Das Flustern der Nacht
Just saw on amazon.de that they already have a cover up for what I assume is The Desert Spear, which will be called Das Flustern der Nacht (The Whisper of the Night). I think the cover is pretty darn cool:
Blog
New Excision: Reclaiming the Circle
Posted a new Excision just now, entitled Reclaiming the Circle. It shows what happened when the Painted Man and Rojer go to take back the circle and horse from the bandits.
It’s a short scene, only about 380 words, but it offers up the opportunity to talk about POV philosophy in the introduction and discussion, which is a topic I enjoy pondering and pontificating on.
As always, feel free to direct any comments on the scene and/or discussion here, since I still don’t know how to enable comments on a static page because WordPress hates me and wants me to suffer.
Grinding
New interview up, this one on the computer gaming blog Grinding to Valhalla. Some of it is the same old same old (though I never cut and paste answers, so they’re always a little different, depending on my mood and level of introspection at the time of writing), but there are also some interesting questions about the writing process and gaming that are worth reading, if you’re into that sort of things.
In other news, you may have noticed some changes to the site, particularly on the News, Creations, and Excisions pages. I have just leveled up in my web-coding skills, and am making an effort to bring these pages more up to date. It’s an ongoing process, of course, but you can expect more changes in a steady trickle as I add fan art, foreign edition covers, downloadable versions of all the wards, etc.
Frequently, readers e-mail me telling me that they gave up sleep to finish the book, or they were so engrossed they missed their stop on the bus/train, or snuck into the bathroom at work to read. All those sacrifices are incredibly gratifying, but this recent Amazon reviewer takes the cake.
Dude, I appreciate the compliment, but the book ain’t that good.
Also, good Warded Man reviews on Buzzy Multimedia, SFF Chronicles, the All Consuming blog and Edward Willett‘s site, an okay review on from a guy who hated the UK cover (madness) on his blog Smote, and the Disillusioned Librarian gives a solid thumbs-up after a brief digression on Swine Flu.
And a bit more on the “cellphone writer” thing, which seems to be dying down in favor of a new flavor of the week. This one has a giant thumb, and this one is mostly about my thoughts on the Kindle.
New Excision:One Arm and the Nightwolves
Added another deleted scene from The Painted/Warded Man on the Excisions page. If you’re new to the site, the Excisions page is where I show scenes that were cut from my work, and discuss the process that led me to write them in the first place, and then later discard them.
This scene, entitled One Arm and the Nightwolves, is one of the oldest deletions, getting struck from the manuscript long before any agent or editor saw it, mainly because it is unnecessarily expository, and a little too “wandering monster” (which is the sign of a bad DM… er, author).
Still, it is a nice actiony piece, and gives some worldbuilding details that many readers have shown interest in.
If anyone wants to discuss it, feel free to comment on this post.
Desert Spear Update, II
The current draft of The Desert Spear is still with my editors, and I needed a break before diving into The Daylight War, so in addition to updating my website and hand-modeling my cell phone, I’m currently working on another “Arlen: The Lost Years” short story just to keep my mental knife sharp. The story, tentatively titled The Duke’s Mines, will likely be the back-up story for Deluxe version of The Desert Spear, just as The Great Bazaar will back up the Deluxe of The Painted Man.
So, speaking of The Desert Spear,the print schedule was at last finalized during the London Book Fair last week. The Desert Spear will be available on a worldwide release date of April 2010 for its English editions.
For my Del Rey/Warded Man readers, this will probably come as little or no shock, as that is more or less a year after the US release of book I, The Warded Man.
For my Voyager/Painted Man readers, it means the book is coming out 8 months later than Voyager’s advertising has promised. That’s more my fault more than theirs, and I’m sorry about that.
How did this happen?
Well, the short answer is, ” I didn’t end up writing it as fast as I thought I would.” The long answer I already gave in a previous post, and won’t go into again here.
Predicting how long I will take me to write something is like a freelancer paying estimated taxes on the year to come. Getting it right is, at best, an exercise in fortune telling, and you never hit the number right on. I spent seven years tinkering with The Painted Man before I sold it, and then another half year of editing after that. By way of comparison, I wrote The Desert Spear relative short order at 26 months. But despite that apparent increase in speed, it is way more than I originally guessed it would take. I was off by… you guessed it, 8 months.
Voyager bent over backward to make time for TDS to keep the August date, but by the time it became impossible, it was too late to change the ads in the paperbacks.
So that’s the bad news.
The good news? Desert Spear is going to be chock full of awesome.
Seriously. For starters, check out the Voyager cover by Larry Rostant (above). How friggin’ sweet is that portrait of Jardir?
In addition, The Desert Spear has fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles… and I promise it’s not a “kissing book”. It will call into question a lot of assumptions readers might have made about the events of book one.
Like The Painted Man, The Desert Spear is part epic adventure, and part coming of age tale as Ahmann Jardir and Renna Tanner take center stage after being only glimpsed in the chorus during book I. You’ll see firsthand the struggle and events that lead them to become people who will help shape the destiny of mankind, and I am literally bursting with excitement to introduce them to everyone.
Plus, plenty more action with Arlen, Leesha, and Rojer.
Oh, and all the main characters get laid.
And, uh, some copies will be hollowed out and filled with candy. Delicious, delicious candy.