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I’m not really sure when I first got the idea to write a book about a man who tattooed magical symbols on his skin, but when I first started work on the Painted Man, my friend Neil sent me an article about Otzi the Iceman.

Otzi is the original Painted Man. He was a man who lived in about 3300 BC (the copper age), and died on a glacier in the Ötztal Alps, near the border between Austria and Italy. The glacier froze and preserved him as a mummy that was discovered in 1991.

Otzi is interesting for a lot of reasons, but what struck me most profoundly was that he not only had tattoos (57 of them), but that they may have been shamanic (ie magical) in nature.

It was really moving to me, discovering that while I was working on something I thought was a (relatively) original idea, it was in fact something that had been going on for at least 53 centuries. People have been tattooing their flesh since we discovered carbon, and many of those symbols over the year have had spiritual, magical, or religious significance.

Rather than being put off that my idea was nothing new, I was inspired further. This brought a kind of realism to the story and world that were forming in my mind, helping me ground the magic system in a way that was familiar without retreading all the old fantasy tropes. There are no bearded wizards in my world, no magic swords, no spellcasting priests. Magic is a raw force, like electricity, and only these funny little symbols can channel it into useful effect.

And so, I’ve decided to dedicate my first published book to Otzi, a man who touched my life across 5300 years.

Is there any greater immortality than to be remembered?

Posted on April 4, 2008 at 1:26 pm by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Musings, Writing
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Things are moving full speed ahead with UK production of the book. ARCs (Advance Read Copies) are set to go on press soon. ARCs are usually a cheaply made version of the book, printed on newsprint-weight paper in a very no-frills fashion. The purpose of ARCs is for reviewers and famous authors to get a chance to take a look at the manuscript in advance of the reading public and give their two cents about how awesome I am (or am not).

Charlaine Harris called it “Tremendously readable!”

The final UK cover is still evolving, but I got permission to share some of the preliminary art. First off, here is the fist pass of the cover:

The first thing that struck me with this cover is how proportionally big my name is! Several times bigger than the title itself.

This used to mean that the author was really popular, and their name meant more than the book title in terms of sales, but obviously that is not the case here, since it is my first book. I guess because they bought a whole trilogy, they are looking to brand the author rather than an individual title, which I guess is smart. It’s just odd.

Wasn’t crazy about the background, though. I get that the artist was trying to go for an ominous setting sun look, but it kinda looks like the Painted Man is walking away from an explosion, Hollywood style.

He looks badass, though.

I remember when covers were just a painting of a specific scene in the book in which all or most of the main characters are clustered together. Those days are over, though. Both the US and the UK go for more iconic looks, now.

I asked them to put the “V” in my name, which will make me easier to google, and will differentiate from other authors named Peter Brett, like that “How-to guy” in the UK.

This is the current, but still not final version. They swapped out the red sky background and grounded the figure by putting mountains in the background, which keep him from seeming like he is floating in space. The desert setting is appropriate to the book, and I think it looks a lot better, despite my general dislike for the color yellow.

They threw the “V” into my name, which was nice, and made the title a little bigger; also nice.

There are still some color changes due, like to the Painted Man’s Frankenstein pale skin tone and the background, but nothing major, I don’t think. This is more or less it.

Which is fine with me. It looks awesome.

This B&W halftone one will be on the ARC cover, while they work out the final details. I think it looks pretty sweet.

I am so psyched for the ARC, I can’t even tell you. Even with all the crazy stuff that has gone on with the book, I have still felt it was all rather surreal. It’s still hard for me to believe this is really happening. Having a printed book in my hand, even one in 2 colors and low-grade stock, is going to have a profound effect on me, I think.

They are also using my interior art on the ARC, so I get to see how that looks in action. I spent the last week endlessly drawing and photoshopping to finish the character avatars in time. It was really hard, because all my photoshop skills are largely self-taught, and things that might take a real artist seconds to do take me HOURS. Still, I am very happy with the results. I will post them on the site soon, as part of a major update.

Posted on March 30, 2008 at 9:34 pm by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Writing
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“Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!”

“Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.”

“Do what you will, but I will hinder it, if I may.”

“Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”

“But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.”

When I was younger, I always said that if I ever had a daughter, I would name her Eowyn, after the heroine in The Return of the King. Of course, this was before the blockbuster LOTR movies, when the vast majority of people would just have thought it was a pretty name and not made the nerd connection. Now, obviously, that is not an option.

But it is not without some level 0f sadness that I let the name go. It has a beautiful, haunting sound to it, and calls to mind the image of Eowyn standing before the Lord of the Nazgul, protecting the body of her uncle, King Theoden of Rohan, from desecration. Then (as now), women were not considered fit for combat, and Eowyn had been forbade to ride with the men, but she disguised herself and came anyway in defiance of gender.

But when she was called to combat, it was not against any ordinary foe. The Witch-King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgul, was an opponent so powerful that the prophecies said no living man could harm him, or hinder him in any way. But Eowyn was no man, and could therefore do what no man could.

I think that is an amazing sentiment, and a wonderful namesake for a girl to aspire to and be inspired by in an age when women are still told they can’t do everything a man can. It is also probably the greatest scene in fantasy literature, bar none.

My friend Matt lent us this baby sound kit, which lets us listen to the baby’s heartbeat in the womb. It also came with a set of little speakers (I call them wombphones) you can put on your belly to play the baby music, which she seems to react strongly to. Some people think that this added stimulation helps stimulate the baby’s mental development, though I don’t know if there’s any factual research behind that.

Anyway, I started recording MP3 files of me reading to play for the baby in the womb, so she will become accustomed to my voice. I could read right to her belly, but that feels a little silly. Besides, I can also have Dani play the MP3’s for her when I am away after she’s born. Of course, the first thing I recorded was the scene where Eowyn slays the Nazgul. I also read some Lewis Carroll and poetry by Tolkien. It was deliciously nerdy.

Maybe Eowyn will still do as a middle name…

Posted on March 26, 2008 at 8:28 am by PeatB
Filed under Life, Musings
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Second pass on the UK cover. Still not final.

Soak it in. I’ll yap about it later.

Posted on March 25, 2008 at 2:48 pm by PeatB
Filed under Events, Writing
9 Comments »

So this will be a new recurring segment on the Peephole, where I secretly google myself late at night to see what I find, and then report back the results. Sometimes I will also point out funny traffic statistics of my website.

For instance, did you know that some intrepid student at the University of California found my website by searching “Is Peter Brett a Real Person?”

Geez, they could have just asked me. I would have been happy to tell them.

Another interesting searcher from sunny California found my site by googling “Malus Snowcrest”. Apparently that got a hit because of the superhero comic my friend Jeremy and I made in High School, The Fellowship, whose arch enemies were the supervillain team “Malus Magisti” (Latin for Evil Masters), and the book SNOWCREST, which I wrote a few years ago, and which got my foot in the door at JABberwocky, but never sold for various reasons.

A person from the Russian Federation found the site similarly, by searching “Magisti game” on google Russia.

One person found me by googling “recushion couch”. Not really sure how that happened…

In the world of PVB internet sightings, if you scroll WAY down to the Science Fiction & Fantasy section of the New Popular Fiction Report from Writer’s Digest, you’ll find a little shout out to me.

There’s also some advance praise for THE PAINTED MAN (which may or may not be called DARKFALL on its US release) from Charlaine Harris on the JABberwocky site.

Most importantly, if you are eager to buy a copy of THE PAINTED MAN, but can’t wait for it to hit shelves, those of you on the east side of the pond (or those of you who live in the Americas and don’t mind paying exorbitant shipping rates), can now pre-order my “stunning debut” from Amazon UK, and Waterstones, which is is apparently the Barnes & Noble of the UK.

Be careful, though. This version will spell “color” with a “u”, and “gray” with an “e”. As an interesting aside, since I grew up reading British authors like Tolkien, I always thought that was the proper way to spell those words until I started seeing red marks on my book reports and term papers in school.

Apparently, you can also pre-order it in Greek. I’m not quite sure, though, seeing as how that site is all Greek to me. Maybe you can just order the English version from a Greek bookseller. The book will eventually be translated into Greek, but we haven’t sent my Greek publisher the final copy for translation yet.

The same goes for Amazon France, where you can pre-order the Anglais version. Commandez-le dès aujourd’hui!

This Russian site mentions “Peter Brett” and “The Painted Man” (I plugged in the actual Russian characters, but WordPress didn’t understand them), but damned if I know what they’re talking about. My Russian is worse than my Greek, and my Greek is limited to “please”, “thank you”, and “excuse me”.

I got a .jpg of the first pass of the UK cover art from Voyager (who are currently in the process of totally revamping their website, which is why is seems a bit cobwebby), but I don’t have permission to post it to the site yet, so you’ll have to be patient.

Posted on March 24, 2008 at 8:50 am by PeatB
Filed under Events, Life, Musings, Writing
5 Comments »