordered at Grim Oak.
It will have a dust jacket:
A design on the hardcover (a rough here):
And 9 pieces of interior art (3 shown):
Wednesday, 20 July 2016
The omnibus is one stop away!
The signature pages have been signed by me and the graphic designer, Nate Taylor. They're now with artist Jason Chan. The layout is nearly complete, and should be with the printers soon!
The numbered edition can still be pre-ordered at Grim Oak.
It will have a dust jacket:
A design on the hardcover (a rough here):
And 9 pieces of interior art (3 shown):
The numbered edition can still be pre-ordered at Grim Oak.
It will have a dust jacket:
A design on the hardcover (a rough here):
And 9 pieces of interior art (3 shown):
The omnibus is one stop away!
The signature pages have been signed by me and the graphic designer, Nate Taylor. They're now with artist Jason Chan. The layout is nearly complete, and should be with the printers soon!
The numbered edition can still be pre-ordered at Grim Oak.
It will have a dust jacket:
A design on the hardcover (a rough here):
And 9 pieces of interior art (3 shown):
The numbered edition can still be pre-ordered at Grim Oak.
It will have a dust jacket:
A design on the hardcover (a rough here):
And 9 pieces of interior art (3 shown):
Monday, 18 July 2016
Moving on.
Conventional wisdom ... conventional commercial wisdom ... is that in the business of writing, when you have a good thing, stick to it.
It is enormously difficult to break big in the business of book selling. As an author, if you have a character or world that sells ... you stick to them like glue (I save my good similes for the books).
This is in no small part why we often have fantasy series spanning 10 or 20 ... sometimes 50 novels.
It's not a bad thing. I've read as many as 7 books focused on the same character and enjoyed them.
However, when it comes to writing I like variety. In the Broken Empire trilogy I wrote about Jorg, a dark, intense, fearless and violent young man. In the Red Queen's war the main character, Jalan, is a coward with a short attention span and little ambition. Those books allowed for a lot more humour than the previous trilogy.
Even with the following wind of a successful first series it's no small thing to carry your readership with you to follow an entirely new character. The Red Queen's War is higher rated on Goodreads than The Broken Empire, but many of the readers who came to it open their reviews with the complaint that "he's not Jorg!". I understand the psychology behind that reaction, but at the same time I have to point out that those same readers don't open any other author's books with the complaint "he's not Jorg!" We are, to some degree, programmed by publishing to expect the same thing from any given author. This is partly because that's what publishing generally wants and gets. Publishing is increasingly a numbers game where the goal is to minimize risk. Risk is minimized by repetition. More of the same is very appealing when that 'same' includes profit.
So I count myself lucky to have publishers who have been willing to let me jump the rails.
And now The Red Queen's War is concluded, what next? Many readers will hope for more from the surviving characters, or more of the Broken Empire's world, or both.
I'm certainly not saying that I won't ever return to those shores or follow the adventures of a favorite character from the previous stories (major or minor). But, just as I didn't want to be bound to Jorg Ancrath for the whole of my writing life (I could be finishing of book 9 of Jorg's saga right now and I'd likely have a healthier bank balance because of it), I also didn't want to be bound exclusively to the world and magics of the Broken Empire.
So, I was very glad when both Ace and Voyager wanted to publish Red Sister and the rest of the trilogy I had started on, (series title: Book of the Ancestor).
We have a new world, a new protagonist, and once again I face the challenge of bringing my readers with me while attracting new ones. And yes, there is no Jorg, there's no Jalan, there's no familiar world. But all these things are also true of every other book not written by Mark Lawrence (of which there are quite a few). And in the plus column, you know you like my writing, and you know I won't keep you waiting. I'm half way through the final book of the trilogy and fully expect to be finished several months before the first book hits the shelves.
After that? I really don't know. I will stare at a wall and see what pops into my head. Everything is on the table.
To conclude: Yes, I would probably sell more books by continuing to turn the handle on the first thing I wrote. No, I'm not doing that. This way lies more fun, more variety, more possibility.
Friday, 8 July 2016
The Gemmell Award shortlists!
I'm very pleased to find The Liar's Key has made the shortlist for the David Gemmell Legend Award.
You can vote again, the 2nd round total adds to the 1st to decide the winner.
Go vote! It just takes 2 clicks, no registration. And the winner gets this...
On the Morningstar Award for best debut I voted for The Vagrant by Peter Newman. The Morningstar winner (Prince of Thorns was shortlisted in 2012 but didn't win) gets this:
And Jason Chan's fine artwork is up for the Ravenheart award for best cover!
The Legend Award shortlist is rather different this year...
Not present are Sanderson and Abercombie (who have featured in 6 and 5 shortlists respectively ... i.e. every time they release a book.) You might call this a good thing for variety, but then again the award is a popularity contest over a particular subset of the readership - i.e. those who can be reached online and persuaded to vote. So the absence of a book with over 23,000 ratings on Goodreads and the presence of a book with fewer than 100 ratings might be considered strange. Particularly when you note that Goodreads ratings are roughly proportional to readers.
However, it's well known that motivating your readership can play a significant role in such votes. The book with 93 ratings is part of the Black Library, Games Workshop's label for Warhammer books. And Warhammer has a huge following. In 2010 a Warhammer book won the Legend Award. That book to this day only has 337 ratings on Goodreads.
The rest of the shortlist has a roughly similar showing on Goodreads (3x ~2000 ratings and 1x ~5000) but given the scale of the books left out by Sanderson, Abercrombie, Hobb (sadly!) and others it's very clear that the result is completely up in the air!
It's worth noting that this year's shortlist has no female authors on it, again. By my count there have been 3 female authors shortlisted over the award's 8 year history.
The answer would seem to be clear enough. If a book with 93 ratings can get voted onto the shortlist then all it would take is for a Robin Hobb or Naomi Novik to mention that the vote is on, tweet the link etc, and they would be right in there. And if they remain too classy to even indirectly toot their own horn ... then if just a faction of those who (justifiably) complain of under-representation in this particular award would take action to get the readers of those authors voting ... again, there would be women on the shortlist in no time.
You can vote again, the 2nd round total adds to the 1st to decide the winner.
Go vote! It just takes 2 clicks, no registration. And the winner gets this...
On the Morningstar Award for best debut I voted for The Vagrant by Peter Newman. The Morningstar winner (Prince of Thorns was shortlisted in 2012 but didn't win) gets this:
And Jason Chan's fine artwork is up for the Ravenheart award for best cover!
The Legend Award shortlist is rather different this year...
Not present are Sanderson and Abercombie (who have featured in 6 and 5 shortlists respectively ... i.e. every time they release a book.) You might call this a good thing for variety, but then again the award is a popularity contest over a particular subset of the readership - i.e. those who can be reached online and persuaded to vote. So the absence of a book with over 23,000 ratings on Goodreads and the presence of a book with fewer than 100 ratings might be considered strange. Particularly when you note that Goodreads ratings are roughly proportional to readers.
However, it's well known that motivating your readership can play a significant role in such votes. The book with 93 ratings is part of the Black Library, Games Workshop's label for Warhammer books. And Warhammer has a huge following. In 2010 a Warhammer book won the Legend Award. That book to this day only has 337 ratings on Goodreads.
The rest of the shortlist has a roughly similar showing on Goodreads (3x ~2000 ratings and 1x ~5000) but given the scale of the books left out by Sanderson, Abercrombie, Hobb (sadly!) and others it's very clear that the result is completely up in the air!
It's worth noting that this year's shortlist has no female authors on it, again. By my count there have been 3 female authors shortlisted over the award's 8 year history.
The answer would seem to be clear enough. If a book with 93 ratings can get voted onto the shortlist then all it would take is for a Robin Hobb or Naomi Novik to mention that the vote is on, tweet the link etc, and they would be right in there. And if they remain too classy to even indirectly toot their own horn ... then if just a faction of those who (justifiably) complain of under-representation in this particular award would take action to get the readers of those authors voting ... again, there would be women on the shortlist in no time.
Good luck to all!
As an afterthought - if no author mentioned the poll then the result would be a rather predictable one largely based on sales numbers. If every author mentioned it then the result would be a rather predictable one largely based on sales numbers. So, actually the degree to which authors engage with the award and make their readers aware it exists, is really what gives the award its character.
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