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So in addition to all the books coming out and various related excitement, there are a few secret projects I’ve been working on in my not-so-copious spare time. Many of these are still simmering on the back-burner,  in need of seasoning or some serious ingredients, but one just rolled off the artist’s board, so I thought I’d share it with everyone.

Last summer, I had this idea. I know there are a lot of readers out there who would love a signed book from me, but aren’t likely to get the chance anytime soon, either because I won’t be visiting their town, or country, or continent, or whatever. Signed books on eBay can get pricey, and mailing me your book so I can sign it and mail it back to you is a pain in the ass for all concerned.

Enter the bookplate. I remember when was a kid, my mom had these bookplates she put in all her books. They were these little vellum pieces of paper with the Latin “ex libris”, meaning “from the library of” that you could stick in your books and sign, so people would know they belonged to you. My mom’s plates looked like this:

I thought about it, and decided to give Lauren Cannon, AKA Navate, Ward Artist extraordinaire, a call and we talked about the project a bit. I wanted something I could personalize and sign, but with a beautiful design as well that spoke of my work. We went back and forth with ideas, and finally settled on something amazing that Lauren brought to life (click image to enlarge):

I love this image of The Warded Man and Twilight Dancer, exploring an ancient ruin of the old world, its wards overgrown and pitted, but still standing. Twilight  Dancer looks kickass, and the Warded Man, even tiny, reflects a determined solitude. There is space for me to write a personal note, or draw a picture, or whatever, in addition to signing.

Now that the design is ready, I will be sending it to the printer next week. Once I have the plates ready, fans will be able to simply e-mail me a request and I will send a plate out to you to adorn your favorite Peter V. Brett book. Or to put in other books, if you want to give them a touch of class. So long as the number of requests isn’t too overwhelming, I hope to be able to offer this going forward, in addition to sending plates to booksellers and giving them out at conventions.

Be on the lookout in the coming months for more awesomeness from Lauren, as well as some other secret projects of mine that I am DYING to share.

2010 is going to be a great year.

Posted on February 6, 2010 at 12:43 am by PeatB
Filed under Bookplate, Fans, Warded Art
24 Comments »

Google alerts sent me a delightful link today, from the Twilight Portugal site. The new Portuguese-language urban fantasy (read: vamp/werewolf soap opera) TV show Lua Vermelha (Red Moon) premiered last night, and featured the Portuguese translation of The Painted Man, O Homem Pintado!

It seems mine is the book of choice for sexy Portuguese vampiresses. You can see a clip here:

Posted on February 1, 2010 at 1:07 pm by PeatB
Filed under Movie, Portugal, Writing
14 Comments »

I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to. Part of this is being super-busy, but another part of it is circumspection, out of a desire not to offer any spoilers about The Great Bazaar or The Desert Spear before people get a chance to read those stories for themselves. In the same vein, work on The Daylight War continues to go really well I think, but it is a lonely kind of well. The working file is now 150 pages long, but I’m not ready to show it to anyone, so I have literally no one to talk to about it. It’s kind of depressing, that I have this thing that consumes half my life that I’m unable to talk to anyone about.

Sometimes I love my job, but sometimes I really hate it, too.

But then I love it again, as my readers continue to bombard me with awesomeness. Last week I mentioned that there would soon be more ARCs of The Desert Spear, and so the DSAC contest would live again. Brendon from New Zealand, a serious contender last time around, submitted this series of pictures:

With the second leg of the DSAC give-away live I thought I’d supplement my earlier entry with some more shots. Rather than more “mountain high” photos this time we’re in “valley low” territory, a place called the Waiohine Gorge. So here are a few photos of myself reading in places of tranquility on the Waiohine Gorge track.

I’m travelling north on holiday soon…there might be more to come 😉

Man, is there a single square mile of New Zealand that isn’t gorgeous? It’s kind of ridiculous. I need to go there sometime before I’m too old and rickety to hike ten miles.

Also, my buddy Myke has always wanted to enter the contest, but his status as a beta-reader disqualifies him. Instead, while on a trip to Germany defending freedom or whatever, he found someone to enter in his stead. In his words:

I visited Stangl & Taubald (Buchhandlung, which I think means bookshop) on 14 Worthstrasse in Weiden in der Operfallz, or just Weiden, as we call the city. The clerk there was a young lady who spoke English. They were sold out of both the print and audio versions of Das Leid der Dunkelheit, but she had heard of it and you and knew that a sequel was coming out soon. She was very excited and said that it was a big fantasy over there. She hadn’t read it yet because she said it was gigantic even by German standards, and I did my best to convince her. I asked her to order me a copy, and hopefully I can find time to swing by and buy it. Otherwise, she said she’d put it on the shelf.

The next day, he wrote again:

I headed back to the Bucher in Weiden to check in with the pretty bookseller there. Her name is Verena, and she’s a HUGE fantasy fan.

She had ordered a copy of Das Leid der Dunkelheit because I asked her to yesterday. I bought it and gave it to her as a gift, but made her promise to read it and (if she liked it, which she assures me she will) to recommend it to customers and to her fantasy reading friends. I also directed her to your website and asked her to contact you when she was done.

Lastly, I photographed her for DSAC, holding the book in front of the fantasy section.

Myke is a prince among men.

Two interesting things about Verena’s store: One is that my friend asked them to order a book, and they had it THE NEXT DAY. Unheard of, in my experience.

Also, if you look behind her, I love that Stan Nichols’ book  Orcs, the only novel I know sympathetic to the plight of those burly older brothers to goblins, translates into German as DIE Orks, the battle cry of just about anyone who’s ever played D&D or read Tolkien.

Translation is fun.

Posted on January 29, 2010 at 6:47 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Musings, The Daylight War, Writing
14 Comments »

If you missed out on the mayhem, I just participated in a Live Chat RPG on Suvudu with authors Ari Marmell, Diana Rowland, Jason Thompson, along with some fans. It was, as you might expect, utterly bizarre. You can click the link and scroll through the chat in its entirety, though it ran in real time from 2-4pm this afternoon.

Right in the middle of the business day.

I was unfamiliar with the rules of the game we were set to play (Skullduggery), or the other players/characters, and in true DM fashion, the King of RPGs waited till the last minute to give us the game info. We spent the first half hour of the chat just trying to work out the logistics of the chat software, and then everyone kind of went off in their own direction. We stumbled with frustrating slowness through the adventure, killing first and asking questions later (sorry about that), and in the end hadn’t accomplished much when we ran out of time. But we laughed. All the players were on a conference call, and we were laughing the whole time. I wish that audio feed had been connected to the chat. It was priceless.

In other words, it was just like every other RPG I ever played.

At one point,I said to Kaitlin Heller, the Del Rey editor hosting the festivities from the Random House offices, “This is your job, Kaitlin. You’re at work.” Everyone laughed uproariously. We all were, really, and took a moment to glory in it.

“Honestly,” Kaitlin pointed out, “work isn’t usually this fun.”

It’s true. It may seem like writing or editing fantasy is a blast, but for a good 10 hours or more a day, you’re really just staring at a screen or keyboard by yourself. Often it’s more like 14 hours a day, and trust me, no one’s in it for the money.

But sometimes there is a moment of real joy, when you realize your profession is something you love.

While we’re on the subject, check out this little gem: Seventh Circuit Rules D&D a Threat to Prison Security

Posted on January 26, 2010 at 6:27 pm by PeatB
Filed under Events, Fans, Musings, Writing
1 Comment »

I am very much aware of how incredibly fortunate I am, having my work published all over the world in many languages. This is an opportunity that was unheard of for all but the most blockbusting genre authors just a few short years ago, but the internet has made the world smaller. Thanks to advanced communications technology (and a very good agent), markets are available to me that were closed to far better authors than I less than a decade ago.

But even more than this, this internet has given me the ability to get to know a sampling of the amazing people from every continent on Earth who are sharing in my work. Through this blog, facebook, e-mail, twitter, Myspace, and various internet forums, and with the aid of google translate, I have a level of reader interaction undreamt of just a few years ago.

I always kind of expected my readers to be people like me. Slightly introverted male nerds. I didn’t expect to hear from men and women, grandparents and gradeschoolers, liberals and conservatives, religious and atheists, artists, musicians, writers, jewelers, doctors, models, lawyers, teachers, company presidents, movie producers, game designers, , computer technicians, soldiers, police, and folk from countless other walks of life.

At no time was this more apparent to me than the Desert Spear ARC Contest (DSAC). For those of you who are new to the blog, this was a contest I ran over the holidays (and into the New Year) where I invited readers to submit digital photos of themselves holding one of my books, and my favorites would win signed advance copies of The Desert Spear. The response was amazing, and really overwhelmed me with joy.

I am happy to say that Voyager has promised to send me more advance copies in a few weeks, so the DSAC contest will be resurrected when they arrive. Everyone is still in the running, but I will start accepting new entries as well. Keep that in mind if you’re going to be traveling anyplace special in the coming months. 🙂

One of those new ARCs is already won, though, as French Jess, believing the contest was over, just sent in a few more pictures for fun. Of course, they turned out to be some of the best entries to date. Check these out:

As promised, here are some pictures I took while visiting a medieval city at Les Baux de Provence (yes, Provence like the restaurant where you eat so good!).

And as I wanted to prove you that no one deserve more an ARC than me…

I faced the catapult ordeal

And the pillory!

But it’s always bereable with a good read in hands!

That’s it! Even if the contest is finished, I took a lot of fun doing this pictures, and I hope you enjoyed them 🙂

Posted on January 25, 2010 at 2:36 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, France, Musings, Sales, World Traveler, Writing
5 Comments »