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Longtime readers know that I have been going on and on about a Arlen novella I wrote called Brayan’s Gold. It was translated into German and published there as part of the German Great Bazaar collection, but here in the US it is being made into a stand-alone small hardcover by Subterranean Press with cover art and interior illustrations by the amazing Lauren K. Cannon (who designed the ward symbols and the Renna painting on the home page of this site, as well as the cover to my first Arlen novella, The Great Bazaar). I have seen the preliminary art, and while it is not complete, I can guarantee it is the same incredible quality as Lauren’s other work.

A lot of readers have been writing to me lately, frustrated by their inability to find an affordable copy of The Great Bazaar, or often a copy at all. As you can see on Amazon, the cheapest copy they have is >$100, and the leatherbound, signed & numbered limited edition is going for >$300. EBay is no better. Even I myself have only a dozen copies, and they are all slated for contest prizes and charity giveaways.

There is a reason for this. There were only about 2300 copies of The Great Bazaar printed, with only 200 of the limited edition. It’s funny, I remember worrying at the time that they wouldn’t all sell, but sell they did. The entire run was almost completely sold in pre-orders, and the rest went just days after the official on-sale date. The price quickly skyrocketed as fans all around the world tried t0 get their hands on a copy.

We’ve had a lot of requests for a reprint, but Subterranean doesn’t tend to work that way, preferring to do a single run of a book and let it remain rare and collectible. Their editions are always durable, beautiful, and worthy of even the most discriminating bookshelf. While the stories contained within will eventually be available digitally and perhaps as part of some future printed collection, odds are the Subterranean edition will not see print again. So if you really want one and can find it, get it while you can.

Based on the success of TGB, Subterranean has increased the print run for Brayan’s Gold, but it is still modest compared to the number of readers out there, with approximately 5,000 of the trade hardcover, and 750 of the leatherbound limited edition. The book became available for pre-order over the weekend, and there have already been so many preorders that the limited edition is close to selling out. It may take a little longer for the trade to sell through, but odds are it will happen well before the pub date of January 2011, so if you are interested in either edition, I would recommend you order sooner rather than later.

You can pre-order Brayan’s Gold from Subterranean’s website here.

I will be posting again probably later today with more information on my upcoming appearances and Worldcon Panels…

Posted on August 19, 2010 at 2:39 pm by PeatB
Filed under Brayan's Gold, Great Bazaar, Sales, Writing
8 Comments »

Hi, this is Peat’s friend and webmaster David here. Over the past few weeks, Peat and I have been working on a prototype version of a forum for this site. We’ve decided that it’s finally ready for beta testers.

What we’re releasing today is an imperfect work, with the idea being for it to be improved upon over the coming days and weeks, in response to your feedback regarding its design and ease of use. You’ll notice, for example, that the private messaging functionality is yet to go live, and that the registration process could be somewhat less clunky. Once you’ve registered, you’ll need to check the email account which you provided during registration for a message which contains your auto-generated password.

So, without further ado, I would like to invite you to check out the forum. Please feel free to post whatever you wish. It would be especially helpful if you could leave us your feedback here, under Forum Feedback.

(Please note that during the development phase, we secretly opened up the site to registered users for the first time. This is why about a half a dozen of you who are WordPress-savvy were able to register. Now that the forum page is no longer password protected, those users should be able to view the forum and sign in with your original login details.)

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

David

Posted on August 12, 2010 at 2:56 am by admin
Filed under Appearances, Australia, Bookplate, Brayan's Gold, Cassie, Contests, Craft, Czech, Desert Spear, Events, Excisions, Fan Art, Fans, France, Germany, Great Bazaar, Hobbit-hole, Interviews, Life, Messenger, Movie, Musings, My Reviews, Netherlands, Pimpage, Poland, Portugal, Reading, Red Sonja, Reviews, Russia, Sales, Tech, The Daylight War, Uncategorized, Warded Art, Warded Man, World Traveler, Writing
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Germany and Poland are at war.

No, it’s not 1939. This current war is about who can be awesomer this week, and the fighting is fierce.

Germany has already racked up an impressive number of points. As I mentioned yesterday, Das Flüstern der Nacht, the German translation of The Desert Spear from publisher Heyne, just went on sale in Deutchland. The title translates as “The Whisper of Night”, and it is surprisingly apt, considering the title and cover were chosen long before anyone at Heyne had read the book, designed more to create a mood than to describe the content.

And yet it works. Throughout the book, the night is calling to Arlen in an insistent voice that only he can hear. I dig it. And the cover art is just gorgeous. I need to find out more about that artist. I can’t make heads or tales of the copyright page in the German edition. I’ll have to ask my editor.

Amazon.de released the book a little early, activating all their pre-orders the week before the official on-sale date, but on the strength of those orders alone, I made it to #40 on the prestigious Der Spiegel Bestseller list, as shown on the German buchreport this morning.

In addition to this, Heyne has created an amazing interactive map, using short video descriptions of the various locations that I recorded on my webcam. The map was put together by designers Andreas Hancock, Herbert Ahnen, and Stephan Kempers and is really awesome.

But Fabryka Slow in Poland is not to be outdone. They too released a book this week, part 2 of  Pustynna Wlócznia, which as I understand it is a pretty straightforward Polish translation of Desert Spear. As with part 1, the Polish edition is illustrated by the amazing Dominik Broniek. More than that, Fabryka Slow is willing to share some of those illustrations online.

I wish illustrations were still en vogue. They can add so much to the reading experience, and I don’t think they limit the reader’s imagination in the least. Take it from a comic book lover. Illustrations are just a springboard for the imagination.

And I really love Dominik’s work. He has a real knack for pulling powerful images from the text and bringing them to life, and his demons kick ass. Don’t believe me? Check this shit out:

Renna’s run through the rising demons:

Mind and Mimic 1:

That coreling ent gonna trouble anyone again:

Mind and Mimic 2:

Rojer in his Cloak of Unsight:

Wonda, Rojer, and Gared:

Staked at dusk:

Plus, Fabryka Slow has their own secret webcam agenda. Shhh!

Who will win out in the end? The week is young…

Posted on August 10, 2010 at 10:35 am by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Desert Spear, Germany, Poland, Sales, Warded Art
20 Comments »

Das Flüstern der Nacht, the German translation of  The Desert Spear, was released today. Amazon has it listed as #1 in Fantasy and #30 in overall books. It climbed as high as #15 over the weekend. In addition to this, based on Amazon orders alone, which activated last week when the book shipped, I made the German Bestseller list, reaching #40 in Der Speigel according to Buchreport!

This is fantastic news, and thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts of Sebastian Pirling, my German editor at Heyne, and Ingrid Herrmann-Nykto, my wonderful and hard-working translator, not to mention my fine German agent at the Fritz Agency.

Heyne made a wonderful web page for the first book, and they are doing no less this time around. A special interactive map will be posted hopefully tomorrow, including video interviews I sent about the various cities and hamlets. I will put up the link as soon as I have it.

Also, this weekend I got a bit drunk…

Posted on August 9, 2010 at 6:39 pm by PeatB
Filed under Appearances, Desert Spear, Events, Germany, Writing
6 Comments »

I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog, but I have a good excuse. I was working on The Daylight War, and for the first time in a good long while, the work has been good.

I think every writer has their ups and downs, times when it feels like the muse is giving us a handjob, and times when she won’t return our calls for weeks. Times when we’re so confident in the story we’re telling that the only limitation is the speed at which we can type, and other times when we stare at the screen for hours, unable to write a single word. Times when we feel like a pro, and times when we feel like a fraud.

I’ve been in one of those downs for a while. I was moving along at a fair clip with new material, and then I hit one chapter that didn’t work. It just felt… wrong. I tried rewriting it several times, changing the events, the POV (Point of View character), everything, trying to find the flaw, to no avail. I was dissatisfied with the results every time, but could never quite put my finger on why. It was like banging my head up against a wall. Finally, I decided to put it aside and switch to an entirely different POV character in another location, so I could give myself a break from the problem.

But there were too many to choose from. My stepsheet for the book included notes for twelve separate POVs, all of them characters I was eager to explore in depth. It was far too much for one book if I wanted to keep it under 1000 pages. I was succumbing to Mission Creep, as my buddy Myke called it. However well intentioned it was for me to want to get in the head of every interesting character, the series would buckle under the weight of them. I think all of us who read epic fantasy can think of examples where this has happened. I don’t want to do that.

So I cut. I cut a whole storyline about Ragen & Elissa. I cut the POV’s I was planning for Prince Thamos and Amanvah. I cut an entire new character called Mudboy (along with 10,000 words of prose) out of the story. I pushed Selia the Barren’s POV into the next book. I hacked and slashed the stepsheet until the number of perspectives was one that kept the story tense and moving forward with a decisive pace. The end result is MUCH stronger and more streamlined. Much more… epic.

I went back to the trouble chapter, and kicked its ass. Starting this week, it’s full steam ahead for as long as the muse is feeling frisky.

I’m keeping all the notes on the cut POV’s, though. Some of them are great stories in their own right, and might one day become their own standalone novellas like The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold. The Mudboy storyline most certainly will.

Before I disappear back down the rabbit hole to work some more, I want to remind everyone of some upcoming events. I’ll be traveling a lot in the coming months.

Conventions & Signings

First up is my August 29, 2010 signing in Burbank, California signing at the Dark Delicacies bookstore, at 2pm. If you’re in SoCal and want to show some love, it would mean a lot to me if you stopped by. I’ll be signing books and taking questions on everything from writing to Krasian politics to how cute my baby is (baby not included). Possibly a reading. Free bookplates, too!

After the DarkDel signing, I am flying out of LA to attend Worldcon in Melbourne, Australia (Sept. 2-6, 2010). It will be my first-ever Worldcon, but I am told it tends to be a huge event, and attendance is often a veritable who’s who of the SF industry. A lot of my readers down under have contacted to let me know I’ll get to meet them there, and I am thrilled for that.

If you’re in the greater Melbourne area and big conventions are not your thing, consider attending my signing at Dymocks Southland in Cheltenham Thursday 2nd September 2010 at noon. The signing is officially set to end at 1pm, but I will not be in any hurry to leave, and will make sure everyone gets their books signed and questions answered. I also may be accompanied by another author, this one more beautiful, talented and fabulous than I. Stay tuned on that front.

The last of my store signings will be in Sydney at the famous Galaxy Bookshop Wednesday September 8, 2010 at 5:30 pm. As with the Melbourne signing, I will stay as long as there are folks to talk to, and probably adjourn to a local bar soon after.

If you can’t make it to one of the signings, but would still like a signed book, consider pre-ordering one from the store closest to you for me to sign while I am there. Most stores will happily facilitate this, sending you the signed book after my visit. You can even request personalization. I will happily dedicate the books any way you like, and include bookplates (while supplies last).  While it’s often cheaper and easier to order books from big online retailers, it is the live, brick and mortar bookstores that make author events like this possible. They are a valuable part of our communities and deserve our support.

Dark Delicacies
3512 W. Magnolia Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91505
U.S.A.
818-556-6660
1-888-DARKDEL
darkdel@darkdel.com

Dymocks Southland
3067/8 Westfield Southland Shopping Centre
1239 Nepean Highway
Cheltenham 3192
Phone:(03) 9584 1245
Fax:(03) 9584 7985
southland@dymocks.com.au

Galaxy Books
143 York Street
SYDNEY NSW 2000
T) 02 9267 7222

After that, it’s time to think NY ComicCon, Oct. 8-10, 2010. You may recall that at last year’s con, some 40,000 name badges were the cover of The Warded Man. It was the coolest con ever.

I expect this year to be even better. Plus Stan Lee will be there.

October 2010 is also World Fantasy in Columbus, OH, followed in November 2010 by Forum Fantastico in Lisbon, Portugal. I’m taking a break in December, and then attending ConFusion in Detroit in January 2011 where I will be signing copies of Brayan’s Gold.

Posted on August 8, 2010 at 10:32 pm by PeatB
Filed under Appearances, Australia, Brayan's Gold, Events, Fans, Sales, The Daylight War, World Traveler, Writing
52 Comments »