Tales of Damasco: Update 4 (Part 2)

In Part 1 I covered the recent glut of Giant Thief news - admittedly missing out a rather nice review from Mr Stephen Theaker in his Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, where he describes it as "as much fun as you'd expect the story of a thief who steals a giant to be," as well as yet another interview I did, this one with Fantasy Book Review ... because, well, they weren't actually out at that point - so that just leaves Crown Thief and Prince Thief.

Well, the Crown Thief news is probably easier to just show:

Because that, dear reader, is what's going to be adorning the cover of my second novel come September.  I got it through a few days ago now, and I still have that weird "all my birthdays have arrived at once" feeling that comes along every so often in writing.  As great as the Giant Thief cover was, I had a clearer idea of how things work this time around and so a better idea of what I could reasonably suggest, not to mention a better understanding of Angelo Rinaldi's phenomenal strengths as an artist.  Put all that together and I was pretty sure we'd end up with something impressive.

But that...

Yeah.  Wow.  I strongly recommend taking a little time to go over some of the detail, because the detail is amazing.  Check out mysterious-guy-in-the-background's knife, or Damasco's stolen uniform. Check out the little tears in his jacket that will probably be completely lost once it's reduced to cover size but that Angelo still bothered to put in there.  Not bad, right?

Finally, we have Prince Thief, and there aren't quite so many exciting things happening with Prince Thief because I haven't actually finished it yet.  But I'm damn near the half way point on the first draft, and the first draft is so far the best first draft I've done, certainly in terms of technical getting-it-rightness but also I suspect in terms of telling a good story.  Considering that Crown Thief only really came together in the second draft, it's a funny feeling to have something that seems almost right to me at this stage.  Touch wood (hey, my desk's made entirely out of wood!) that I'm still feeling like that in thirteen chapters time, because that would be a really good way to be feeling.