Sunday, 26 October 2008

Best Served Cold Copy

So, we have some copy for Best Served Cold now that all parties are happy with. It goes something like this:

Springtime in Styria. And that means war.

There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die.

Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...

Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

Artwork is pretty much there as well. I'll be talking about that in due course. For now let me only say it's pretty damn good. Oh, yes, sir...

And, since folks are asking, the book will be out June 2009 in hardcover in the UK, then a month later in July in hardcover in the US.

Labels: news, process

Tuesday, 21 October 2008

An Evening in Casualty

OK, true story, so don't laugh.

Well, you can laugh where you're meant to laugh.

My wife has college on a Tuesday, and my daughter goes to nursery with her. I go to meet them off the bus to lend a hand when they get back most days, just down the end of my road. 5 minute walk. So yesterday I'm on my way down there, 5 o'clock in the afternoon, broad daylight, rush hour, plenty of people around. Maybe 100 yards from my front door, and I see a load of kids hanging out round the front of a little estate that's on my road. You know the types with the hoodies and all. And I think, hmm, I'm glad I'm on this side of the road, though I don't give it much attention. Fifty yards further on I feel a tug on my bag, which is a smallish bag containing, at this moment, a book, a pen, and some Rennies (over-the-counter indigestion pills). I'm just holding it by the corner, but I keep hold of it. Turn round, and there's this kid there, maybe 13, smiling.

And he's all, "oh, man! I nearly got it! Nearly got it! Has it got a laptop in there, man?"

And I said, "no. What? Eh? No." And then as I started to realise he'd tried to nick my bag, stretched the Queen's English toward its more colourful limits.

I realise a load of his mates are following me now, six of them maybe, two kids at the front in particular, one of whom has a banister with him. They're shouting at me - not Shakespeare - and I'm shouting back a bit - I should've used Shakespeare, thinking about it, but in the heat of the moment the mind did rather reach for f*cking little c*nts instead, so unless that's in As You Like It I rather missed my chance - and they're still following me, but not really all that keen to catch up, I wouldn't say, not chasing after, exactly.

Now here's the stupid part, and I still don't totally understand the thought process here, if there was anything you could call a thought process. I turned round and walked towards them. I've been thinking a lot about why I did that.

I don't know if I was just gripped by some kind of fundamental macho-twat death wish of refusing to have the piss taken out of me by a load of 13 year olds.

A kind of outrage that some little tw*t had tried to steal my bag (containing, let us remember, a book and some dyspepsia medication) in broad daylight.

A feeling that if I kept walking away they'd just get bolder, and keep chasing after me, and my better chance was just to face them down then and there (not clever) especially since I was on the way to meet my wife and two year old and didn't particularly want to arrive with an escort of banister-waving 13-year old scum.

I think in the back of my mind, was the notion that perhaps if I came towards them, like a game of chicken, they'd run off. They didn't though, it hardly needs to be said. And so, "alea iacta est", as Julius Caesar would've said, or if the Matrix is more your thing, "you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of ... inevitability." I walked towards them, they walked towards me, we met and exchanged pleasantries, going through now the pathetic ritual of posturing that males of the species usually engage in prior to a fight. Chiefly it was these two kids at the front, a right pair of pasty uglies, one with the banister, they might have been brothers.

The one on the right is going, "you stupid? You stupid?" or words to that effect, and the one on the left, "you in my face? You in my face?" Which were redundant questions, really, since I obviously was both stupid and in their face.

So I shoved the guy on my left into a car. Didn't really shove him that hard. More of an escalating jostle than much else. His mate (brother?) then twatted me over the head with the banister. Hard as he could. Pretty damn hard. The feeling was very undramatic. No pain to speak of. A little jolt. I think maybe I half got my arm up, deflected it a bit. Not really sure. He went, "woah!" because I'm guessing there was some blood at that point. It seems as if there was a polite pause, but maybe time feels like it slows at a moment like that. I think we were all a bit surprised. He was a bit surprised he'd actually clocked me. I was a bit surprised he'd actually clocked me. We were all a bit surprised I didn't go down, or even move much. It just bounced off. Perhaps none of us had thought it would come to that. Anyway, I got the banister off him, not sure how. Maybe he was a bit shocked, lost his grip, or maybe I twisted it off him.

What do you do when someone hits you over the head with a banister and you somehow get it off them? Obviously, you hit their mate with it. He looked at me, and saw it was coming, and he twisted away, and I cracked him over the back with it and the end broke off and he kind of reeled away.

The rest of them all more or less ran at that point, leaving me there, slightly tangled with my bag, half a banister in hand, wondering what happened and swearing a lot. I started walking off down the road. I became aware that I was bleeding. Like, really pouring out of me. Spritzing, I think Richard Morgan might say. It was spattering down my t-shirt, down my jeans, all over the road. I put my hand to my head and it came away red as if I'd pressed it into a plate of blood. Loads of blood, by my standards at any rate, where a hangnail is something to visit the doctor for. Uh-oh, I thought. This isn't good. Is my skull broken? Still didn't hurt, though, and I felt absolutely fine. Quite chipper, really. Just out for a walk with the old bannister, you know, spritzing. Checked, but they weren't following, so I just went on to meet my wife thinking, she'll know what to do, probably I'll need to go to casualty, though, cause I'm like really bleeding, and it's a new t-shirt, and you can only wash it at 30 degrees, so that'll be buggered. Little shits.

Anyway, met the wife, she didn't realise until I was quite close that I was covered in blood, what the hell happened and all the rest. A friendly dentist's surgery let us in, helped me clean up, though the bloodflow was largely staunched by now. My wife phoned 999, police turned up very quickly, took a statement, then an ambulance took me up to casualty where I waited a couple of hours to have the head cleaned up and looked at. A long cut, but not that deep, didn't need stitches, they glued it, I came home. I can't wash for five days, but that's OK, because I don't usually wash anyway. A ha ha.

One strange thing is, though, and this is a really strange thing, I feel much more pleased with myself that I went back - even though it was a terminally stupid thing to do, achieved absolutely nothing, and I'm really lucky I didn't get hurt a lot worse - than I would have been if I ran off. Posturing macho bullshit? Striking a blow for the cause of righteousness? Standing up for your family (highly questionable)? It's not something I would ever have thought I'd do.

I hope I don't make any of this sound at all romantic or exciting, because it really wasn't. Silly was the word I'd use to describe most of it. The lame attempt to steal a bag which contained nothing, my sluggish response, the meaningless monosyllabic exchange of insults, the retarded decision to turn round and get in their faces, the cut-price macho posturing, my pointless shove of one guy almost just to get things started, them letting me get the banister off them, me ineffectually breaking it over the wrong guy's back, which probably didn't even hurt, them running off even though there were seven of them, 2 tedious hours wasted waiting in casualty, a largely sleepless night spent turning the thing pointlessly over and over in my head, leaving me feeling sore and mildly hung over this morning. I felt neither scared nor angry at any point. It happened too fast for that, really. I felt confused, then irritated, then overcome by a sick sense of inevitability, then worried about all the blood, then bored waiting to be seen in casualty, and today just tired and mildly irritable (pretty much the usual baseline).

Did I win? Well, they ran away, I kept the bag, and I even came out of it with half a banister more than when I started. But I scared them off largely by splurting blood everywhere. Not quite how Vin Diesel would have done it at the movies. If minor scalp wounds were less spectacular I'd probably have got a right kicking. And what did I win? Two hours in casualty? Jackpot, baby!

Anyway, visit to the police station tomorrow morning to go through mugshots. As one of the officers with the response unit said, somewhat resignedly as though he too was overwhelmed by the silliness of it all, "if they've done it today, the chances are they've done it before, and we'll have caught them, and we'll have their pictures." Honestly don't know if I'll recognise them - oooh, they all look the same these days though don't they these kids though, oooh, fabric of society coming apart at the seams, etc. It's surprising how the details get away from you, especially considering I was no more than six inches from them, looking right in their faces, in broad daylight.

The morals of this little tale? As with so much in real life, it rarely boils down to simple moral lessons (it's something I try to reflect in my writing, doncha know), but a couple present themselves:

1. A banister is a much less effective weapon than one would expect.
2. This type of thing doesn't necessarily happen at night, down ill-lit backstreets of foreign towns. It happens on your doorstep, because that's where you usually are.
3. Even superficial scalp wounds bleed a hell of a lot.
4. The emergency services are damn fine people.
5. It's always best to walk away from these situations ... isn't it?

Questions that remain unresolved:

1. Why did I walk back, thereby escalating the situation and making it almost inevitable the guy would have to clock me with the banister?
2. Why did I focus my attention on the guy without the banister, even as far as hitting him with the bannister instead of the one who hit me?
3. Will I now be crapping myself every time I walk down that bit of street or, indeed, have to avoid that bit of street for months to come?
4. Will they ever be caught for it, or will it be (as seems much more likely) another pointless and unresolved moment of violence on the streets of old London town...

Time will tell...

Labels: Other Life

Friday, 17 October 2008

Two More Things

Tired of reading me make an arse of myself?

Now you can LISTEN to me make an arse of myself, because I've been interviewed by Michael Stackpole, Summer Brooks and Michael Mennenga at The Dragon Page. I am really not so good at this spoken interview business yet ... but conversation runs towards language, violence, and innovation in fantasy, plus an enormous amount of dithering and massive over-use of the meaningless phrases, "if you like," and "kind of". It starts about 15 minutes in, by the way, because Mike Stackpole takes that long to really rip a book to shreds (not mine, I'm relieved to say).

Not like me to link to the blog of another author, you would have thought, but in this case it's OK to share the glory because the redoubtable Pat Rothfuss, stablemate at Gollancz, owner of the most exciting new beard in fantasy, and author of the vastly successful Name of the Wind, has been speaking about The First Law. A little quote:

"The books are good, really good. They pulled me in. Well-developed world. Unique, compelling characters. I like them so much that when I got to the end of the second book and found out the third book wasn't going to be out in the US for another three months. I experienced a fit of rage, then a fit of depression, then I ate some lunch and had a bit of a lay down."

I owe him a beer now if I'm ever in the States, but it's OK because Marcus Sakey emailed me the other day promising me a beer if I'm ever in the States for giving his The Blade Itself a shout. Authorial karma.

Hey, maybe I could just get Marcus Sakey to drop off a beer to Pat Rothfuss...?

Labels: interviews, reviews

Friday, 10 October 2008

Two Things

Some fantasy-minded folks are setting up an award to commemorate the late, much-loved, David Gemmell. The David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy will be given for the first time in June 2009 for the best fantasy novel of 2008, which means ... oh ... Last Argument of Kings will be eligible, fancy that, I hadn't even realised until just now ...

*Ahem*

Anyway, check out the website, and the long list so far. The idea is, as I understand it, to focus on the more heroic/epic (dare one even say commercial) end of the fantasy spectrum (the type of work for which Gemmel was famous). Sounds like a good idea to me, since that stuff doesn't always get a lot of representation in the shortlists of existing awards. Nothing to do with me writing that sort of work. No, sir. You lot know me, and I never think of myself. Never. Anyway again, the process sounds like an interesting idea - publishers nominate any works they think fit the criteria, then there is an open public vote to establish a shortlist of five. A panel of genre experts then debate and select a winner. Current confirmed panelists include Aragorn, Cugel the Clever, the Grey Mouser, Conan, and Druss the Legend. I'm joking of course. Conan was unavailable, he's getting his back waxed that week.

But seriously, I think that process has the potential to combine the better elements of public and panelled awards. Unless I don't win, in which case I'll declare the entire thing an ill-conceived failure, and, more then likely, some kind of fix-up like that Campbell Award what I didn't win just because other nominees got a lot more votes than me. But seriously again, perhaps this is an opportunity for any among you who might complain that existing awards are too elitist and that epic fantasy never gets a fair crack of the whip to involve yourselves with something more proletarian? Hmmmmm?

But before you rush off to vote for Paul Kearney! 2008 isn't over, stoopid. The best fantasy book of this year might not yet have been published. Voting does not open until Christmas...

So to keep you entertainted until then ... there's a humblingly in-depth piece by Steve Tompkins - review? examination? essay? all three? on The First Law at The Cimmerian, a journal focusing on the work of the grandfather of Sword and Sorcery, Robert E. Howard. He talks about the covers, about long form fantasy versus short form, about the main characters, and much, much more. Well worth a look, if you're so inclined...

Labels: news, reviews

The Other The Blade Itself

So I've just done a little piece for a website called Writer's Read, a website where writers say ... what they read. Shockingly, I have actually been reading something recently. Thought I'd crosspost it here:

Over the last couple of weeks - in an airport, on a flight, and standing on the stairs for an hour this evening - I have been reading an exciting first novel that has set its genre aflame, called The Blade Itself.

I know what you're thinking. "But isn't that your book? How dare you promote it in such a barefaced manner? You pompous arse!" And you'd be right. I am a pompous arse. But not for that reason. Because although I have been reading an exciting first novel entitled The Blade Itself, the genre it set aflame was not fantasy but crime, and the author was not me, but a very pleasant young man from Chicago called Marcus Sakey.


Allow me to explain. It was, I think, several months after I sold my book, The Blade Itself, to a publisher, but several months before it was published, that I became aware that someone else had sold a book called The Blade Itself in the US. There is no hint of copying, the timing makes it impossible, we had simply, simultaneously, picked the same title, derived from a quote from Homer's Odyssey, "the blade itself incites to violence." Great minds think alike, I guess. And mine. When The Blade Itself was optioned for a film a few months ago I received a welter of congratulations from readers. A welter which greatly surprised me, since my agent had not been in touch. It was, in fact, Marcus Sakey's book, The Blade Itself, which had been taken to the bosom of Hollywood. In Siena, Italy a couple of weeks ago, my wife needed a book for the flight, so we stopped into a bookshop to peruse the English Language section. As I occasionally do when in a bookshop, I checked to see if my books were in stock. They did have The Blade Itself. You guessed it. Marcus Sakey's The Blade Itself.

So I thought I'd check it out. And I'm glad I did. It's a recognisable style of story - guy with a shady past makes good but his shady past comes back to haunt him - but it's nicely written with some good characterisation, a strong eye for detail, and the tough prose one would expect. At times I felt the plot tended to drive the characters rather than the other way around, but the build up and climax really were cracking, hence my finishing the book standing on the stairs. All in all a great piece of crime writing, and I look forward to reading whatever else Sakey puts out. Providing none of it shares titles with any of my other books, of course....

So my advice? Read The Blade Itself. Both of 'em.

Labels: interviews, reading

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

New Covers

The UK Mass Market editions of The First Law are being given a new cover treatment, to be phased in over the coming months in preparation for the mass market release of Last Argument of Kings in Februrary. Check out these bad boys:


Of course it lacks the full impact created by the oft-praised grip-friendly paper, debossing of text and sundry features, and precious foils in gold, icy blue or bronze, applied to the edges of text and the symbol in the background to make the covers glitter from afar like the setting sun upon a stirring sea...


But I think you still get the idea. Note in particular how MY NAME now appears above the title, and in bigger letters. Why so? Because I is a BRAND, biatches. I must say I find it slightly weird, but sales have insisted, and when sales insist ... names are ... made bigger, I guess. I'm sure I'll get used to the idea. It continues with the cover of Best Served Cold, which I daresay I'll be discussing in due course, at great length, 'cause it is frakking ACE.


My grovelling appreciation to Laura, the designer, and Gillian, dark mistress of editorial, responsible for these works of art. You could sell any old crap with THOSE on the front. Which is just as well...

And in case you're thinking - man, it doesn't say it's part of a series and which number in the series it is, and that's like well annoying - it does say. On the back. Oh, and while we're talking about The First Law, check this out:

"Abercrombie has written the finest epic fantasy trilogy in recent memory. He's one writer no one should miss."

Junot Diaz, winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. That's right. Let me bullet point it. Junot ... Diaz ... Pulitzer ... finest epic fantasy ... no one should miss. In fact, he expressed well-deserved approval for Pyr's ouput as a whole.

One more time. Pulitzer ... epic ... miss.

Labels: artwork, process