In another instance where fans come up with some fantastic stuff, Peat got this great email from Rui in Portugal.
Hello Peat,
First of all congratulations on some excellent books, I really enjoyed all.
When I was reading the books, the Sharik Hora temple reminded me of a chapel in the city of Evora in Portugal.
It’s called the bone chapel and the inside of the chapel is ‘paved’ (for lack of a better word) with real human bones.
I have collected from the Internet some photos were you can see what I mean.
In the chapel entrance there is a phrase that states “Nos Ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos” (“We bones, lying here bare, are awaiting yours”) … :))
Note: none of the photos are mine, and none of the links as anything to do with me, I just did a search and found them.
Rui also included some great pictures including these:
This chapel really is just like the Sharik Hora though originally Peat was actually inspired by the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora. This one is in the Czech Republic instead of Portugal.
Peat originally heard about this “Church of Bones” from a friend.
The differences between the two are quite interesting: the Capela Dos Ossos was created by a priest to show how brief life is, but the Sedlec Ossuary was created for more of a practical reason; in the 1200s a priest brought back some dirt from Golgotha, which made it “Holy Soil”. He then spread it on the grounds and then everyone wanted to be buried there. However, at some point they needed to build over the old (and now extremely large) cemetery, which left them with the problem of a very crowded cemetery that needed to be moved. What exactly do you do with all of the bones?
Well, they decided to hire a woodworker who would arrange all of the bones into this chapel including the chandelier above and this huge coat of arms below.
Who would’ve thought making buildings out of bones would be such a “common” thing to do. Does anyone else know of another building like it?
You can read up on the Sedlec Ossuary hereand here. And of course, do a standard Google Image search for both of these comes up with some fantastic results.
Peat just told me he’s been making a “shitload” of progress on the Daylight War recently so he hasn’t been able to post much, so I’m posting instead. I’m sure you’ll all prefer that and add your own “Write! Write like the wind!” comments as well. To tide you over until he finishes the book, here are some great stuff from the PVB world.
As you may remember from this post, Voyager is doing a big campaign in the UK with the slogan “Read Brett yet?”. They did a great post about the campaign here. Perhaps one of the coolest things about this campaign for The Desert Spear is that Waterstones is including a belly-banded version of it that includes a booklet of The Great Bazaar. This is quite special since The Great Bazaar hasn’t been published in the UK before. You can see it here. It’s the pages that seem to be facing the wrong way. (It’s not, I promise!)
You can see posters at major underground tube stops all over London for it. This one was at the Moorgate station, but posters have been sighted at South Kensington and others.
You can find Peat quoted in this cool article from Salon.com. It talks about older guys who are going back to Dungeons & Dragons after many years and Peat talks about how D&D helped him become a better writer. Sadly, it does make me a little envious as I’m not an older man who is returning to an old past time…it does really make me want to find a new D&D group though.
I’m not sure why the internet has gotten so violent recently; we had the cage match with Arlen and Peat himself is getting in on some Battle Royale action at Fantasy Faction. Fantasy Faction is a message board so feel free to chime in yourself.
Peat also did a great interview at SFSignal. It’s pretty long, covering tons of stuff like why he isn’t called Peter VD Brett, the ever lovely Cassie, his awesome friends, his upcoming Red Sonja comic, as well as the Daylight War (everyone wants to know about that, right?), the Warded Man movie (and leading from that superhero and fantasy movies in general), and why you should read epic fantasy series even though they’re not finished yet (I’m looking at you Game of Thrones). It’s a really fun and informative interview.
SF Signal also did another interview with Peat about music here. It’s a cool interview and really can tell you a lot about his working style, because as he says, he listens to music constantly while working (which I can vouch for), and I’m going to add that his music collection is huge, so he knows what he’s talking about (and that’s not just me being nice to my boss!;)).
Peat is nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy for Desert Spear! He’s already on the short list, and so you can now vote for him by going here. It will only take about 10 seconds so you don’t have to do a long form or anything.
You may remember Birte from this post. She had written two music compositions based off of the books and she even made cover art!
Someone else has also taken the same vein; Agnieszka wrote a composition for the Desert Spear as well.
A while ago, Pat Rothfuss was doing a book signing tour and was in the city along with little baby Oot! Of course Peat had to go, but he didn’t want to stand in line for hours with little Cassie, so I held a spot for him. Here is is an adorable picture of Cassie with Pat Rothfuss. Cassie is pretty cute too. 😉
You may remember Marken as the cool guy who made the Thesan Wiki. We did a post about it here. Well, apparently he is a man of many talents; he’s created a comic of The Warded Man. Here is his first strip, and it starts off with a bang… if you could call it that.
Here is his sketch of young Arlen by himself.
Also in the news, the rights to The Desert Spear have been sold to Varrak in Estonia. You may remember the Estonian cover of The Painted Manwhich is really different from all the other versions.
The pencils and edits are done for Red Sonja Blue and they look fantastic. Right now Peat is waiting on the coloring and lettering to be finished. It will be coming out in late June and it’s going to be awesome!
They have made the first few copies of L’Or de Brayan. I’m sure that when you take a look at it you’re going to gasp like I did. It’s absolutely fantastic and I’ve decided that I need to learn French.
Eliamyrh posted this great drawing of Renna on Deviantart.
Peat’s French publisher Bragelonne is doing a really fun event while he’s in France for Imaginales. They’re hosting a party with him and Trudy Canavan. You can find the information here. The English translation is here. All you have to do is email them saying you would like to attend. It is first come first served so you might want to hurry.
Angela Asaleem, a writer, has featured Peat on her website and listed him as one of her favorite authors. You can see it here.
Thanks to Marken, Thesa has it’s own wiki. As you can imagine, he has put a tremendous amount of work into it. You can find entries on characters, places, races, objects and almost anything else you would want to know. Don’t remember the name of the Duke of Miln? Just look it up. Or, as is the case with me, you go looking for one thing and spend a couple of hours wandering around the other pages. The address is http://thedemoncycle.wikia.com/wiki/The_Thesan_Wiki .
Of course, this is a wiki and because of that you (yes, you!) can contribute as well. Some of the entries are a little bare so both Peat and I will be adding content. But if you think that your favorite character isn’t getting a fair shake, feel free to add some content yourself. It’s really easy; you just pick an entry, say Inevera, click edit, and add some information (or you change something that you know to be wrong). You have the option to create an account (so that you can show others how awesome you are at writing entries), or you can just edit without signing in. I guess it depends on your level of laziness that day. (Sadly, my laziness has been winning, but I will defeat it soon and create a username.)
A couple of weeks ago we received a fantastic email from a fan that just had to be shared with everyone. Luis immediately recognized a similarity that he had with one of the characters from the Demon Cycle. You’ll be able to see the resemblance at the bottom of the post.
Dear Peter,
My hand is like Rojer’s! Normally I don’t disturb my favorite authors with e-mails but I thought the similarity was too much of a coincidence to let it pass and maybe you’d be interested. I’ve attached a couple of pictures of my right hand—missing its index and middle fingers—wondering if maybe that’s how you imagined Rojer’s hand (darn, I even have a scar on the same spot where Rojer’s fingers were devoured!)
I don’t play a fiddle, but I do sometimes have the same feeling that Rojer does: that some instruments (e.g. scissors) become an extension of my arm, which would otherwise be hindered if my hand was complete. The only difference is that I do not consider it a “crippled” hand.
If you are by now wondering, this lack of fingers was not due to some Coreling attack 😉 or to an accident of any sort; it was a birth condition called Oligodactyly. If you look closely on the picture with my face, I’m covering my mouth with my left, where I’m missing my middle finger. Those scars were product of a surgery from when I was a baby, supposedly to make the grip stronger, but or course, I don’t remember any of this.
Going on with the coincidences, I have a trip planned to Paris on the exact same dates of Les Imaginales, I didn’t know that it existed, but I might find some time to drop by and who knows, maybe I’ll even bump into a copy of “L’Or de Brayan”.
On April 28, The Desert Spear will go on sale in paperback in the UK, and I’m pretty damn psyched about it for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the excerpt from The Daylight War which will see print for the first time in this edition.
But that’s not all, no sir. Because the awesome folks at Voyager put together a heck of an ad campaign to go with it, and I am really psyched about that.
First off, those of you looking to read The Great Bazaar but unable to afford the super-rare printed edition or access the US eBook, fear not! The same day the paperback comes out, The Great Bazaar will go on sale as an eBook from your favorite e-vendor. Next year, TGB will have a printed edition in the UK as well.
Second, from April 25-May 9, this AWESOME WH Smith poster will grace major station stops all over London:
I am kind of annoyed I won’t be in London to see it in person. If any of you UK readers out there see one, take a picture for the blog, preferably with yourself in it!
In addition to this unbelievable coolness, there will be bookend-style ads in gaming magazines in May:
Waterstones will be promoting BOTH books in May as well. So much awesome I could burst.
