You should totally buy it.

It’s no secret that Myke and I have been friends a long time. Heck. I remember back in 1991, when he spelled his name M-i-k-e like a normal person.

Yeah, yeah. Like I should talk…

Anyway, Myke and I have a long history of kicking each other’s asses editorially (and with weapons). I met Myke briefly while we were in High School. It was the early 90′s, and we both had crazy heavy metal hair. We didn’t really become friends until college, where we played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons (For those who speak fluent geek, we played Edition 2.0 which evolved into 2.5, Forgotten Realms setting) together.

I’ve spoken before about how Dungeons & Dragons has made me a better storyteller. I used to run friggin’ EPIC games, where I would take the map of Faerun in the Forgotten Realms, pick a spot that hadn’t been explored in any of the novels or boxed sets, and write up a huge, complex story set in that obscure place. I would create plots, sub-plots, characters, backstories, twists, turns, and emotional motivations.

Then my players, Myke included, would just go in and kill everything. And I would have to toss aside my careful plans and dance like a motherfucker to keep up with them, and more importantly, keep them going in the direction I intended. They would deliberately seek out loopholes in my storytelling and try to game the system, or just ignore the boring “talky” parts and get down to dicing and dividing treasure.

Because there are two parts to storytelling: What you want to say, and what your audience is going to hear. Sadly, the two are almost never the same, and the purpose, after all, is to entertain an audience, yourself included.

A year or so later, Myke ran a game, and I gleefully fucked with his the same damn way.

We were also preparing for the pain of rejection letters by ritualistically hitting each other with bamboo swords:

Fast forward to 1998. I have moved to Brooklyn and he to DC. We don’t talk much anymore. Myke tell me he’s been working on a fantasy novel. I say, “Huh. Me too.” I sent him whatever shit project I was working on at the time, and he sends me the first draft of a book called “Latent”.

It would later be renamed, “Control Point.”

In the ensuing 15 years we have relentlessly broken each other’s books, finding tiny weak spots and driving knives into them, forcing each other to improve our craft and pass the other’s gauntlet. We would cover each other’s work in red ink, and call each other saying, “Nice try. Here are the parts that suck, here’s WHY they suck, and here’s my suggestions on how to fix them.”

So there are a lot of Myke’s ideas in my work. The Krasian Watchers, for instance, are laddermen on his suggestion. There are also a lot of my ideas in Myke’s work. For instance, he wanted to call the water sorcerers in Control Point “aquamancers”. I told him tying them forever to the lamest of all superheroes was a bad idea, and suggested he go with “hydromancers”. True story.

Sometimes, we would argue:

So believe me when I say, I couldn’t be more excited about this launch if it was my own book. Because in some small way, it is.

This is not to say that Myke doesn’t deserve all the credit for how awesome Control Point is. The man works obsessively and ruthlessly to make ever second of his books riveting.

Seriously. Stop reading this and go read his reviews. There’s like a million of them already, and they’re all glowing.

Control Point is a military fantasy story set in an alternate version of our modern world where magic ebbs and wanes over the course of every thousand years, much like the waxing and waning of the moon. When it waxes, people with latent magic ability suddenly manifest incredible powers.

They are then drafted, broken down, and trained to fight America’s enemies in the Supernatural Operations Corps. They’re the lucky ones. Those who manifest prohibited powers like necromancy (zombies) are shot in the head.

Lt. Oscar Britton starts as a ‘normal’ human, serving the army in hunting down magical fugitives. That is, until he manifests a prohibited magic himself, and overnight becomes Public Enemy #1.

The fun starts there, and doesn’t stop till the end.

Oh, and I’ve read the sequel, Fortress Frontier. It is even better.

If you want to hear us discuss writing and our history of alpha reading, you can check out our recent podcast interview with The Functional Nerds.

I realize I’ve been promising this post for a very long time. Frankly, I’ve been putting it off because it was causing me a bit of anxiety. I needed to focus on actually writing the book, rather than writing about the book. Thankfully, Meg has really stepped up and kept the blog running in the meantime, posting all the amazing things people send in.

But it’s the start of a new year, and I want to set the record straight as I move into the home stretch, so let’s get right to it…

Not a Trilogy!

First off, the Demon Cycle is not a trilogy. The third book, The Daylight War, will NOT end the series. It was always intended to be a series of five books. A quintet.

This is a confusing point, though, because the series was widely marketed as a trilogy in the early days. It’s an understandable error that isn’t really anyone’s fault, but one that has caused me an ongoing headache these past years.

When I initially sold The Warded Man to Del Rey, they asked about my plans for sequels. I did a treatment for the series showing the full story arc. That treatment was for five books. I noted that while the arcs for all the main characters would resolve in the fifth book, I might continue to write further stories set in the same world with different characters or at different time periods (like The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold).

But I was also realistic, and at the end of my presentation, I noted that if I HAD to close it out in three books, I theoretically could, but really didn’t wanna.

Del Rey hedged their bets (a totally fair move on their part), offering to buy the first three books and see how it went. Several other markets, like the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Poland, etc., quickly followed suit and bought three books as well.

Happily—and thanks especially to you, my fans—the series took off and I never had to worry about what I might need to do to force the story into three books. However, since the initial contracts in so many countries matched the length of the original Del Rey contract, the book media and some internal marketing teams assumed (not unreasonably) it was to be a trilogy. It was widely reported as such with the viral speed of the internet, and has caused wildfires I’ve been trying to extinguish ever since.

I have since signed contracts in the US and UK for another three full novels after The Daylight War. The first two if these will be the final books of the original quintet. The last will be a standalone novel set in the same world with some shared characters. It is plotted out already and I think it will be a kickass book that will appeal to both fans of the series and new readers.

But even with six books to spread out into, the Demon Cycle has grown with the telling. I don’t think this is a bad thing. However, instead of changing my five book plan, I have started doing some spinoff books for the more standalone storylines. These are not necessary to enjoy the main series, but do expand the world and give insights into the characters and their motivations.

In between writing The Warded Man and The Desert Spear, I wrote a novella for Subterranean Press about Arlen during his pre-warded Messenger days called The Great Bazaar. It was meant to appeal new readers, introducing them to my world, while also giving those who had read Warded Man a great bridge into Desert Spear. It also had some deleted scenes from The Warded Man along with my reflections on the writing process that caused them to be cut, a Krasian dictionary and ward grimoire.

I love that little book. After writing The Desert Spear, I wrote a second novella entitled Brayan’s Gold, gorgeously illustrated by Lauren K Cannon, about Arlen’s first (extremely dangerous) Messenger run. Again it was meant for both fans of the series and new readers.

These novellas have gone on to be translated into German, Polish, and French, most of them released in 2011. All are beautiful, illustrated editions that are a great fix between the novels. The original Subterranean Press books are pretty rare and expensive now, but easily available as eBooks in both the US & UK, and a new UK edition combining them both into one book will be printed this year.

I intend to continue writing one novella between each novel. The next, Mudboy, will have a storyline that introduces a wholly new character. It started as part of Daylight War, but got too big for its britches. It’s already mostly written.

The full Demon Cycle bibliography now looks like this:

Novel Quintet:

Book One: The Warded Man (First published 2008)

Book Two: The Desert Spear (First published 2010)

Book Three: The Daylight War (Forthcoming)

Book Four: The Forest Fortress (Forthcoming, working title subject to change)

Book Five: The Core (Forthcoming, working title subject to change)

These five books will close the storylines for Arlen, Jardir, Rojer, Leesha, Renna, Inevera, Abban, etc.

Standalone Novel:

Book Six: Tibbet’s Brook (Forthcoming, working title subject to change)

This book will mostly be about Selia Barren from Tibbet’s Brook, showing her life story and how it affects her decisions in the present as she contends with corelings, Krasians, and the growing power of Southwatch, all while wrestling the demons of her own past. It is mostly plotted and I am very psyched to write it.

Standalone Novellas:

The Great Bazaar (First Published 2010)

Brayan’s Gold (First Published 2011)

Mudboy (Forthcoming)

Others TBD

Pub Date

The next thing I would like to clarify is the publication date. As of this moment, The Daylight War will probably be out February 4, 2013.

This 2013 date has been rumored for some time, and prompted a lot of “Say it ain’t so!” messages from fans via facebook, twitter, email, and the like. I know it comes from a place of enjoyment for my work, and the VAST majority of messages have had a tone of excitement and exuberance that brings joy to my heart. But on some occasions, the exhortations have been… ruder, implying that I should be doing nothing but sitting chained to my desk cranking out manuscripts.

It is fair for people to be annoyed about the current pub date, as the book was briefly available for pre-order on several major bookseller sites with a release date of Spring of 2012, leading many to set their hopes on that date. The shift of almost a year is a pretty big one. Even now, I say “probably” for the 2013 date because in publishing few things are set in stone. Several countries are trying to coordinate a worldwide release date, and it can be a complex thing.

Especially when the author misses their deadline.

Ahem.

Oh, I have my excuses. Early this year my part-time assistant (deservedly) went on to a full time publishing job, leaving me with a lot of administrative work that ate away at my writing time. Around the same time I also had major shoulder surgery that left my arm in a sling for months. I’m told it went well and I will be back to full strength without pain at some point, but six months out I’m still only at 75%, and prolonged or strenuous use leaves me in a lot of pain.

And I spend a lot of time with my three year old daughter Cassie. I know I could put her in daycare or hire a sitter as many people do, but these years before she starts going to school all the time are precious, and I don’t want her to ever feel like daddy didn’t have time for her. We do arts and crafts and build marble runs and train sets. We practice her reading and watch Pixar movies. We argue about what she wants for dinner, bathtime and bedtime. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

But also, in fairness to me, the deadline was not realistic. When I first sold the books, there was pressure from the publishers to turn in a book every year. At the time, I naively told them I could do that, because even though it took me seven years to write The Warded Man, I did that writing part time. Now I would be full time, and should have the sequel out much more quickly.

Eh. Not so much.

I’ve talked about this before. My writing process is a very slow, meticulous one, and sometimes it requires me to stop and unravel a story knot before I can continue. Whether this method is right for everyone is debatable, but it is what works best for me to deliver a level of quality I am satisfied with. I take a lot of pride in my books, and don’t want to knock them out half-assed. I ended up delivering The Desert Spear close to a year later than originally promised, and The Daylight War has proven to be much the same.

That said, I have gotten my focus back, and am knocking out Daylight War chapters left and right these last few months. I am finishing up chapter 19 out of an estimated 27, and I expect to deliver it to the publishers in the early spring, so they will have plenty of time for editing and making sure everything is ready for the ’13 release while I get a head start on book four.

I am getting faster, I think. Warded Man took me seven years. Desert Spear took three. Daylight War is looking closer to two. I don’t know that I’ll ever do a book a year, but I hope you’ll have a shorter wait for the 4th book than for the 3rd.

I can assure you, though, The Daylight War will be worth the wait. Here are a couple of previews:

First up, the excerpt from Inevera’s storyline that was included with the eBooks and UK paperback of The Desert Spear is now live on the Excisions page! Throughout The Desert Spear, Inevera’s motivations, and what she really saw in the alagai hora she cast, remained a mystery. The Daylight War takes you back into her childhood to see her humble beginnings. Read it here.

Next, my spontaneous reading at NY Comic-Con this year, where I gave a peek into Arlen’s newly leveled up powers, and how he and Renna are getting on after the… incident:

Speaking of Daylight War, I have turned a corner in the writing, switching from Inevera’s story arc, which is more or less done, and on to Leesha and Rojer’s. As I did, I immediately fell back into a comfortable rhythm with the loveable cast of characters around them.

This was a series of tweets I put out the other day which kind of speak for themselves:

No idea how much I’d missed Gared, Wonda, Erny & Elona till I started writing them again. They should have their own sitcom.

Gared enters. [applause] “I just chopped down a dozen trees! With my face!” [Laughter]

Elona: “Your father would have done it with his cock. Isn’t that right, Ernal?” [Laughter/applause]

Erny: “Yes, dear.” [Audience: "Awwww"]

Next week on The Hollowers: Wonda wears a dress to the Solstice dance to impress Callen Cutter. Hilarity ensues.

One more thing to throw on the gigantic pile of fun projects I will never have time for.

Alas.

Speaking of which, I would kind of like to write up the 334 AR International Deliverer Debates:

Ahmann Jadir: “I’d like to take this opportunity to attack Arlen Bales on being a flip-flopper. First he’s for Sharak Ka, the war to end all wars, but then he’s against it. Sure, he calls you greenlanders heroes now, but it wasn’t three years ago he was spitting in the dust and calling you all cowards.”

Arlen Bales: “What my former friend isn’t telling you is that the Damaji are going to raise taxes to support a quagmire ‘Daylight War’, the whole purpose of which is to come and take your spears away. They also want to replace the Herb Gatherer healthcare system our communities depend on with a dama’ting-based “Sharum only” system. It’s bad for our seniors, and bad for Thesa.”

Moderator: “Mr. Bales, some sources are reporting that you lived in Krasia and even attended an Evejan Sharaj for several years. Do you have any comment on this?”

If you enjoyed the interview, check out some of the other awesomeoness Fantasy Faction has under their “Peter V. Brett” article tag.

I know, I know. That makes me seem like a grumpy old man shaking his cane at the world, but it’s really true.

Just discovered a subfolder of my facebook mail called “other”, which has been quietly accruing mail since 2008, unbeknownst to me. Apparently they are messages from pages I have “liked” or ones sent via my author page(s). Just found a crapload of fanmail there, and feel like a total heel that it has gone unanswered. Sigh.

This isn’t the first such occurrence. The same thing happened a couple weeks ago when I logged into goodreads for the first time in a while and discovered a glitch that was holding back a slew of e-mail notifications about fan messages I had received there. Or the once every six months I log into MySpace. Or Deviantart. And hell, I can’t even remember the last time I logged in to LibraryThing or BookArmy. Kinda scared to at this point (update: Bookarmy has apparently since mutated into something called Authonomy). I am pretty good about keeping up with twitter and now google+, and I thought I was decent with facebook, but apparently not.

Social media has become so fractured that it is becoming unwieldy and in many ways defeating its own purpose, which is unity (and as Kaji tells us in the Evejah, “Unity is worth any price in blood.”). Just keeping up with the platforms eats up SO much time that could (and let’s face it, probably SHOULD) be spent writing more books.

Something needs to be done about it. I don’t mind using all these services—any way for me to connect with readers is a wonderful thing I am happy to take advantage of—but I need a single interface for it all, both to send and receive. Whoever invents that app or whatever will be my hero. Otherwise, things will continue to unintentionally get lost in the shuffle, like when I post something to twitterface and forget to put it on google+. Back in the day, the single interface was my email. Then it was this blog, then twitterface, but the advent of so many other forums has changed that, and maybe not for the better. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I need a new assistant to help me keep up. Rebecca was wonderful, but she is now a hotshot at Science Fiction Book Club. I was sorry to see her go, but she, you know, deserves a living wage and health insurance, so I had no choice but to give her the glowing reference she deserved. I need to find someone in or about Brooklyn who can help keep my social net from fracturing further, mail out books and bookplates, run contests, moderate my web forum, update my website and various fan pages, plan my convention travel/calendar, and make sure my wardrobe is appropriately nerd chic.

Been meaning to do a job posting on the appropriate (fractured) employment forums, but… busy.

Got that pesky Daylight War to worry about. I will blog an update on that one of these days.

In the meantime, if you have sent me a message, ever, and not gotten a reply, I am really sorry about that. Honest word.

I consider it one of the great ironies of life that what would have been the greatest gift in the world when I was in High School/College and had endless free time is now a cause of great depression and shame.

Why? Because I want to read every one of them, but now that I’m a grownup with responsibilities, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to read even a fraction.

I feel even guiltier, because a lot of the books are manuscripts for new authors whose initial sales can be dramatically affected by a few kind words from established authors. I remember what that feels like. It wasn’t four years ago I was biting my nails at the thought that Terry friggin’ Brooks might read The Warded Man and blurb it.

So when I get books, I try to take a snapshot of the box and twitterface it, then put the books on my TBR (To Be Read) bookshelf. Whenever I finish a book, I peruse the TBR for what to read next. It’s usually a tough call, as the shelf is always overflowing. Even if I had nothing to do but read through all my waking hours, that pile of books would be daunting. If I were put in prison and told I would not be released from my solitary cell until I had read every one, I would be locked up for months.

Aside: How messed up is it that I might consider that a vacation?

As I have discussed before, writing as a career has made me hypercritical of not just my own work, but that of others’ as well. I used to never leave a book unfinished—as a point of pride if nothing else. Now I do it all the time. If a book doesn’t have a voice that grabs me in the first few pages, I am apt to put it down, sometimes for days or even weeks. If the story doesn’t have me by the balls by page 50, I am out. Even if I keep reading, gods help you if I find flat characters, flaws in your plot, deus ex machina, or inconsistencies in your magic system. I pass on blurbing books more often than not, because I’d rather say nothing than tell my readers I liked a book when I didn’t.

Anyway, a few months ago this book Prince of Thorns (PoT) by Mark Lawrence arrives in the mail from my UK publisher, Voyager. Included is a note from the editor saying how special she thought it was. Most every book comes with such a note, but the tone of this one was different. Voyager usually only chooses one big new author to push each year, and—having been one myself—I can account for their taste.

So I put the book on tier one of my TBR shelf: Books I might actually read in the next six months. There are about ten books on this shelf. I figure there’s a 40% chance I will read it in time to give the hardcover a blurb.

FYI, TBR tier two is books I might read if I get the flu and it’s the closest book I can reach from bed. These fill several shelves. The third tier is books I hope to get around to when I am retired and living in a rest home. Or if that prison thing happens.

About a month later, I was at the Boskone SF convention in Boston and found myself at a dinner with the book’s US editor, Ginjer Buchanan of Ace/Roc. We started having a debate about the use of villains as protagonists, and what authors were doing with that theme. I was generally pro and Ginjer generally con, but said she did support it when done well. She cited PoT as an example.

Where had I heard that name before? Ah, yes. Odds of reading now up to 55%.

But there planes to catch and bills to pay. Stories to write and contests to run. I had surgery and plenty of other stuff to keep me busy over the summer. And let us not forget that A Dance With Dragons was out, and that trumped all other reading commitments, so sorry.

So I gave the book to Rebecca in the interim. That girl reads like three books a week. Her review was somewhat mixed. She said it was well written, but harsh for her taste. That put me off a bit, and I missed the window to blurb the hardcover. I felt kind of bad about that.

Then I went to France for the Imaginales Convention, and had dinner with Trudi Canavan and Robin Hobb (both of whom are wonderful people, by the way. Cassie tested and approved). We’re debating up and coming authors, and what book does Robin start spontaneously raving about? You guessed it. Prince of Thorns.

I kept seeing good things and/or controversy about PoT on the twitterface, too, and everyone loves controversy. Finally I decided to take the arc along with me to Worldcon in Reno, with the intention or reading it by the pool (I am still not comfortable taking an expensive eReader poolside).

Boy, am I glad I did.

Prince of Thorns had me by the balls in the first chapter. I found myself stealing time to read just a page here and a page there, and whenever a rare block of time opened, I commandeered it in the name of PoT. Read the whole book in less than a week. This used to be nothing, I would read two books a week in high school and college, but these days even a standard 300pp paperback can take me weeks to finish. Too much to do. If I’m reading 50+ pages a day, that is a damn good book.

I was immediately pulled into Prince Jorg’s sociopathic little world, fascinated by the flashbacks of his past that hinted at how he became the amoral monster he was. Lawrence’s writing is a wonderful mix of vivid metaphor and tight, economical prose. There are no wasted words, each is beautifully chosen. His world, too, is a wonderful blend of medieval and post-apocalyptic fantasy. Jorg’s interactions with his teachers, foes, mercenary brothers and royal family are fabulously done.

After seeing mixed reviews and controversy, I expected PoT to be a lot more violent and disturbing than it actually was. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. I think my own books are fairly tame compared to what goes on in the really real world, and yet there are plenty of reviewers who would have you think they are one long rape scene. Fool me once, reviewers, shame on you. Fool me twice…

Don’t get me wrong. Lawrence’s Prince Jorg is one delightfully twisted little bastard. But you may find yourself having a little sympathy as you get to know him.

Blink, and you might even find yourself rooting for him to succeed.