A Map Of Kormak’s World
So finally the Kingdoms of the Sun have what all serious/series fantasy worlds seem to need– a map. This beautiful one was done by Chazz Kellner using Campaign Cartographer 3. (Thanks Chazz!) It’s an enormous improvement on the vague sketches and lists of names that I produced when I first started writing the stories. The distances are accurate and I now have a much clearer idea where everything is. It’s been a fascinating process watching bits of background from my published books, my notes and my half-completed short stories take shape. I’ll be adding this map to the latest version Read more…
Anatomy of an E-Book Sale
I just bought an e-book, Yesterday’s Spy, by Len Deighton. So what, Bill, I hear you cry– you buy ebooks every day. Most of us do. What’s there worth writing a blog post about in that? Well, it’s a process I usually do unthinkingly and today I actually analysed it on the level of both my intellectual processes and the mechanisms of sale. (Forgive me if what I am going to say sounds entirely obvious, but sometimes it’s worth thinking about the obvious.) Here’s what happened. This morning I was reading an article on Slate about how Len Deighton wrote Read more…
Author’s Notes: Weaver of Shadow
Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilisation is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph. That quote, as you probably well know, comes from Robert E. Howard. More specifically it comes from his 1935 story Beyond the Black River, one of my two all-time favourite Conan tales. (It’s a toss up with Red Nails. I can’t choose between them.) Beyond the Black River illustrates Howard’s theme all too well. It’s a tale of violence along the border between the civilised land of Aquilonia and the Pictish Wilderness. It was written late in Howard’s Read more…
Author’s Notes: Defiler of Tombs
I started work on Defiler of Tombs almost seven years ago, back in 2006. I really wanted to write a novel about Kormak, the monster-hunting hero of The Guardian of the Dawn but I was trying to fit it into the template that would be acceptable to a conventional fantasy publisher. I’ve written about what a struggle that was elsewhere, but to recap, I was trying to fit a lean, taut sword and sorcery tale into an oversized vessel, to make it longer than it was meant to be. It could not to be done (by me at least) and Read more…
Gamesday Italia and Other Stuff
Just a quick note to say I am getting ready for Gamesday Italia in Modena. I am really looking forward to this. Also for all you writers out there, a book recommendation; 2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better. This is one of the shortest and best books about writing I have read, and certainly the best book about writing I have read this year. It’s by Rachel Aaron, of How To Write 10,000 words in a Day fame and it covers not only how to increase your word count, but how to edit efficiently and well, and probably the Read more…
Author’s Notes: Stealer of Flesh
I know, it’s a bit silly to be writing up the Author’s Notes five months or so after the book was released but what the hell– I’ve been busy and I’ve been sick and these things get done in their own time. Stealer of Flesh is a book that Amazon made possible. Seriously. All of my life I have wanted to write something like it but I was born at the wrong time. In order to explain that we need to rewind to when I was a very young teenager. I grew up reading, among other things, lots of good, Read more…
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