2020: There Can Be No Purpose In This

In trying to figure out this post, my mind kept drifting to the early Neil Gaiman graphic novel Signal to Noise.  Excepting a couple of volumes of The Sandman, it's my favourite thing Gaiman's written, and it's always stuck with me, but I'd rather hoped that its tale of a dying writer pressing on with a final project he knows he'll never complete wouldn't ever feel as relevant as it does now.  Not that I'm dying - I mean, not that I know of - but I'm three months into a book it's unlikely I'll even be able to finish, let alone attempt to sell.  Right now, I'm writing because, with months of near-total isolation behind me and many more ahead, I've no idea what else to do with myself.  Though I've effectively been out of paying work for half a year, I have underlying health problems that make hunting a new job in the middle of a pandemic a particularly dicey move.

And so I find my brain coming back to Signal to Noise, and especially to that one quote: "Today I did something strange.  I started to write.  There can be no purpose in this.  Still, I am writing."

2020 wiped me out in pretty much every conceivable way.  But specifically for the purposes of this post, it's left my career in tatters and killed off any real possibility that I can keep writing full time, with a large percentage of my output in limbo or languishing in other ways.  No doubt that has a lot to do with the pandemic that's wrecked so much for so many, so it's not like I feel singled out, but it's hard to know to what extent the year wouldn't have still gone disastrously if it had only thrown up the usual share of mishaps and complications.

I was supposed to have six and possibly seven books out in 2020.  Only one made it, my SF novel To End All Wars, and so far the sales figures for that - a book I poured more of myself into than anything I've written and, for me, definitely among the best I've produced - have been the lowest of any I've released.  Truth be told, I've had other books not do so great, and of course it's never fun, but those didn't break my heart so hard as this one.  I feel like there's a parallel universe somewhere where To End All Wars must have found its audience and connected with a bunch of people as something pretty unique, First World War-set science fiction mysteries with gay protagonists not exactly being ten a penny.  Hopefully publisher Aethon might yet figure out how to reach that readership, but in the meantime, if you've enjoyed any of my work and not yet picked it up, maybe now's a good time to?

As for those other five books, they were all with Michael Wills and his outfit Digital Fiction, which has been my principle publisher for the last four years.  One, of course, was the fourth and final entry in the Black River series, Graduate or Die, and another was my novella Graveyard of Titans; both are finished and have been ready to go since early summer.  The other three were my debut Tales of Easie Damasco series, which Michael persuaded me to withdraw from their original publisher Angry Robot so that he could give them a fresh lick of paint and an exciting re-release.  Clearly, none of that's happened, and I'd be lying if I claimed I know why.  Michael has mostly ignored my emails since the back end of 2019, but what he has said is that he's had a tough time in the pandemic and that he's seriously considering closing Digital Fiction, which already appears to be largely shuttered.  He's also, in fairness, said he still intends to put out these five books, but won't tell me when or discuss details.  With 2020 over and not a ghost of a release date, there doesn't seem much room for optimism.

All of that bad news would have been easier to suck up if there'd been any good news to counter it.  I guess the one book I haven't mentioned, the mysterious novella I'd hoped to have announced by now, falls into that category, except that here we are and I still can't, so the best to be said on that front is that it'll hopefully be a positive note in the very near future.  As for the short fiction side of things, the year got off to a fantastic start, with Ghost Drive in new market Hybrid Fiction and Not Us going to Nightmare, along with reprint sales of Casualty of Peace to The Dark and Parasite Art being picked up for this year's NewCon Press SF best-of.  Had it gone on in that vein, I'd have been more than happy, but the last nine months have been a wasteland: there's one sale I can't reveal yet and, fingers crossed, another coming soon, but given the staggering number of hours I've put in to revising and submitting short fiction, the results are effectively a disaster.

If all of this sounds as if I'm giving up, it's not like I've much of a choice at present.  I've no writing income and no particular hope of more coming along in sufficient quantity to save me from ruin.  But I have a couple of novels finished and a couple more at first draft stage, and I've spent a lot of the last six months readying a second short story collection, compiling and polishing a bunch of work I'm especially proud of, so I guess the time will come when I make moves in those directions.  It just won't be my priority if an alternative should come along.  Even were it not for the financial pressures, I don't have the heart for it right now.  Frankly, the publishing world hasn't treated me too kindly for the most part, and that's been particularly true of the last few months.  I am, at the very least, ready for a sizable break in which I try to figure out what the hell it is I'm doing.

Fortunately, there was some good that come out of 2020 - I've finally learned some slightly more than basic cooking skills, thanks to the rather brilliant Simplycook, my oldest friend has moved to the right end of the country, and at the very least I've enjoyed writing an absurd number of anime reviews - but my professional life has mostly been one long kick to the face, and I could do without twelve more months of that.  Up until recently, the plan was to wrap up the first draft of a book no one would read and then, assuming I could do so without major risk of death, look for whatever jobs people do who've gone from being self-employed in a profession nobody respects into an employment market ravaged by months of plague and government incompetence - but given the present vaccination schedules, even that's starting to look optimistic.  So who knows, maybe this new book will end up getting finished after all, whether I want it to or not?

Not Us in Nightmare, and Other News (or the Annoying Lack Thereof)

 If you're a regular reader of the blog and have been getting frustrated with the fact that for weeks now I've been posting endless anime reviews and nothing in the way of writing news then, believe me, I share that frustration.  And the fact of the matter is that there should be news: about the fourth Black River book, Graduate or Die, which is finished and ready and yet not out for reasons I'm not privy to, and about a novella that's similarly done and dusted, and about another major project with Digital Fiction that's seemingly in limbo, if not somewhere worse.  I hope those are all still happening.  I hope they'll all be happening really damn soon.  But I don't know for a fact, because I don't have that information.  I mean, I guess that's 2020, right?  Whatever else this year has been, it most definitely hasn't been the year when things went to plan.  And obviously, the minute I have some solid and meaningful information to share, I'll be doing just that.

Fortunately, I do have another major project nearing completion, and it's immensely exiting, and by "nearing completion" I mean "pretty much just waiting for a cover" - but the other thing it's waiting for is an official announcement from the publisher, and while I sort of have permission to discuss it, I figure it'd be nicer for everyone if I hold off until they're comfortable letting the cat out of the bag.  So for the minute I'll just reiterate what I've already cryptically said: it's a genre and topic unlike anything I've attempted to cover before, but a subject matter unusually close to my heart, and it's with one of my absolutely favourite publishers, who I'm very excited indeed to be involved with.

But there is a single concrete bit of good and announce-able news, and that's my real reason for finally getting around to a proper post: in what's turned out to be a mostly crummy year for short fiction (and, let's face it, everything) one of the few legitimately brilliant things to happen was selling my story Not Us to splendid horror 'zine Nightmare.  This is my third piece there, and my shortest at a trim 3000 words, and I'm not going to say it's my best because realistically that's probably Great Black Wave, but it's definitely one of the better horror stories I've written.  I mean, if it is a horror story; I suspect it's one of those pieces that very much gives back what you bring to it, and I'm curious to see what the response will be.  At any rate, I'm always grateful when I manage to sell something this thorny and hard to categorise.

If you just want to read Not Us then - well, that's cool and all, you're certainly allowed to, but you'd be missing out on some good stuff.  Nevertheless, if you really do, you can find it at the link here, along with a podcast version read by Stefan Rudnicki.  Oh, and there's an interview with me, too, where I talk about the story a bit, but mostly ramble at excessive length about movies and comics and whatever else came into my head.  Really, though, the thing to do would be to buy the entirety of issue 97, because that way you'll also get three more stories, in the shape of Furtherest by Kaaron Warren, The Monkey Trap by Adam-Troy Castro, and The Secret Of Flight by A.C. Wise.  And needless to say, you'd also be supporting a fantastic horror fiction venue that entirely deserves to be supported.

Graduate or Die Delayed But Close

For those wondering where the fourth Black River book is, I can only apologise for the unexpectedly lengthy radio silence.  Until quite recently, I didn't know myself where exactly things were at, and it seemed better to stay quiet until I did.  Graduate or Die should have been ready and with the publisher by now, but we had some unfortunate issues with our copy editor, who missed a couple of deadlines and finally handed the book in almost a month late.  Add to that the fact that what they eventually delivered wasn't altogether what they'd been asked to provide, especially when it came to things like brevity and moderation, and the result is that, though the end is very much in sight, it's taking that bit longer to get there than I'd have hoped.

But fear not ... I've nearly made it!  And in fairness, it's always better to get too much feedback than too little, especially when a fair percentage of what was in there was genuinely useful, so at least I'm confident we're putting out this last book in the best state it can be.  Also, the holdups have given me plenty of opportunity to address some other outstanding elements; and so, for example, we have a brilliant introduction by one of the biggest names in modern fantasy to go with those by the lovely folks who helped us out on the first three.  I won't say who just yet, but suffice to say that, if you're into fantasy, there's a good chance they're one of your favourite authors.

As for a release date, my making a guess when the publisher hasn't officially set one is probably too much like tempting fate, especially at the moment, when predicting anything feels like tempting fate.  What I can say with confidence is that everything will be ready at my end by the middle of next month, so as things stand, there's no particular reason Graduate or Die shouldn't be out soon after that.  Fingers crossed, right?  I feel like I've been working on this one for an age, and according to my magical spreadsheet of timekeeping, I have been working on it fairly constantly for the better part of a year, so I'm as eager as anyone to see it out in the world.

Graduate or Die Cover Reveal

It's been rather quiet here on the blog for the last few weeks, but I do have a good excuse.  I've been putting the last touches to the fourth Black River book, which goes by the title of Graduate or Die, because ... well, you can probably work it out, right?  One way or another, everything's coming to a close with this one, and you don't get to attend your graduation ceremony if you've been eaten by a dragon.

One of those aforementioned finishing touches happens to also be my reliably favourite part of being a writer, namely working with a fantastic artist to come up with the perfect cover.  As with the first three Black River Chronicles, that meant absolute superstar Kim Van Deun, and the only reason I can't say that Kim's outdone himself this time around is because he always outdoes himself, if such a thing is possible.  Don't believe me?  Here's what's going on the front of Graduate or Die...

Actually, from Kim's point of view, I suspect this might have been the toughest brief yet.  I've never been a professional artist, but I get the impression that the more elements, the harder things become, and five students facing off against a dragon is a lot to cram in there.

Wait ... five students?  We haven't had five students on any of the previous covers!  And who the heck is that in the upper left?  Yes, the gang have a new member to contend with, and there was no way I wasn't crowbarring Lucenna Fia-Arcwright into this image, because she was my personal highlight of writing this fourth book, for reasons you'll get to share in the not-too-distant future.  It's hard to say when exactly, because we still have the copy-edits and proofs to go, but I'd say we should be ready before the summer's over.  And in the meantime, here, in all its glory, is the complete wraparound artwork, which has a teaser or two of its own to reveal...

End-of-the-Year Novel Updates

It's been a while since I've discussed the fourth Black River book - known as Graduate or Die, until someone talks me out of it! - and while that's mostly because I'm in that long haul between writing the book and getting to call it finished, there's been enough progress to justify a blog post, I think.

The last I mentioned it, I was stuck editing out a few tens of thousands of words, and that, thankfully, is all done and dusted.  It's still a relatively long book by Black River standards, by far the longest in the series, but now that's because there's a lot crammed in, not because I've used five words when I only needed one.  In fact, every time I come back to it, I'm astonished that I've included everything I intended at the overambitious planning stage: major locations that have merely been mentioned in passing before, character arcs for an ever-growing cast, and lots of weird little details that if I was a fan of this series - and let's face it, I totally am! - I'd get a kick out of seeing.  Which, I guess, is the point: I want this book to be all the sorts of awesome I'd expect if I'd devoted tens of hours to reading the first three.  And so, though with the writing essentially done the rest is noodling, there's a fair bit of noodling ahead.  Fortunately, I have the sort of publisher who's happy to give me a deadline of "deliver it when it's done, within reason."  With that said, I see no reason to suppose that Graduate or Die won't be out by the middle of 2020.

But that's only one of the books I have in the works for imminent-ish release.  I still don't feel like the time's quite right to be announcing the others, but I reckon I can at least go through what they are.  So, in order of when they're likeliest to appear, we have:

- A new science-fiction novel from a publisher I've not worked with before.  This one is being proofed as we speak, everything else is basically ready, and honestly, I probably could get away with just announcing it right now.  At any rate, that time can't be much further off, and it's a book I'm thrilled to be getting into the world, so once the word's out, I'm unlikely to shut up.

- A new science-fiction - or possibly horror, or maybe sci-fi / horror? - novella from a publisher I've worked with quite a lot.  That's in the midst of its copy edits, is one of the most deeply strange and hard-to-classify things I've written, and should be appearing in the first half of next year if all goes well.

- And lastly, a project so secret that I'd better not say too much of anything, except that I'm about to start writing it literally next week, that it's for another publisher I'm new to and insanely excited to be working with, and that I suspect it's going to blow some minds once I get to spread the news, because the concept said publisher approached me with is phenomenal.  Currently I'm a little panicky at the thought that I might not do it justice, while also determined that I will, since it's far too good to mess up.

So there we have it: four books at various stages of completion, but all coming in the not-too-distant future, which is an exciting position to be heading towards the new year in.  More news as I have it / am allowed to share it!

How To Make a Black River Cover (Part 2)

So last time we'd settled on a direction, and our fantastic artist Kim Van Deun was about to embark on the real work of making what would eventually be the cover of the third Black River novel, Eye of the Observer.  That direction wasn't much besides a crude black and white sketch, but it was enough to give us both a sense of what the final image would entail, especially given that Kim and I had already gone over in detail what needed to be on there.

Now, the immediate purpose of a cover is obviously to offer the prospective reader a sense of what the book behind it is going to entail.  But for me, the fun of a cover lies in tailoring it to the reader who's already spent their hard-earned cash and is looking at that same image over and over, trying to relate it back to the story they've developed whatever amount of familiarity with.  In the first case, I figured that you if you were the sort of person who'd enjoy The Black River Chronicles, there was a good chance you'd be grabbed by a party of teenage heroes facing off against a giant floating eyeball.  But I really wanted there to be a definite setting that drew from the narrative, and to include a couple of direct nods to specific plot points: hence the mysterious city cut from the cavern walls in the background, and the fact that the gang have some brand new gear, and especially the fact that, if you look really carefully at the final image below, there's a carving on the stonework that happens to look an awful lot like the head of Arein's staff and also like a certain mythological monster.  All of that was in the pitch I initially sent over to Kim.

However, we weren't quite at the stage where that was going to be relevant yet.  As such, the next versions I saw were the ones to the right, and the process was still very much about ensuring that everything was in the correct place.  Which it mostly was; it was clear that the basic composition was coming together, and that foregrounding Arein and Pootle was going to work just fine.  Already it was really only a case of tweaking details, and you can see what changed between those two versions: Pootle's design is becoming more specific, but the crucial difference is one of shuffling everything around so that we can fit four main characters plus a giant eyeball on the limited real estate of a single cover.


By their nature, the Black River books have busy covers.  Look at the fronts of most fantasy novels and you'll notice that we're somewhat unusual in that respect.  The current trend is much more in the direction of abstract images - oh look, it's a sword! - or single figures of the hot guy with a sword / hot girl in a cloak variety.  Whereas it's pretty much essential that we have four characters right there, and that they're all fully visible.  (It broke my heart a little that we couldn't also get Caille and Pootle on the front of The Ursvaal Exchange, but you can only push things so far!)

At any rate, this was the aspect we worked to get right by degrees through the final stages.  In the images to the right, it's clear that Tia's getting short shrift, and as much as everything else is nearly there in the very-nearly-finished version above, the problem is kind of the opposite: Tia's taking up too much space, and also looks like she's balanced on the tip of Arein's staff!  On the other hand, that was pretty much the only thing wrong by then, and on the whole, I think it's safe to say that we had a stunning image on our hands.  Aside from Tia, the subsequent tweaks were extremely minor: to the colour of Pootle's eye, to the buildings in the background, which didn't quite match their description in the book, and to Hule's outfit, which was drifting a little too far from his usual look.  In general, though, it was obvious that the final result was going to be stupendous ... and sure enough, it was!

How To Make a Black River Cover (Part 1)

I've said half-jokingly that working with artists is my favourite part of being an author, and though obviously I enjoy all that writing stuff too - at least on the good days! - it's not a million miles from the truth;  I never quite get used to the privilege of having someone incredibly talented produce something totally amazing on my behalf.  And while I'm sure not everyone is as emotionally involved in my book covers as I am, still, I reckon there are a few people out there who are curious about how this stuff works, right?  So I thought it might be interesting, with the permission of our terrific Black River cover artist Kim Van Deun, to reveal a little of how these stunning images come to be.  Unfortunately, that's inevitably going to mean a few SPOILERS, so be warned, and maybe don't read this until you've read Eye of the Observer - yet another excuse to grab a copy if you haven't already!

Of course, by the time we got to this third book, I'd already worked with Kim twice before.  I didn't have so much input on the cover of Level One, my co-creator and editor Michael Wills handled that one, but I got to see the work in progress, and so I had an idea of Kim's process by the time we got to The Ursvaal Exchange.  There, Mike and I swapped roles altogether, and I even had strict instructions to surprise him with the finished image, which is a lovely position of trust to be placed in as a writer, but would have been kind of intimidating if I hadn't known I could rely on Kim to deliver!

With that behind us, I had no worries when Mike said much the same about Eye of the Observer; the process had been a pleasure and I felt I knew how to play to Kim's considerable strengths.  However, I wasn't quite so certain about what ought to grace the front of this one as I'd been with the last.  There's a definite balance, especially once you're midway into a series: on the one hand, you want to give enough information to a prospective reader that they'll have a fair idea of why they should pick up your book, but on the other, you don't want reveal anything that might ruin crucial plot points.  This was straightforward enough with Level One, in that we were really just trying to convey the core concept, and The Ursvaal Exchange had a relatively early scene that was an ideal fit.  This time around, the balancing act wasn't so straightforward, and the scene I had in mind occurred relatively late on.

Being the sort of person who tends to think out loud, I'd said all this in my initial pitch to Kim.  There was a lot I was definite on: the underground setting that's basically the whole second half of the book, the ruins, the nod to the Dwarven city and the idea of subtly hinting at what it's hiding.  But the question we started out grappling with was, do we explicitly show Pootle or don't we?  Both approaches had their advantages and disadvantages.  However, initially I found myself leaning toward keeping an air of mystery - and the result was the image up there at the top.  Even at the thumbnail stage, there was a lot that I liked; this is still perhaps my favourite take on Arein, with a perfect balance of yearning and trepidation in the way she's reaching toward Pootle, and the rest of the party look great too.  But it was immediately apparent that, from the back, it was awfully hard to tell what Pootle was.  Are they looking at a big rock?  A beach ball?  The moon?  Hiding a giant eyeball's one distinguishing feature might not be the best way to go!

That discussion left us with four thumbnail sketches, one of them the image here and the remainder variations on these two.  In the alternative designs, there was no ambiguity: Pootle was front and centre.  The result was more immediately striking, but it brought its own share of issues, the most obvious of which being that Arein, effectively our protagonist for this third book, had her back to us.  (You'll probably have noticed that, for obvious reasons, covers don't generally show characters with their backs to the reader!)  And since I couldn't choose between the two, I did what I always do: pester friends, family, and anyone else who'd listen for their opinions.  The result was an ever-so-slight preference toward the second design, one that basically came down to the fact that there was something very cool about Pootle looming there dead centre with that glowing light behind it.  So, after much discussion, we had a direction, and now the real hard work could begin - well, for Kim, at least!

To be continued...

Eye of the Observer is Out!

Yup, the third in the Black River Chronicles series, Eye of the Observer, is finally out to buy!  And it's hard to know what I can add to that announcement, since it feels like I've already been talking about this book for such a long while now.  I guess I'll just have to settle for summing up everything I've said elsewhere, now that people can actually read the thing for themselves, right?

Eye of the Observer has been a major part of my life ever since before The Ursvaal Exchange came out, and that was an entire year and a half ago!  In that sense, it's actually a bit weird to be finally letting it go out into the world.  Some of why it's arriving later than I'd hoped is to do with a bit of general rejiggering at the publisher end - all positive, mind you, and which will hopefully get the series under the eyes of yet more people - but part of it is undoubtedly my fault, so sorry for everyone who's been itching to see what misadventures Durren, Tia, Arein, and Hule get up to this time.  At any rate, I'm confident in saying the gap until book four will be a good deal shorter; with the first draft already finished, there's a solid chance we'll have it out before this time next year.

But back to Eye of the Observer ... and as I'm sure I've said before, you can get a  good idea of where the focus of each Black River book lies from who gets most space on the cover.  Durren was our viewpoint into the series in Level One, The Ursvaal Exchange dug into Tia's background and motivations, and here we have two characters sharing almost equal space.  Of course, part of the reason for that is that one of them happens to be a heck of a lot bigger than when we last saw them.  Can that really be the party's faithful companion creature Pootle squaring up to Arein?  Obviously the answer is ... maybe?  Look, I'm not going to spoiler my own book in the week it comes out, am I?  Let's just say that, as the title suggests, we're going to be learning more about a certain eyeball creature, and as the cover suggests, this one is in many ways Arein's book - which is great for me, because she's a joy to write and has always felt like the heart of The Black River Chronicles.  Indeed, since her character was my personal starting point for these books, there's a lot here that's been on the boil since before the first word was ever written.

Right, I think that's enough out of me!  To give you a taste of what Eye of the Observer is actually about, here's the blurb:

Durren Flintrand, student ranger at the Black River Academy for Swordcraft and Spellcraft, finds his life thrown into fresh confusion when his party's latest quest goes disastrously awry.  Magic is malfunctioning in strange and terrible ways, and what's worse, it might be their fault.  Certainly that's what their wizard Arein believes, and her doubts may be enough to accomplish what countless threats haven't: to tear their group apart.

Along with Tia the rogue and fighter Hule, Durren is determined to put right what's gone wrong, no matter the cost.  But when they embark on a desperate mission of their own, the friends end up far from home and lost in a subterranean labyrinth of monsters, traps, and buried secrets.  With Arein's fate on the line and Pootle the observer, their unofficial fifth party member, undergoing a bizarre transformation, the stakes have never been higher or more personal.  Yet they may prove trivial compared to what lies in the heart of the mountain Gongurren, an ancient horror now stirring toward the light of day.

And if you fancy a copy, you can find it on Amazon in the UK here and in the US here.

Level One Free This Weekend

If for whatever reason you're not already on board with my ongoing fantasy series The Black River Chronicles then a) why the heck not and b) it happens to be your lucky day, or rather your lucky weekend, because for the next two days the e-book of the first volume, Level One, is completely free on Amazon.  And it's a great time to begin catching up, what with The Ursvaal Exchange already out and Eye of the Observer coming awfully soon and the grand finale ... well, about a year off, all told, and still waiting to be written, but it's going to be one big, crazy adventure, I promise.

Anyway, if you're in doubt, here's what you'll be getting - for free, mind you! - if you decide to dip a toe into Black River...

Three months into his studies at the Black River Academy of Swordcraft and Spellcraft, Durren Flintrand is shocked by the news that from now on he'll be assigned to a party, and that his only hope of progressing beyond the lowly rank of level one is to succeed with his new companions. However, Durren has a secret that may make that impossible, and his three partners have problems of their own. Wizard Areinelimus is terrified of her own magic. Rogue Tia has no patience at all with others. And warrior Hule is just an idiot. In fact, when a disembodied, floating eyeball is your most competent party member, you know you have serious problems.

To stand a chance of succeeding, they need to work together, and that means learning to tolerate each other, while surviving a world of angry rat people, murderous sorcerers and homicidal unicorns. But even if they can somehow find a way to get along, dark and ancient forces are stirring, ones no level one students should ever have to confront...

And hey, while you're downloading your free copy of The Black River Chronicles: Level One, why not grab Saurians by Tim Manley, Wolf Creek by Nikko Lee, and The Sword to Unite by Peter J. Hopkins?  Because they're all in this week's Digital Fiction giveaway too.  You can find the links to the US versions of the books all together here, and if you happen to not be in America, rest assured that all four are free on your local site too.  So why not go grab 'em, eh?  It would be daft not to.

Back in Black (River)

First the good news: the third novel in the Black River Chronicles series, Eye of the Observer, is about to head off for copy-editing, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we have a cover to show off in the near future.  The release date isn't set yet, but I don't think it's going to be too far off.  Maybe start saving your pennies for the end of spring, early summer at the latest?  As I've mentioned elsewhere, there have been some delays along the way, but they're all sorted now, the wheels are turning, and I'm so, so pleased with how this one worked out.  In many ways, it feels like a book I've been itching to write for an age; the basic concept has been nagging at me for a long, long time.  And it gave me an opportunity to push four characters I really do care about harder than I ever have before.  Because that's how you show you care about your characters, right?  By putting them through the worst sort of torments you can come up with?

(Okay, yeah, it's probably a good thing I chose to write fiction instead of having kids.)

Second, the other good news: I just now returned the signed contracts for the fourth and final book in the series.  Yes, final ... this one's going to wrap up the story Mike and I began way back at the end of 2015, and I promise you, it's going to be all sorts of epic.  We're going to be leaving Durren, Tia, Arein, and Hule - and let's not forget Pootle, given what a major player he is in book 3! - a heck of a distance from where we met them way back in Level One.  As you'll see in Eye of the Observer, graduating is rapidly becoming the least of their worries, and there's no guarantee that everyone's going to reach the end in one piece, or even in roughly the same shape.  In fact, after the events of that third book, there's not much guarantee of anything!

Thirdly, the other other good news: if all goes to plan, Eye of the Observer won't be the only book I have out from Digital Fiction Publishing this year.  That's all somewhat up in the air at the moment, but there's a meaningful chance that a few long-gestating projects will see the light of day before 2019 is out.  Any one of them will be exciting; if we somehow pull off the lot then that's going to be pretty damn amazing.

But in the immediate future, it's all about the Black River Chronicles, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  I'm thrilled at the notion of finally cracking into the last book, and I'm equally thrilled at the prospect of putting book three together once and for all and having my words behind another cover by the astonishing Kim Van Deun and getting this things into the hands of those folks who've been good enough to follow us this far.

Short Story News June 2018

Here's a post I've been holding off on for a while now, I guess because bad news only becomes actual bad news at the point when you share it.  Or at least because I've kept hoping that the horrendous dry spell I've been going through these last couple of years on the short fiction sales front might finally come to an end, and then I could spread a little good news instead.

To put that in perspective: since January 2017, I've literally sold more original novels than I have original short stories!  And honestly, this bites.  I mean, not the novel-selling part, that's great news.  But I know with utter conviction that I'm sending out some of the best short fiction I've written - indeed, maybe the best work I've written full stop - and the creeping certainty that some of it might never see the light of day is pretty gutting.  But what can you do?  Only give up or try that bit harder, and I'm not giving up yet.  So I've been submitting with all the energy I can muster, and more importantly, making a concerted effort to edit the remainder of the work I've got sitting about at first draft stage.  Because maybe something in that lot might fare better, right?

With that grumble out of the way, I have to admit that things could be worse.  At least I'm still selling the odd reprint, and at least I've landed them in a couple of really exciting markets.  The nicest surprise was when I was approached by the editor of Nowa Fantastyka to see if they could buy my story Jenny's Sick for translation into Polish.  Now that it's out, I'm probably safe to admit that I'd have likely let them have it for free; my family immigrated from Poland a generation or three back and it was extremely cool to have that link to what my dad jokingly refers to as "the old country."  Plus, Nowa Fantastyka is an utterly wonderful magazine.  I mean, I can barely read a word of it, but the presentation is fantastic, and the illustration for Jenny's Sick - rather, Jenny Choruje - is one of the very nicest I've had.

But family heritage issues aside, the bigger news is surely making it into a third of Flame Tree Publishing's utterly gorgeous gothic fiction anthologies (after Science Fiction and Lost Worlds).  This one's titled Lost Souls, and the story, Casualty of Peace, is one of my personal favourites, which I'm really pleased to be getting to yet more readers after its appearance in Eric Guignard's excellent Horror Library Volume 6 collection.  It's one of those rare tales that turned out just the way I intended, after a gestation period of months or maybe even years, and I'll be thrilled to see it between lavishly engraved hardback covers.  I'm not sure of a release date on that yet, but I'd guess it'll be towards the back end of the year; in the meantime, there's a full table of contents here.

And, thank goodness, there's always Digital Fiction Publishing!  I've already had one story out with them this year - Twitcher, in the Heinous Concoction horror anthology released back in February - and I've a couple more pending.  Again on the horror front, Great Black Wave will be coming up at some point, as will another personal favourite, my science-fiction tale of well-intentioned alien oppressors Free Radical.

Last up, I guess I should admit that there are one or two other things on the horizon, and those are original pieces.  But I don't know that I'm meant to be talking about them yet, so I won't.  Still, I do sincerely hope that things turn around before this year is out, because the way it's going, it's getting increasingly untenable to keep pouring time into writing and trying to sell short fiction - and it would break my heart to give it up.  So on that front as on every other, here's to the second half of 2018 sucking less than the first has!

The Bad Neighbour Available to Pre-Order

September seems like a long way off, but it really isn't, is it?  In fact, in about four months' time my sixth novel - and my crime debut - The Bad Neighbour will be out to buy as part of Flame Tree Press's exciting opening line-up, which also features a whole host of impressive fantasy, SF, and horror names, including Tim Waggoner, Ramsey Campbell, and John Everson.

Fortunately, Flame Tree are a bit more aware of the calendar than I am, as I recently discovered via Michael Wills, my editor over at Digital Fiction Publishing.  Probably that's not how these things are meant to work, but hey, the important point is that The Bad Neighbour is available for pre-order in a whole host of exciting places.

I will, of course, be going into greatly more detail on the book the closer we get to the release date, and about why I think it's great and you really ought to read it, but for the moment, here's the blurb:

When part-time teacher Ollie Clay panic-buys a rundown house in the outskirts of Leeds, he soon recognises his mistake. His new neighbour, Chas Walker, is an antisocial thug, and Ollie's suspicions raise links to a local hate group. With Ollie's life unravelling rapidly, he feels his choices dwindling: his situation is intolerable and only standing up to Chas can change it. But Ollie has his own history of violence, and increasingly, his own secrets to hide; and Chas may be more than the mindless yob he appears to be. As their conflict spills over into the wider world, Ollie will come to learn that there are worse problems in life than one bad neighbour.

Needless to say, pre-orders are a huge deal in publishing, and it will do the book no end of good to get a few - so if you're planning to grab a copy then now would be a terrific time to do so.  You can find The Bad Neighbour on Amazon UK and Amazon US, at Waterstones, and very likely at any other online bookseller of your choice as well.

The Top Ten Reasons I Reject Stories For Digital SFF

The topic of why stories get rejected is one I've been thinking about for an awfully long time, first as I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong to earn me endless rejections in the early days and then, over the last couple of years, as I found myself being the one behind those rejections in my role as Acquisitions Editor of fantasy and sometimes science-fiction short stories at Digital Fiction Publishing.  In the early days I tried to write a brief note explaining all of my 'no' votes, and I rapidly found that I was hunting for permutations of the same handful of explanations time and again; steadily it became apparent that, with a few rare exceptions, I was bouncing stories for a very limited number of reasons.

Now before I go further, I should say that the general standard of submissions we get is reliably high, and that we end up rejecting very many solid stories.  There's a definite advantage to only considering work that's been previously published in at least a semi-pro market.  (Of course, not everyone follows the guidelines, and that can be a reason for rejection in itself, though rarely on its own.)  My aim here certainly isn't to denigrate the work we turn away; it's simply to offer a little behind-the-scenes insight.  And to that I'll add that I've made every single mistake here at one point or another, so I'm certainly not one to judge!  In fact, I suspect I still make some of them.  Like this first, for example...

- No Sympathetic Characters

It's tough going to read about a protagonist who's totally obnoxious for however-many pages; then again, it's perfectly possible to make the most colossal asshat sympathetic so long as they're interesting.  The everyman characters tend to be the worst for this one: those who are just like all those boring people you know, only something wildly fantastical is happening to them.  That's fine and all, but I don't especially want to read about boring people, especially if there's nothing to give them a spark of inner life and I start to suspect that maybe their author isn't terribly attached to them either.

- Seen It Before

This is probably the hardest to pre-empt; what's overly familiar to me might be the freshest damn thing to another editor.  With that said, it's definitely the case that a writer's unfamiliarity with the genre they're working in tends to show itself quickly.  Often, however, it's not even the content necessarily, but rather a question of style and tone.  To put it another way, the stories that tend to spark my interest early are the ones that do at least something to surprise me: a turn of phrase here or an idea there.  When you boil it right down, there aren't a lot of truly innovative concepts left to be written, but any really good writer will bring a voice to their material that will make it feel fresh.

- No, Literally Seen It Before

Oh, and then there are the folks who actually just keep sending in the same story.  Pro tip: for this to stand a hope of working, you really need to make sure that the person who read your story the last time is out of the picture.  Try murder.  Or bribery.

Wait, no, definitely that second one.

- More Than a Couple of Typos

We're a reprint market, so we're not much for copy-editing, because that should have been done already.  So if I'm spotting obvious mistakes in a piece that's already been published then that's a major red flag.  Also file under this category leaving track changes on with an editor's comments visible in the margins.  Especially when you've ignored those comments, despite their being obviously correct.  (This has become so common that it's actually kind of weird.)

- Too Long

Actually, this arguably affects the majority of submissions we get.  And I'd urge any writer of short fiction to make trimming their story to its briefest reasonable length a priority.  I'll always look more kindly on a good four-thousand word story than a good six-thousand word short story, because the former makes less demands on my time and so allows me to get more work done.  And in the latter case, I'll likely be noting the points where cuts could have been made.  Generally they're not hard to find; often these are the tales that start a couple of pages before they should have, with a lengthy character-establishing preamble or a blob of direct exposition that really should have been worked in more subtly later.

- Fairies And / Or Blacksmiths

This is probably a subcategory of "Seen It Before" - in fact, it definitely is - but there always seems to be someone who assumes that everybody else out there has forgotten the roots of the genre and that it will be terribly daring to write something in which a random blacksmith's apprentice kills a dragon or gets tricked by fairies or whatever.  I don't know if there's an obvious sci-fi equivalent, but as a general rule, if you think you've rediscovered the long-lost wellspring of a genre, you probably haven't.  In fact, you'll be lucky if your 'blacksmith's apprentice vs fairies' story is alone in that batch of submissions.

- Not As Funny As It Thinks It Is

These tend to be the most likely to make me want to stop reading within a paragraph: the stories that scream their intention to be humorous from their opening lines and just aren't.  Which, in fact, is most of the ones that take a stab at being funny, because humour is perhaps the hardest thing to get right as a fiction author, and also because I'm a miserable git.  Unless you have cast-iron proof that you're a comedy genius, I'd argue for not taking the risk.

On the other hand, any story that really makes me laugh is almost a surefire recommendation, so make of that what you will.

- Not Actually a Story

A tricksy one this, but awfully common; these are the tales where five or six or a dozen pages in, I'm still not getting any sense of an actual narrative.  Twist-ending stories tend to fall into this category, at least the ones where the author has assumed that someone will endure a few thousand words of mundanity just to have the rug pulled from under them in the last paragraph.  Whatever the case, a story needs to be doing something awfully right elsewhere to get me to overlook the fact that I'm nearing the halfway point and still don't have a clue as to why what I'm reading about should matter.

- Not Enough Style

These are the stories that tend to get farthest along, only to be rejected at the last minute, or scrape their way to a hesitant 'maybe'.  They're fine, they're engaging, there's enough originality in the tale itself to make them stand out from the crowd, but there's nothing to differentiate them stylistically.  On the narrative level they're interesting, but on the level of sentences and words they're a bit flat.  Honestly, this is a really, really hard one to nail, but it's often what makes all the difference, and a sign that a further draft was needed to introduce that elusive spark.

- An Overabundance of Style

Then there are the stories that just don't know when to back off with their style.  It's there from the first line and never relents, even when it's getting in the way of such basic necessities as moving the plot forward or setting up characters.  After the stories that try to be funny and don't land it, these tend to be the most wearisome, and often its because they're the work of obviously talented writers - ones who are maybe just a little too aware of that fact.  Style is undoubtedly a way to catch an editor's eye, and I've recommended stories that wowed me that way, but it can also become exhausting really quickly; basically it's a tool like any other, that needs to be put away sometimes.

And there we have it: the top reasons I'm most likely to turn down a submission, or at least the ten that I could remember off the top of my head.  So what do people think?  Is anything here unreasonable?  Does the world need more stories about fairies and blacksmiths?  Is style overrated?  Or underrated?  Set me right in the comments!

Hark to the Sign in the Moonlight

Implausible as it might seem, I can be a bit sneaky on occasions!  Like when it comes to news; I've been sitting on this particular piece for over a year now, even though it was a subject I was craving to discuss.  But I can also be sly when it comes to getting my books out in cool formats.  Today's case in point occurred somewhere around last Christmas, when, due to a contract mix-up, it turned out that my story The Shark in the Heart had been included in an audiobook adaptation of the Sharkpunk anthology though I'd omitted to sign over the relevant rights.  Editor Jonathan Green was immensely nice about the confusion (as he tends to be nice about everything, unless you're unlucky enough to find yourself up against him in a live version of Just a Minute at a convention, in which case he's a git) and offered to have my story removed.  But I'd already heard the recording of The Shark in the Heart by then, and it was a terrific take on the story, so that was the last thing I wanted to happen.  Instead, spying an opportunity, I asked if he would mind making introductions to the team who'd produced the audiobook version, studio Circle of Spears?

My goal, of course, was to talk them into producing an audiobook of my own short story collection The Sign in the Moonlight, which had been a cherished dream basically from the moment I started putting the anthology together.  And fortunately they didn't need a lot of persuading; in fact, they were flat-out enthusiastic.  The results, somewhat over a year later, are everything I could have hoped for, and something I suspect only a smaller, independent production house could have concocted.  For a start, Sam Burns and Tracey Norman split the male and female narrators up between them, which is a brilliant touch; but more than that, their deep roots in drama mean that these are more than mere narrations.  They've gone the extra mile to build on the characters I wrote, and to capture the period atmosphere that's crucial to so much of the collection.  Stories such as The Burning Room and The War of the Rats really do have the air of historical diary accounts read aloud; The Desert Cold really does have the sinister overtones of a criminal's confession; let your mind drift a little and it really is possible to believe that the teller of The Facts in the Case of Algernon Whisper's Karma is recounting from the distant past.  Sam and Tracey have found the bloody hearts of these stories and ripped them out for anyone to hear, and the result is something as special, in its own way, as the beautifully illustrated original or its lavish hardback cousin.

Anyway, no need to take my word for what a fine job Circle of Spears have done!  You can grab a digital copy here, or a physical copy here.  And full details of the collection, including the story listing, can be found on my website here.

Black River 3: The First Post

Is it too early to start discussing a book that I only began writing five weeks ago today?  Well, maybe, but I'm over halfway through, I have it planned out to the finish, and anyway, what the heck, right?  I want to talk about the next Black River novel.  I'm already excited about it, and there's no reason I shouldn't try and share some of that excitement!

So here are a few small teasers that I think it's okay for you to know at this early stage.  Rest assured that nothing here will meaningfully spoil your enjoyment of the third book (or even the first or second, if you haven't read those.)  But of course if you really want to come to this second sequel blind then you should probably stop reading right now.

For everyone who's left, here are six insights into what will be coming at the end of 2018:

- This One is Arein's Story

Astute readers may have spotted the fact that, while each of the two books so far has been about Durren, Tia, Hule, and Arein as a party, they did tend to focus in on one character in particular.  In Level One it was Durren; in The Ursvaal Exchange it was Tia.  Well, this time around it's Arein's turn.  And she's in for a rough ride.  You know how Arein's always been a bit scared of her own magic?  Now imagine how she'd feel if a spell ever got really, wildly, disastrously out of control.

- But it's also Pootle's Story, Kind Of

Where Arein goes, Pootle is sure to be following close behind.  And Pootle's a little mysterious; we've never really delved into just what's going on there.  How do observers work?  Why do they work?  Everyone's favourite floating eyeball may not have done much but hang around so far, but it's about to make its presence felt in a major way.

- It's a Dungeon Crawl

At least in part.  I've been intrigued for a long time with the notion of what a dungeon crawl would really be like; in D&D campaigns and video games, you spend days or even weeks underground, and not once does anyone get claustrophobic, or trapped by a cave-in, or stress about lugging a tent around or the practicalities of starting a campfire when you've been under the earth for so long that you barely remember what sunlight looks like.  And since I'm the kind of person who worries unduly about those sorts of practicalities - and since this series could hardly go on forever without some serious time spent in a proper dungeon! - that's a little of what we'll be delving into.

- There's a Scene That's (Loosely!) Based on My D&D Campaign

A small confession: before I began writing the Black River Chronicles, my hands-on experience with D&D extended to one afternoon at the house of a friend of a friend.  And since I insisted on playing as an alcoholic dwarf bodyguard who wouldn't lift a finger unless his client was in danger, it didn't go tremendously well.  But finding myself writing a series that draws from the game so heavily, I felt it was time I gave it a proper go, and I've been with my current group, under the not-so-tender ministrations of dungeon master Jimi Jibodu, for a few months now.  The scene in question was not, however, from Jimi's campaign but from a fill-in session DM'd by another member of the group.  I've modified it heavily, of course, to make sure that it slots comfortably into the book (and to not be a big plagiarist!)  Nevertheless, it's my first instance of D&D life influencing D&D art, and that warrants a place on this list.

- Book Three is Going to be a Bit Longer

Of these points, this is perhaps the one I'm least certain about right now; but midway through the chapter plan, the wordage was already at nearly two thirds of The Ursvaal Exchange's final count.  That doesn't necessarily mean a great deal, since I tend to write verbose first drafts and then hack them up heavily when I return.  Still, I've a feeling that this one might come in around the one hundred thousand words mark, which equates to a couple more chapters than the last.  It's a big, ambitious story, with an awful lot to cover.

- It Actually Already Has a Title

Last but certainly not least ... the third Black River book has a working title, which may or may not end up being the final title.  Currently it's called Eye of the Observer - which might raise some interesting questions for readers who've followed the series so far!

-oOo-

So there we are: a tiny glimpse into what's coming in, oh, about eight months time now.  There's a great deal still to be written, and a vast amount of editing to come once the writing's done, but for all that, it's safe to say that The Black River Chronicles: (maybe!) Eye of the Observer is beginning to come together.  I'm certainly having a ton of fun writing it, which always tends to be a good sign!

The Black River Chronicles: Who Would You Be?

I was once asked in an interview, "If you could live in the world of a fantasy novel, which one would it be?" and again, "If you could be any one of your characters, who would you choose?"  The answer to both questions was the same: I wouldn't want to live in any fantasy world, thank you very much, and certainly not one of my own.  Those places are dangerous!  I mean, real life is dangerous, but fantasy lands are seriously dangerous.  I might stub my toe, or slip on an icy pavement, or get a funny tummy from eating shrimp that's been in the fridge for too long, but I don't expect to ever have to stare down a dragon.

But if I was going to be a character in a fantasy novel, especially one of my own, I wouldn't pick anyone at the Black River Academy; even by relative standards, it seems severely hazardous.  And if I had kids, I wouldn't let my kids go there either.  Oh, that head tutor Borgnin might make a big show of having safety measures in place, but have you ever seen them in action?  Have they once teleported out a party that were about to be splatted by trolls or devoured by giants?  Well, maybe; I mean, I don't want to disparage the educational establishment in my own books.  Still, I'd be awfully wary if I found myself there, and I wouldn't waste any time buying a ticket on the first stagecoach to Luntharbor, which frankly sounds like a far nicer spot.

Now, I realise that I'm a grump with no sense of adventure and perhaps too healthy a sense of self-preservation, and not everyone's like me.  Some people enjoy imagining themselves as characters in even the most dangerous of stories, and no doubt there's at least someone out there who's thought "Boy, I'd sure like to be one of the students in those Black River Chronicles, they seem to be having plenty of fun, what with the murderous shapeshifters and the savage unicorns and the poisonous giant toads and the walking corpses."

For those people: congratulations on being much braver than I am.  And I've made you a little quiz.  Because there's no use imagining yourself as a character in the Black River Chronicles without knowing which of the party you're most suited to be, right?  I mean, maybe you're envisaging yourself as Hule when you'd be much better off as Arein; maybe you like the idea of firing off the odd arrow and running away a lot the way Durren does, but you'd be far better off slinking around in the shadows and generally being all Tia-like?  Or, you know, perhaps you're be best off as a floating eyeball that really doesn't contribute all that much.  Because that's an option, too!

The point being: there's now a Black River Chronicles quiz.  And you can find it here.  Have fun!  And don't come complaining to me if you don't get the answer you want, it was created using rigorous science and is totally infallible!

2017: Achievement Unlocked

It occurred to me when I started planning this year-just-gone's concluding post that there's a bias inherent in the system: I always write these things at Christmas and Christmas is my least favourite time of year.  I mean, not Christmas itself, exactly, but the dark depths of winter are perhaps not the best vantage point from which to try and objectively summarize twelve months of one's life.  And usually when I look back a few months later, I'm surprised by how pessimistic I've been.

Which is to say, it feels like 2017 was a but rubbish right at this minute; but it's probably safe to assume that a large part of that is the dark and the cold and the fact that I've done next to nothing except line editing for what feels like a decade and is easily five whole months.  Argh, I'm so sick of editing!  And seriously, I'm never going to blunder into a situation where I have to deliver two manuscripts in immediate succession again, because doing so is an incredible, soul-sucking nightmare.  I swear, I've spent maybe two months of 2017 in the business of actually making up stories, and it hasn't been anywhere like enough.  Creatively speaking, I've had my ass kicked.  And that's not even to mention the unusually dreadful year I've had on the short fiction front, with a grand total of one new story sold in the entire twelve month period, a fact made all the worse by the weirdly disproportionate number of editors who just never bothered to get back to me or lost my story down the back of the sofa or whatever.

So, yeah, some stuff sucked.  But a lot didn't.  For a start, I got to try a couple of intriguing new sidelines: somehow I began a tangential career as an interviewer, and got to talk to Joanne Harris and Adrian Tchaikovsky in front of live audiences, both of which were amazing experiences; and thanks to Michael Wills and Digital Fiction Publishing, I got my teeth into slush-reading, which led me to some stunning authors I'd never have encountered otherwise and gave me the chance to help more people get to read their work.  Most importantly, for me at least, The Black River Chronicles are out there in a major way and finding readers: Level One is already proving popular, and with The Ursvaal Exchange released as of late November, we now have a fledgling series for readers to get their teeth into.  It's a book that I'm really excited for, the first I've had out that I felt went mostly right from the beginning and ended up being more or less exactly what I'd intended, and I'm eager to see what people make of it.  Especially since I'm really close to beginning the third book, which is another step up in ambition and another broadening of the world that Mike and I have concocted.  I love this series, and that there are increasingly other people out there who love it is reassuring to know.

And actually, on a personal level, 2017 has been a mostly solid year, too.  There were some crappy moments, sure - I could happily never end up in A&E with an eye infection again ever - and maybe a bit more work than I could reasonably cope with.  But I finally feel like I'm settled back in the north after my years of IT contracting in the wilderness, and that I have stuff going on here, whether it's pub-crawling around Sheffield with that Ian Sales bloke or board-gaming or my D&D campaign (and yay for my D&D campaign, the most fun that I could possibly have while pretending I'm researching for The Black River Chronicles!)  In fact, my birthday celebration, which somehow managed to drag together people from all across the spectrum of my life, was perhaps the nicest birthday I've had - and huge thanks to everyone who made it, your presence meant a lot.

Here's the really exciting thing, though, and the thing that definitively tips 2017 from an okay to a basically good year: this was the first year since I walked away from my regular job that I didn't have to dip into my savings even slightly.  While I didn't exactly manage to live off my writing income, I came considerably closer than on any previous occasion.  I have no idea if this is sustainable, let alone if a level of success where I get to write full time and not be majorly hard up is ever going to be on the cards, but I've already done a little better than I seriously expected to when I walked the plank out of my safe, well-paid IT career.

Oh, and a big part of the reason why is that I've sold another novel, which is due out next year.  I knew there was something else!  But that's kind of a secret right now, so I can't tell you which book it is or who the publisher is or anything at all useful.  The proper announcement should be along sooner rather than later, and it's probably enough to say that this is something wholly, wildly different from anything I've had out before, and that the publisher is one I'm thrilled to be working with, having seen the sort of extraordinary work they've released in the past.

So that was 2017.  I had a new novel out and sold a couple more, both of which are due for 2018.  I managed to keep my head above water; I get to keep doing the job that I (mostly!) love for another twelve months, at the very least.  And whether I end up looking back at this past year as a turning point or a lucky fluke, I feel as though I've proved to myself that the decision I made four and a bit years ago wasn't wholly idiotic, and that alone is enough to make 2017 a win.

The Ursvaal Exchange Begins

It's out!  The second of the Black River Chronicles, The Ursvaal Exchange, is available to buy in print and e-book as of the end of last week.  If you enjoyed Level One, I genuinely think you'll love this one; it builds in so many fun ways on the groundwork Mike and I laid there, and develops the gang and the world they inhabit in some directions that I for one find really interesting.  And if you're new to the series, I'm confident that this second book stands well on its own - though it would probably make more sense to just grab them both and begin from the beginning!

I've talked so much about this novel by now that I think, right here, I'll back off to touch on an aspect I've never officially addressed.  Eagle-eyed readers might notice that there's one name rather than two on the cover this time, and that it's mine.  This is because my co-creator and publisher, Mike Wills, decided that his input into the series doesn't warrant taking a full author co-credit.  And while there's perhaps no easy answer as to what does or doesn't constitute co-authoring a novel, I didn't want to let that pass without taking an opportunity to point out how, regardless of what names go where, this series has been Mike's baby from the beginning.  In truth, the initial concept was all his, and there are countless moments and details that were either direct suggestions or that spun out of me musing on his suggestions and off-hand comments.  (Just as an example, Hule's entire arc this time around comes from a detail that I felt bad about not being able to work into Level One!)

The point being, though I'm now listed as the sole author of these books and will be going forward, in my heart The Black River Chronicles will always be Mike's playground: one he built the foundations of and then, effectively, paid me to run around in.  Writing professionally isn't always the easiest of jobs, despite what you may have heard, but there's such a thing as a dream writing gig, and for me, this is it; I'm utterly in love with this world and this concept and these characters, and it's a joy to be spinning these tales.  Had Mike never pondered where fighters, wizards, rogues and rangers learn the basic skills to do the things they do, I'd never have met Hule, Arein, Tia and Durren; had he never left me trying to figure out how the four of them could go on multiple quests in one novel without spending half the book wandering the countryside, there would be no Pootle.

And I have big, big plans for Pootle!  But perhaps I'd do better not to spoiler the third book - because, yes, there's going to be a third book, which I'm plotting out now and will be starting early in the new year.  Which, come to think of it, is also pretty major news, right?

In the meantime, there's The Ursvaal Exchange - which you can buy is print and e-book in the US here and in the UK here.  And for those who haven't seen the blurb yet, here's a little insight into what our second chronicle is about:

Student ranger Durren Flintrand had thought he was settling in at the Black River Academy for Swordcraft and Spellcraft. But when rebellious rogue Tia Locke uncovers a horrifying secret in the dungeons beneath the school, Durren quickly realises that the challenges he's faced so far were scant preparation for what lies ahead.  Along with magic-averse wizard Arein and blunt but good-hearted fighter Hule, he and Tia find themselves on Black River's first student exchange program: they're being sent to the Shadow Mountain Academy in the dank and dismal land of Ursvaal, and they're going whether they like it or not. 

At Shadow Mountain, things are done differently. No longer is Durren a ranger but a bard, despite his lacking the slightest notion of what being a bard involves. And not only that but Tia is acting even more strangely than usual, Hule is taking being a paladin awfully seriously, and Arein has a new party member with ideas very different to her own to contend with, in the shape of irascible cleric Cailliper Ancrux - who wants nothing less than to be involved with Shadow Mountain's unpopular newcomers. 

The four Black River students will have to relearn everything they thought they knew; but the threats surrounding them aren't about to wait. Can they hope to survive an uprising of the dead, the winged horror that haunts this desolate land, and an ancient plot risen from the blackest depths of Ursvaal's history? And even if the somehow should, can Durren possibly overcome his tone deafness and learn to play the lute?

The Ursvaal Exchange Cover Reveal

There's going to be a lot happening on the Ursvaal Exchange front in the coming weeks - we're awfully close to our mid-November release date, after all - but let's start with what's, for me, the most exciting part of the whole process.  We have a cover!  And it's glorious!

That's by Kim Van Deun, who painted the second cover for Level One and who I sincerely hope will be staying with us as we move forward with this series, because he's an astounding talent and it was a real pleasure putting this together with him - or rather, making a few vague suggestions and then getting out of the way while he sprinted off into the distance.  And as much as I like seeing my name written on things, it's even more impressive in full and without all that text cluttering things up:

Cool, right?  And since I know that we live in a world of fake news and misleading book covers, let me just say here, Hule really is going to get to wield that sledgehammer!