Tuesday, 25 August 2009

The Heroes

With Best Served Cold already three months out (can it really be so long?), perhaps the time has come to talk a little about my next book. Like Best Served Cold it's intended to be a semi-standalone, which can be read on its own (hopefully) but has a few characters and settings in common with the First Law.

It is called:

The Heroes

Both because the action centres around a ring of standing stones called the Heroes, and because it's about heroism and that (meant semi-ironically, of course). It mostly takes place over the course of three days, and is the story of a single battle for control of the North. Think Lord of the Rings meets A Bridge Too Far, with a sprinkling of Band of Brothers and Generation Kill. It's about war, you get me? Principally it follows the (mis)adventures of six assorted persons on both sides and different levels of command, whose paths intersect during the course of the battle in various fateful, horrible, wonderful, surprisingly violent, surprisingly unviolent, and hilarious ways. With the Northmen: a veteran losing his nerve who just wants to keep his crew alive, an ex-Prince determined to claw his way back to power by any means necessary, a young lad determined to win a place in the songs for himself. With the Union: A depressive swordsman who used to be the king's bodyguard, a profiteering standard-bearer, and the venomously ambitious daughter of the Marshal in command. But of course a fair few familiar faces show up on both sides...

I'm just finishing up the first draft of the second part of five, so two fifths of the way through, about 85,000 words in. Which means the whole thing is looking like about 220,000 words - similar length to Best Served Cold and Last Argument of Kings. Really want to write some shorter books one of these days. REALLY want to. Provided I keep writing relatively smoothly (which is by no means a certainty given that we've got a massive building project starting over the next few months), the whole first draft will hopefully be done spring next year. A fair bit of editing will no doubt be required, though, meaning that an October publication is just too tight. For small fry like me November through January is pretty much the zone of death, which means February 2011 is probably the soonest you guys can expect to see it lighting up the shelves, alas.

That'll mean 20 months between books, which is a fair bit more than I'd like in general but, hey, maybe I'll be able to get a head start on the next thing (yeah, right). It also means no book from me in 2010, though I'll have a short story out in an anthology. So, the headlines:

The Heroes. It's about War. February 2011 (hopefully).

Labels: announcements, news, process

Monday, 1 June 2009

Release Date

Rejoice, my friends, for Best Served Cold now walks among you! In fact it's been available in bookshops here and there for a few days, as UK bookshops have a flexible attitude towards release dates, but from today it should be in Waterstones across the nation and is also, it would appear, shipping from amazon uk as well as other reputable internet purveyors...

And what better way for an author to celebrate the publication of one of his books than to sign a few?


A thousand, in fact, at the warehouse. Two pallets full. I'd never done anything like this before, so it was quite strange to see so many in one place. After signing about fifty your signature (which is a bit of a scrawl in my case anyway) turns into a complete shambles. You can't remember how it works any more at all. Then, strangely, after about a hundred, it goes onto automatic and comes out pretty well. Took about two hours to do the lot, with help from the wonderful folks at Littlehampton Book Services, and I swear, by the end, my hand hadn't hurt so much since I was thirteen.

Writing for three hours solid in an English exam, obviously. What did you think I meant?

Apologies, by the way, for ongoing email silence. Still don't have a regular internet connection, let alone my email accounts repaired. This time next week, with any luck, we should have actually moved into the new house and things might be up and running again. We shall see...

Labels: news, process

Monday, 20 April 2009

Back in the Trenches

Just been through the page proofs of Best Served Cold and made a few teensy little adjustments, which means the book is now officially out of the door as far as I'm concerned.

Done, finished, and complete.

I'm actually very happy with it, now, which is good, because for a long time - probably up to about two-thirds of the way through the first draft - I wasn't particularly happy with it. The central character, in particular, took quite a while to come together. The characters of the First Law had been developing and maturing in my head for a long time - some of them since childhood - and so they leaped much more fully formed onto the page. A couple of the point-of-view characters in Best Served Cold came out easily but the more central, more complicated ones took a fair bit of trial and error to find the right voice, the right style of writing. It took a while for me to know who they were, if you like, and that was somewhat worrying and damaging to the confidence. That's right. My confidence is not the impenetrable tower of adamant it seems. Within this harshly beautiful, heroically manly shell lies a heart-achingly vulnerable little boy who just wants to be loved. And that little boy worried. I wondered if I'd ever write a book as good as my previous one again. I would say things like, "well, not every book you write can be great." Had I lost it, if, indeed, I ever had it? Would I ever have it again? What is it anyway?

To put it more succinctly, I was worried the book would be shit.

Probably this is the kind of tosh that every writer ceaselessly bores their family and editor with. And when I say ceaselessly... As a result it took a fair bit longer to write than Last Argument of Kings - maybe 18 months compared to 14? It was also intended to be a bit shorter - around 175,000 words, and ended up about the same length - around 225,000. Still, things have to be the length that's right, and I think it justifies the girth (unlike my abdomen) and reads pretty quickly, covers a lot of ground for a single book. Perhaps it doesn't have quite the depth of characterisation the First Law had, but it's certainly a lot tighter, leaner, more economical and more focused (again, unlike my abdomen). Smoother in the pacing, too, and rather richer and more precise in the worldbuilding (that's right, the worldbuilding, would you believe). I'd say it's my best book yet, for what that's worth, though no doubt my own feelings will change over time, particularly as it goes out into the world, like a bright-eyed child off for their first day of school, knowing nothing of the bullying, homework, teen pregnancy and hard drug abuse that is to come. How will the readers respond? Will they think it's my best book yet? Hmm. Opinions always vary, and I'm sure they'll vary this time...

But even before it hits the shelves I'm back in the trenches of my next book, about 11,000 exploratory words into my first draft, fumbling with plot and wrestling with structural issues, worrying that I don't really know who the characters are, that they won't be sympathetic, won't be realistic, won't be compelling, and saying things like, "well, not every book you write can be great." If only I'd been through this before, and could look back and say, "you were worried last time, and it all came out fine." Ah well...

In other news, I note that voting on the David Gemmell Legend Award has now opened. So pop over to the site and get involved. You could even vote for me, if you fancied it, but hey, if not, you could vote for Joe Abercrombie, or maybe Last Argument of Kings. The choice is yours.

As I've probably said before, I reckon it's a good thing, overall, to have an award that's aimed squarely at the more commercial end of fantasy, which tends to be a little bit overlooked by existing genre awards. I preferred the original idea of a public vote to establish a shortlist of 5 from which a winner would be picked by a panel, as that seemed to ensure a popular shortlist while preventing winners from being chosen purely on the basis of internet popularity or (dare one say) actual fraud. A full-on public vote seems to me to reward the most popular author, the biggest series, the best-known book, which I've always thought of as a little pointless since it basically rewards sales, which are kind of their own reward, and gives publicity to those who need it least.

But, you know, every award is a poll of one group or another with its own makeup and natural biases, and every award is endlessly criticised for the particular group it chooses to poll. Those that use membership of a certain convention as an academy (like the Hugos) tend to get accused of being unrepresentative and out of touch. Those that use a professional body (like the Nebulas) tend to get accused of being a club which gives an award to the most popular member of the club. Those that are based on public vote are accused of being populist, pointless, and subject to fanboy tampering. Panel-based ones are accused of being elitist, random, and over-literary. There's really no pleasing everyone. Especially on the internet. Good article from Adam Roberts on the issue, for anyone who hasn't read it.

Still, This year's shortlist actually seems to me quite a varied one, within the confines of the epic/heroic/secondary world-ish end of the spectrum. Two americans, a new zealander, a brit, and a pole. I'd find it hard to pick a winner. Sanderson was doing nicely and his profile has no doubt been much boosted by his involvement with Wheel of Time. Weeks, though only published recently, has already hit the NYT bestseller list, so he must have a fair few readers out there. Sapkowski, though only recently translated into English, has been a massive-selling author in Poland for some time, and has probably sold more books than the entirety of the rest of the list combined. Marillier is more of an unknown quantity to me - though strangely enough she interviewed me a while ago for a writers website, and on my visit to Holland recently Wim Stolk was fulsome in his praise for her books. She's a writer who doesn't get duscussed much on the forums and blogs I occasionally frequent, but her being on the shortlist only demonstrates what a surprisingly unrepresentative world those forums and blogs can sometimes be, even of the wider internet, let alone the reading public as a whole.

If the aim of the award is to a) commemorate Gemmell and his contribution to the genre, and b) celebrate continuing contributions, they seem to be making a pretty good stab of it, especially since, as I understand it, publishers and booksellers seem to be interested in getting involved and doing some promotion based around the shortlist. And you know, it's hard work to launch something new, and if it works out it will take a few years. There are bound to be teething issues to begin with. As long as they help me win, who cares?

A ha ha.

Labels: news, process

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Going Underground

Some among you have already emailed me to let me know that you've seen a most surprising - could one even say fantastical - thing, namely vast posters advertising my books on the London tube. Naturally I took these for elaborate pranks/sinister deceptions on the part of rival authors/belated april fools. Imagine my shock, therefore, when I got off a northbound Piccadilly line train at Finsbury Park station, where I live and breathe, to see THIS:


Someone had mentioned at some point that they might be doing some advertising on the tube, but I'd assumed they meant some of those dog-eared stickers promoting rubbish club nights opportunistically slapped over some poor model's face on the cards up the escalators, along with used-up blobs of chewing gum. Not, you know, proper big-ass three-sheet posters like you get for Hollywood movies and that:


I think I must be the only author in history to get MORE marketing than they were hoping for.

The interesting thing for me, once I'd got over the bowel-loosening shock of it happening at all, is that the approach is very much pitching to a mainstream audience rather than a fantasy-specific one. I'm described as being "David Gemmell x CJ Sansom". Gemmell is heroic fantasy to the core, of course, but Sansom is much more of your general historical mystery fiction. That's no surprise, in a sense, because my stuff, as you all know, is just as much about plumbing the depths of the universal human spirit as it is about smashing faces in with a magic sword. Honest. Of course, every writer thinks their own stuff is deep and ace and should appeal to anyone with half a brain. I'm actually right though. Obviously.

In truth, I'm always suspicious of any talk that splits readers into fantasy or mainstream. I think all readers are individuals with a whole range of different tastes, and such distinctions are often accompanied by a load of bullsh*t paranoid tribalism that doesn't really have anything helpful to say about the real world, where nothing is black and white and all is shades of grey. Few indeed are those who read nothing but fantasy, just as few folks who read much at all won't ever have delved into a Tolkien or CS Lewis at some point. Still, the distinction is important as far as marketing goes. After all, imprints tend to be either genre or not, and books have to be shelved somewhere within the bookstore, however arbitrarily the distinctions sometimes are. With every genre book there's always a decision to be made, therefore - keep it safe, stick a dragon on the front and aim for a reliable core audience, or try to appeal to a wider readership and take the risk that no one will like it? Do you plump for the sf section where you know there should be steady trade, or do you aim to get your fantasy shelved at the front of the store, and risk fantasy buyers walking straight past to the fantasy section to buy, say David Gemmell, while the more general buyers ignore your tawdry magic-sword based nonsense in favour of, say, CJ Sansom?

Anyway, I digress. Will this bring in new readers? Very hard to say, really. I'd certainly like it to, whether they be mainstream or fantastical. Will it do more good than a lower impact campaign, more focused on stuff like genre magazines and websites, where you're hoping to hit a more targeted audience, perhaps a more explicitly fantasy-reading audience? Again, very hard to judge. I'd say I've spent a dozen years riding the tube pretty regularly and never bought anything as a result of the constant bombardment of advertisements I'm exposed to down there. But then everyone would say that, and they're quite obviously wrong, aren't they, cause if they weren't, no one would advertise in the first place. And it can achieve things without directly converting a commuter from "never heard of him" to "I will buy that immediately" - a more subtle increase in recognisability of the author's name or the book's cover. But in all honesty, this isn't necessarily about selling books to readers. Not directly, anyway. Just as important as the selling out is the selling in, that is the selling of books to booksellers. A publisher can point to a big-splash style campaign of this kind and say, "we're taking this seriously, so should you," and hopefully get booksellers to stock more, shelve better, and so on. So I guess we will see how it goes, and regardless of the figures, find a way to declare it a ringing success.

I certainly can't complain that the publisher isn't taking me seriously. I asked my editor if I would be getting advances in the region of CJ Sansom x David Gemmell now. She said it would be more like divided by.

You laugh because it's funny, you laugh because it's true...

Labels: news, process

Thursday, 5 February 2009

Best Served Cold Artwork - US

Well WHAT a to-do. No sooner did Pat post Orbit's US cover for Best Served Cold on his redoubtable Fantasy Hotlist than the inter-tubes BOILED OVER with hyperbole, bloggers, commenters and forum members spouting outrage from every orifice. Which caused both the US and UK covers to be plastered all over the place. What a shame, what a shame...

So what do I think? Let me be completely honest here (DISCLAIMER: The management wish to point out that Joe Abercrombie is never completely honest about anything, especially where commercial realities may be on the line. Actual honesty experienced may fall below accepted EU standards of honesty, and bear no relation to "the truth". Always read the small print on any claims of honesty.) I really love the UK cover, and believe me, it looks a lot better in the gloriously textured wraparound flesh than as a flat JPEG.

But the folks at Orbit US, who are publishing Best Served Cold in America, wanted to go a different way, and since they are extremely highly paid professionals who know their market, being the SOUL OF MAGNANIMITY that I am, I permitted them to do so. A ha ha ha. Of course, no sane publisher would really give right of veto to an author, especially me. But they indulged me by attending to my opinion. Fundamentally, they felt it was a good idea, as far as selling the book went, to show a person on the front, that the book might appeal beyond confirmed parchment-lovers, and I kind of understood where they were coming from, and was interested, if nothing else, to see a different treatment. The first version they sent me was-a-this-one:


And I was like, "Hmmmm. Don't know." I thought with the half-cut-off face it looked much too much like a ladeeez historical novel. Kind of Other Boleyn Girl-ish. Kind of lowly scullery maid runs off to join the crusade and experiences adventures, romance, and big-sword-holding beyond her wildest dreams. Nothing wrong with that, except I did not write that book. Maybe I should? And, to be fair, no one that side of the pond had read the book yet, cause, erm, I hadn't written it. So I said words to the effect of, "is it possible for it to, I don't know, kick more ass?" They didn't have to, but bless their kindly hearts they listened to me, and they came back with this:


And I was like, "Ooooh, that does kick more ass." The figure was much closer to how I'd imagined the central character (I mean, not how did you get inside my mind and see exactly what I was thinking close, but close enough). But now, ingrate that I am, I was concerned that it had taken on a kind of a paranormal romance-y/urban fantasy-ish sort of a look. A gritty example of such, and not from behind like they often are but still, I was concerned. Now it is a bit of a weird book, this is true. I wouldn't call it urban fantasy but I'm not entirely sure I'd call it epic fantasy either - in fact I'll be interested to see what people do call it when it gets reviewed (obviously providing it doesn't get called, you know, shit).

But I was worried that epic fantasy readers (the core of such established audience as I am cringingly grateful for, let us not forget) would look at this and think, "uh oh, he's changed, man. He thinks he's outgrown us. He's trying to get him a slice of that sweet, sweet paranormal pie, and that jazz ain't my bag." When this jazz IS your bag, readers of epic fantasy, it IS! It's EVERYONE'S BAG. Plus I was worried there was no sense of continuity with the trilogy, and also that the cover would not match with some design stuff we're thinking of tinkering with on the inside of the book. I furthermore felt that the parchment-y covers of the First Law have kind of a unique look - there's a bit of recognisable branding going on there that stands out from the crowd without standing out TOO MUCH, if you know what I mean. This cover seemed, well, a little bit like a lot of other stuff I've seen. I was worried, in spite of the texture and the rest, it might fade in amongst the many leather-clad swordswomen on today's genre shelves. So, bless 'em again, they didn't have to, but they listened to me (probably with teeth well-gritted) and they came back with the cover shown at t'top of t'post which, y'know, combines the two.

Some might say it's a bit schizophrenic, a cover in two halves, but I actually quite like that aspect, think it makes it quite striking, odd, potentially attention drawing (which is kind of the point, after all). And textures, foils, embossing and so forth (which you don't get the benefit of on your new-fangled computer screening devices) will hopefully further underline the divide. The inclusion of the map (which I understand will wrap around the spine and back as it does on the UK version) gives it some continuity with the trilogy and also some of that sense of unique-ni-ness.

Of course, some still complain that there's a woman with a sword on the cover, so it still looks a bit like paranormal romance/urban fantasy but, you know, the main character is a woman. With a sword. If you want to put someone on the cover, who are you going to put on there? Some big barbarian in a posing pouch? That'd be weird. We'll probably do that on the next book.

Anyway, Lauren Panepinto, the art director responsible for this internet tempest has put together an interesting post over at the Orbit site explaining some of the reasoning and process along with showing some other prototypes, which in turn brought out some more measured responses from the blogosphere. Someone's even running a poll to see which one folks like best but, aside from the UK version, they seem to like the lowly scullery maid one most, so, you know, some people are completely beyond help.

In summary let me be completely honest again (and I hope the hard-working folks at Orbit US won't take this the wrong way and blow my marketing budget on opium) and say I still prefer the UK version. But - if I can still find my own opinion under all this clutter - I see the commercial sense of the US one, and I do feel it's faithful to the content. And here's the thing - the one person they don't need to sell it to is me. I get free copies. And, what's more, I've already read it. Here's the other thing - and this may hurt some among you just a little bit - the other people they don't really need to sell it to are people who already like my stuff. They'll probably buy it because of all the wonderful little word-gifts they know I've wrapped up inside just for them. The idea of this is to bring in new readers. Poor, pitiable folk still sleepwalking through their lives unaware of my genius. If it can bring some of them in from the cold then I'll be well pleased.

There's room in here for everyone...

Labels: artwork, process

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Happy Birthday to Me

Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday dear meeee-eeeee...

You know the rest.

Yes, I'm 24 for the tenth time today. I tried being 25 for a year back in 2002, but it didn't work out for me, so I've decided to stay where I am...

Out goes 2008, the year of Barrack Obama's election, some world economic thingy, and, more importantly, of course, the thrilling completion of The First Law Trilogy to universally rapturous popular acclaim (DISCLAIMER: actual acclaim may differ from the acclaim stated both in terms of universality, rapture, and popularity, the staff and management of this blog accept no responsibility for crushing disappointments or, indeed, anything else. Always read the small print on any claims of acclaim).

In comes 2009, a year that will no doubt be remembered for various stuff, but chiefly, of course for the publication of Best Served Cold, for I can reveal that my latest book is now totally finished. Yes, I have carried out my own exhaustive and exhausting program of read-throughs, revisions and rewrites, I have absorbed and acted upon some comments from Devi, my wonderful new editor at Orbit in the US. And I have been through the Line Edit from Gillian, my wonderful old editor in the UK. Though she is quite young, in fact.

The Line Edit, for anyone that's wondering, follows the more general edit, and is where your editor goes through the manuscript in detail and physically marks up anything that still bothers her - typically creaky sentence construction, repetitive wording, but also making sure details like timelines, time of day, positioning of settings and so on all make sense, as well as some final tinkering with making plot points as clear as possible. Many of those changes I accept, some I scornfully cast aside with a wrinkled lip and a cry of "Never! How dare you presume to edit ME?" But in the vast majority of cases, even if I don't necessarily agree with the solution out of pure bloody-mindedness, I am often spurred to come up with my own improvement. Which is handy as, by this stage, it becomes harder and harder to tell what's good and what isn't.

Then a final read-through of the whole manuscript, in order, to get a sense of how it flows and correct any little errors, add in a couple of last-minute thoughts and do a tad of tightening here or there, and the book is FINISHED.

Naturally when I say finished, I mean, not actually finished. There is still the copy-edit to wait for and look at, then a final proof-read to undertake. But those should be pretty light. Creatively, it's FINISHED. Mostly. The version I send off today will be the one from which the proofs will be made, which hopefully will be going out to readers, taste-makers and critics some time during the next couple of months. I can almost feel the bile tickling the back of my throat at the thought of the first reviews...

It occurs to me that it's probably been four or five years since I had more than one day at a time where I didn't do any writing, even if it's just been something tangential - a bit of planning, a bit of reading over, a bit of blogging or responding to emails. So I've promised myself (not to mention some of the hazy, dimly-remembered figures who were once my friends and family) that I'd have a couple of months properly off, to read, relax, try to sort out my crippling neck pain, and recharge the batteries.

Sits staring into space, drums fingers for a minute...

Thank god that's over. Right. Next book. And could someone pass the painkillers?

Labels: news, process, reviews

Friday, 21 November 2008

BSC Artwork - Proofs

The final step of the process is for proofs to be made, that is some examples of the final cover printed in the same manner and on the same paper as they'll appear on the finished book, to make sure everything works properly. The main difference here, apart from the colour balance being slightly changed, is that any 'specials' - that is features like foil and embossing - will be present for the first time. On this cover the sword and the coins are embossed (they stand out a little from the paper) the title and author name are debossed (stamped into the paper), which gives the whole thing some added depth. It's quite a subtle effect, in fact, almost more impressive to the touch than to the eye, but it certainly adds a little something, and it continues all the way round the book, which is sweet.


The foil they've used this time around is pretty damn cool, from most angles it looks almost black, but hit it just right and...


Oh, yeah. You want it. You need it. You MUST have it.

But I'm afraid you'll have to wait until June...

Labels: artwork, process

Thursday, 20 November 2008

BSC Artwork - Design

Now that the elements were in, it was time for Laura Brett, designer par excellence, to work her magic and combine the whole thing into a classy yet pulpy, genre yet mainstream, commercial yet literary cover. I mean, how hard can that be?


This first effort already demonstrated the idea was going to work, which was a great relief, and the sword and map sit together and look good, but the scales were wrong, the map too big, the sword too small and square-on which made the whole thing look a bit disjointed, rather than an actual 'scene', if you will. So we played about with the arrangement. Or Gillian and Laura did, anyway, and the next version I saw was:


Now we were really getting somewhere. Already it looked pretty damn good. Laura had resized the map so it fitted on the front and back cover, which made sense, then added some extra atmospheric parchment down both sides where the blurb and obligatory moody author photograph would sit. I'd thought at one stage we'd need some table or backdrop for the map to sit on, but this worked just as well and was less intrusive. The sword now looked like it was sitting on the map, which until that point I'd feared it wouldn't. The wine stains we weren't entirely sure about, though. And by a freak of chance the sword blade was sitting over Talins, which is about the most important location on the map, so it needed to be moved a tad. Plus I felt, in an understandable push to make the title as readable as possible we'd whited out too much of the map behind. And, much though it amuses me to frustrate you map lovers out there, I thought it would be nice to make it usable as a map, and make the six key cities visible. I also wanted to add some coins, partly because it's not just about murder, it's about money as well, and also just to add something to the layer above the map, if you will, to balance up the sword and make it more of a scene. Therefore...

Laura just lightened the map around the lettering rather than whiting it out altogether, which allowed for a lot more of the map to be visible while still maintaining legibility. She also closed up the leading on the title (pressed the lines together somewhat) and removed the little spacer between the name and the title. In this version the blood seemed a bit static, the coins a bit of an afterthought, so some more coins were added and Laura got some much more dramatic, active looking spatter on the blood, giving the impression the sword had just been tossed onto the map following a gruesome murder...


At my ill-conceived urging we also experimented with the lettering, trying various colours and having a stab at a style that was closer to the lettering on the map, but that didn't work at all, it just looked messy. With the background being a lot busier than it had been on the First Law covers, it was a lot better to go for something simple and bold, with maximum readability. Hence back to good old Casablanca Antique, which is the same font we've always used on the chapter headings on the inside of the books. I also felt we'd maybe gone a bit too far on the blood now, it was getting a little bit ... Saw VI. I mean to say, it's a very, very violent book, but even so. We dialled that back a tad, maintained the energetic spatter while removing some of the bigger blobs, shifted some of the coins around to balance the whole thing a bit better and...


Bingo. That is design.

Labels: artwork, process

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

BSC Artwork - Map

Now, if it was key that the sword should hit the right note, it was much more key that the map should. Plus the map obviously had to reflect the facts of the text. So first of all, obviously, I had to provide my own childish scrawl which the artist, Dave Senior, would then art-i-fy and render beautiful and atmospheric. So the squared paper, retractable pencils and ultra-fine drawing pens were broken out with great relish. Styria looked something like this:


Apologies for the faint names, it's a photocopy of the original.

I've talked a bit in the past about the pros and cons of maps in fantasy, and the reasons why there was no map in the First Law. I think the main thing I didn't really discuss was that, if a map's going to be included, I want it to be right. I want it to punch its weight, and look the part. I think maps in fantasy series are too often lazy. Lazy in terms of the authorial thought going into them, and lazy in terms of the artistic execution. A map is artwork, and if you're going to include it, it needs to look authentic, it needs to help set the tone and create the atmosphere for the world as well as simply describe it, or it's a wasted opportunity. Or worse, it's just stuck in there to say - "this book is epic fantasy, like that Lord of the Rings that made everyone so much money. Man, I hope this makes money too."

So I was very keen that a map should a) be accurate within reason, b) have artistic merit, and c) communicate something about the setting just in the way that it's drawn. To feel part of the setting. This was extra-specially true given that it was going on the cover, rather than just sitting forlorn, split in half over the first two pages. So the brief that went to the artist, Dave Senior, who draws a lot of maps for Gollancz books, was to aim at something like the work of Gerardus Mercator, the famous 16th century Flemish cartographer. Work along these lines (those links are pretty hi-res, so they may be demanding of processing power, but they are pretty damn cool for those of us who like maps, which, let's face it, is pretty much all of us).

Our map would obviously be a lot simpler than Mercator's, 'cause there's NO WAY I'm thinking up that many names, and monochrome so as not to distract too much from the other elements that make up the cover. I particularly liked the way the cities were depicted as little groups of buildings vaguely appropriate to the city in question. That was particularly apt for Best Served Cold, since the action is centred around six cities, each with its own feel, so I gave some descriptions of those key locations as well that some sense of them could be conveyed in miniature on the map.

Couple of weeks later a rough version came back, which honestly was already pretty exciting. The general look, the lettering especially, was spot in. It felt classy. It felt authentic. One could believe that it was a map that the characters in the book might consult. There was a bit of tinkering to do, plus a few extra details - towns and towers and what have you - were added to fill in some of the white spaces. Laura Brett, the designer, then applied her ye olde parchmenty effect and we ended up with this:


Click on it. CLICK ON IT. Delighted with the results, I need hardly say. Excellent work, Dave Senior. In fact we like it so much we might attempt to incorporate it as a background on the title pages to the parts, as well. I've always liked the idea of extending some artwork into the book proper, to give the whole thing a bit more visual identity and make the experience of reading it that little bit richer. We will see how that goes.

And here's one more, of my original guide with the final artwork beside...


What's that you say? You think my version has the greater artistic merit?

Yeah, right.

Labels: artwork, process

Tuesday, 18 November 2008

BSC Artwork - Sword

Burned and spattered papers, such as the ones on the First Law covers, are pretty much universal, but a sword has to hit the right note, especially since it's meant to be the one the main character uses in the book. So it has to be the right era, and have the right feel. Since the feel for the book is kind of renaissance Italy-ish, more baroque than medieval, the brief we gave to Didier Graffet, a French artist who specialises in weaponry, was something roughly along these lines (and no doubt those of you interested by historical weaponry, which is, let's face it, pretty much all of you, will now spend some time exploring that site), but possibly with a bit more heft to the blade. So it needed to look beautiful, but functional, without any fantastical flourishes. Steely, not gilded. It needed to look dangerous.

This was the first sketch we got back:


Which was already looking pretty good. We messed about with it a bit, shortened bits, lengthened bits, talked ricasso, knuckle-bow, quillons, and fore-ring, cause, you know, I talk fluent sword, and ended up with something actually pretty close to the original, though somewhat weightier and shorter in the blade, a bit less graceful and a bit more brutal:
Happy with that, it went back to be coloured, and damned if it didn't turn up but a few hours later looking bloody brilliant:


Click on it. You know you want to. CLICK ON IT. Possibly you can't entirely see it on this version, but the detail is amazing. It has that quality of accentuated reality that great graphic novel art has. Real, only more so. So my thanks to Didier Graffet. If you ever need a sword painted, I might just know a guy...

Labels: artwork, process

Monday, 17 November 2008

BSC Artwork - Concept

People occasionally ask me how much input authors have into the cover art, and I guess it varies greatly, but contractually, the publisher usually has no obligation to involve the author at all. For the vast majority of books, the cover will be the main selling tool at the publisher's disposal, and that's far too important an area to be left in the hands of an author who, let's face it, most of the time doesn't know shit about selling books. A lot less than their publisher does, anyway. And let's not forget, this isn't necessarily about making something pretty, or classy, or even relevant to the content of the book, this is about making something that the greatest number of people will want to buy.

This is particularly true with foreign rights deals. I've had no input whatsoever into the covers of any of the foreign editions of my books. Title changes either, for that matter. The feeling is, and I think it's probably a wise one, that tastes and traditions vary from one territory to another, and the publishers in that territory, having bought the rights, are the people best equipped to know what's going to sell.

Things are somewhat different in one's home territory, however, and in general it behooves a publisher to at least run their ideas past an author (in much the same way as it behooves the author to give serious consideration to their editor's recommendations about the content) if only because they will understand the language in which the author is complaining. Enjoying, as I do, a fantastically close relationship with my UK editor and publishers (Gollancz are like FAMILY, man, at least until I get a better offer), I am lucky enough to be consulted at every stage. It's a collaborative effort. They provide the talent, I provide the complaints.

Now I'm not that brilliant on concept - I think that's a very particular and valuable skill, one that you develop partly through long experience, and I don't have it. Once I see something I get a feel for whether it's right or not, and I get ideas for how to improve it (at least from my point of view), but I rarely have any sort of notion in advance of how I think a book should look. So when my editor Gillian picked my brains to see if I had any brilliant notions about what to do for the cover of Best Served Cold, I didn't really. We considered going for a different look, since it's not part of the same series. We floated a few things back and forth, but nothing was very compelling. Vague talk of graphic novels. Some mention of snow, and a female main character, but, you know, not that obvious, but, you know, not that un-obvious. I mean, a bit like that book what's-it-called. Well, not like it, but not UN-like it. You know. You don't know?

Simon Spanton, meanwhile, who is one of the two editorial directors at Gollancz, and who'd been responsible for the cover treatments for the First Law, was pretty intent on continuing that blood-spattered parchmenty theme, which had, after all, proved pretty successful. Possibly upgrading it by having a dagger stuck into it. I forget exactly whose idea it was to put a map on the parchments. Either Simon's or Gillian's, so let's say mine. I have an idea we'd been discussing some recent impassioned chat from readers about maps in fantasy, and the absence of them from my books, so the issue was on our minds. Simon is, shall we say, not the greatest fan of the knee-jerk inclusion of maps in epic fantasy books, so possibly the idea of putting the map on the outside, then setting it on fire and spraying it with blood and vomit amused him. I think it was Gillian's idea to go for a sword rather than a dagger, possibly because she was aware of the work of the artist in question. So there you have it. Map. Sword. Blood. Bingo.

Initially I was a bit worried, I must admit, about whether the map and the sword could be made to hit the right note, and whether they'd bind together into a consistent whole or just look like two entirely separate and mismatched bits of art dropped onto a page. In a sense it's a much more complicated and specific idea than the more abstract covers for the previous three books had been. But I'd been pretty unconvinced by the cover treatment for The Blade Itself, when I first heard it (what, a load of burned paper? You sure that's going to work?) but have ended up really liking it (and in the end barely making any changes at all, aside from incorporating the magic-circle thingy on the back) so I didn't object this time around, having nothing much to offer as an alternative, and having learned the lesson that I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to concepts for covers and I'm better off doing what I'm told, at least in the early stages. Later on I would have earth-shaking impacts on the design process, as we shall see over the coming week...

Labels: artwork, process

Saturday, 15 November 2008

Best Served Cold Artwork

Take THAT. Pretty much the final cover for the UK edition of Best Served Cold. I should point out it's a hardcover release, though, and you really need to see the whole wraparound, which looks like this:


Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Click on it to see it in all its glorious detail. Go on. Click on it. You know you want to. Even that's a long way from doing it full justice, though, I have to say. The final version will have the title and the edges of the author-name foiled, probably in chilly gun-metal grey, then the sword and coins embossed and the text debossed. Plus it will be printed on that textured paper for which my previous books have won most of their acclaim. You really have to see it wrapped round a book to get the full effect. You have to handle it, stroke it, caress it, lick it. Well, not the last one, necessarily, that's just something I like to do.


And that's not even a proof cover, it's just a good printout. The book isn't actually Best Served Cold, in case you're wondering. It's Julia Gregson's East of the Sun. Long story. Anyway, it's designed to be of a piece with the new covers for the mass-market editions of the trilogy, that they may all beckon to prospective readers from the shelf, together.

In case you're wondering, I fricking love it. I feel that it expands on the tone set by the previous covers, and establishes something of a unique identity for the books as a whole - a brand, even - which has got to be a good thing. It communicates a lot about the feel and the content - and a real sense of action and violence - without straying into the difficult ground of literal cover art. It manages to be classy and pulpy at once. I think overall the covers achieve the extremely difficult trick of being entirely un-generic, striking, and standing out from the crowd of fantasy artwork while at the same time not seeming to be deliberately NOT FANTASY. I think that's what fantasy covers need to try and achieve, these days, ideally - to not alienate the hardcore fantasy fan while still appealing to the more occasional reader.

It involves the work of no less than six people. Original concept from Simon Spanton (I believe), expanded upon by my editor Gillian Redfearn, who then put the brief together and assembled the team to carry it out (kind of like the A-Team, but with more artistic accumen and less mercy), and co-ordinated the project. The sword was painted by weapons expert Didier Graffet, the map was drawn by map-master Dave Senior, adapting my own scrawl, then the whole was combined and made to live by designer Laura Brett (also responsible for the First Law covers), who added the spatter, coins, parchmenty effects, and lettering. At various stages a pedantic asswipe interposed himself and made everyone's lives a misery. I won't say who, but there's a clue on the cover itself...

The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that it features a map quite prominently. But Joe! I hear you cry. Aren't you the anti-map guy? Is there a whiff of hypocrisy about this blog today? Well, maybe. I've always had a foot in both camps on this issue, and with a tighter and more defined setting for this book it seemed to make sense. Plus I don't hate maps, I just hate rubbish maps, and this time around there was the opportunity to make sure it was done right, both factually accurate and with some artistic flair. But more discussion of this later, maybe, because for those who give a toss, next week will be Best Served Cold artwork week, in which I will discuss the evolution of cover from twinkle in publisher's eye to fully-realised proof in exhaustive detail...

Labels: announcements, artwork, news, process

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, 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

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

Finished ... Kind Of

Much to my delight, I finished the first draft of the final part of Best Served Cold while I was away, on holiday (rolls eyes toward heaven). That means I have an entire first draft, running from beginning to end. Currently just over 235,000 words long, which is about the same length as Last Argument of Kings. I was aiming at the start for something between 150-175,000 words (still a big book by most reasonable standards) so you could say I've spectacularly over-fulfilled, or you could say I've spectacularly mis-planned. Either way, it's long been plain I wouldn't realise my ludicrous ambitions in anything less, so I'm actually quite pleased it's as short as it is. Hopefully I'll cut another maybe 10,000 words during the process of revision and editing, though oftentimes I find I add as much as I remove... Perhaps something shorter in future, Joe?

(sigh)

So the book is finished! Pop the Asti Spumante, motherf*ckers! Right?

Well ... not quite.

In fact ... not at all.

There's always a lot to do following a first draft, but more in the case of this book than with the books in the trilogy. That's partly deliberate, in that I felt since this was a standalone I could go back and revise the entire book en masse, rather than trying to get things right as I went along. I've therefore pretty much written each of the seven parts on their own, revised them, then left them as they are while I pressed on with the rest, the characters and the methods of writing them changing, developing, taking shape in my mind as I went, and the plot shifting a bit with them.

So the earlier parts of the book feel like a cupboard that's rammed full of rubbish from my childhood that I know I need to sort out but somehow never can. Daren't go near, lest when I open the door the contents fall out and crush me. The time has now come when I must open that cupboard and gaze upong the wreckage within. As with most tasks long put off, I'm sure it'll be a lot less daunting when I actually get stuck into it. I hope. But there is certainly work to be done. A fair bit of work is needed both to introduce elements of the plot that came to me later in the writing process, or became more (or less) important as I got towards the end, to add details of the world that came to me as I went along, and (most importantly) just to impose a much stronger and more consistent sense of the characters, some of which didn't necessarily take shape until I was a fair way into the writing process. Knowing the end sure does help with the direction of the beginning...

So from here, for anyone who cares, the plan is:

1. Make any significant changes to the actual events that happen, if they're necessary. Mostly this is small stuff, slipping in hints of things that will be important later, and introducing a couple of characters and themes earlier on that have turned out to be more significant than I thought. I also need to write a small chapter to insert near the front, as things have turned out.

2. Kick the shit out of the first part. Which currently doesn't have the right feel at all, partly due to just slapping it together and getting on, and partly due to the fact that I was still very much fumbling around with the characters and overall arcs at that point, especially with the main character, and my conceptions of how they should behave and develop have changed quite a lot. So it needs to be reworked to match how I see the whole thing now. The front is the most important bit, right?

3. A quick run-through of the whole thing. Mostly a read-through, just to try and get the whole shape into my head, see what works and what doesn't, hack out any obvious crap (what, me?), see if anything needs a lot more work, see if there are any plot points I didn't resolve well enough or, er, forgot about as I was going along. Also to remove some tricks I was trying earlier on and proved to be too clever for their own good (or not clever enough, depending on how you look at it), and to find if there are any tricks or constructions that work nicely and could be applied more widely during...

4. Character Pass. And now we come to the meat of the exercise. You have to imagine me being interviewed, probably on a darkened stage with a single spotlight, in a black leather armchair like Mastermind, by Melvyn Bragg, possibly? I'm wearing a corduroy suit and a thoughtful yet slightly sour expression like I just tasted a fine wine and detected the slightest aroma of piss about it. And I say something like, "well, you understand, Melvyn, this is when I take on the mantles of my various characters, this is when I absorb them into my id. This is when I become them ... Or do they become me?" (humbly apologetic smile, round of applause from the sycophantic audience, you get the idea). Basically I try and get as complete a sense of each point of view character as possible in mind, often taking one particular chapter that worked particularly well as a model. Then I spend a few days going through every chapter and part of chapter from their point of view trying to get as strong a sense of that character down on the page. Usually involves some cutting down, some tinkering with the prose style to try and get it consistent across every appearance of that character, some work on the dialogue to get the voice right, some application of clever tricks and catch-phrases, or repeating constructions, and so forth.

Also during this phase, and particularly with the three more important characters, I'll be trying to draw out some of the theme relating to that character a bit more strongly, especially early on when I wasn't (ahem) totally sure what their themes would, like, be. I will be trying to sketch their arcs more distinctly. Trying to boil them down to a more decisive essence of person. Melvyn. Whoever said I was pretentious? I'm just like any other master craftsman or great artist at work...

When this pass is done the book should hopefully be coming together nicely. (Not that it isn't already brilliant, you understand. You understand, right?) The groundwork should be laid for...

5. The axe-man cometh. Time to read through in order with an eye for anything overly repetitive or redundant, cut down and simplify as much as possible, try to correct any factual blunders and pick up on any mistakes or wooliness that I might have missed out in my previous goes at it, smooth out any crappy writing (as much as I'm ever going to, anyway) or clunky exposition. Up until this point, the chapters are all separate documents. At this point I'll probably combine them into their seven parts and work on them as units. Also, and you'll laugh here, you really will, I occasionally MAKE THE TEXT REALLY BIG. I've got a big monitor which will usually fit two pages side by side. Now I zoom in so as to fit only a half-page or so on at a time. Sounds absurd, but I actually find the big letters can sometimes help you to focus on the details...

This will probably all take me a month or two (I hope). During that time I'll also be absorbing general comments from my editor into the process, as well as from the folks from my family who act as readers (Mum, Dad, Brother). Ideally, when it's done I'll be, like, WELL happy. For about 10 minutes. This is my happy time during the year, so I'll make the most of it. I might even smile.

Then the more specific editing will begin, with a detailed look and a proper marking-up. The process goes a little something like this. Of course, during that period, I'll be working up ideas for the next book.

(gut wrenching sigh as from the dead in hell)

Indeed, that YOU may be entertained, MY torment must never end... Melvyn...

Labels: process

Friday, 16 May 2008

The God of Publication Dates

Gather round, my friends, for I have some (slightly) bad news. Publication Date for Best Served Cold has moved from April 2009 back to June 2009. Only a couple of months, which is probably small fry for some of you folks who are used to waiting for books, but I thought that you should be the first to know. Other than me. And my editor. And some other folks at the publisher. And some booksellers. But I thought you'd want to know, anyway, nice and early, to keep any disappointment as small and far off as possible. Nothing worse than camping outside the bookstore all night in the pissing rain, charging in bright-eyed and sweaty-palmed as the doors open only to be told the book's been put back a year, right?

Now I hang around some forums, so I see people get quite irritated about shifting publication dates, and I entirely understand. So in the interests of full transparency, let me attempt to explain a) what's going on with my writing process that has caused the publication date to be moved in this case and, b) why it is that you seem to get considerable delays even once you hear a manuscript has been handed in.

So, Best Served Cold. It's a simple story, in a way, a lot less complicated than The First Law, certainly. So why's it taken me a good few months longer to write than I expected? New characters is the main problem. New characters mean new approaches, new feels to create. For me the characters are the essence of the book, so getting them properly realised is key. That's taken time to a degree I didn't entirely aniticipate. The characters in the First Law had fermented in my mind over the course of years, then I'd taken two or three years with no pressure to happily work the approaches out in the first book before I ever got a publishing contract, and long before anything was printed. You know, when it was a hobby and fun, rather than the hideous drudgery of actual work. These new characters, particularly the central one, have had to be worked out from scratch and that's been (and still is being) a challenge.

Plus I'd got used to the pace I was working at with Last Argument of Kings, and foolishly extrapolated my likely writing pace from there. That was pretty damn fast, took about 14 months including all the editing. But that was writing the third in a trilogy, the characters, plots, endings long established in my mind and ready to be vomited out onto the page. This new project has proved more difficult. In a sense, since the trilogy was one long story, this book has felt much more like my "difficult second album" than the second book did, which was only really a continuation of the first. I am beginning to understand why people end up writing endless series...

Partly in order to make my life easier, and partly because I like books that tend toward the shorter and more concise end of the epic fantasy spectrum, I'd aimed for something tighter than the previous three (which were 195,000, 200,000, and 230,000 words respectively, oh yeah, real short and concise, Joe), somewhere in the region of 150,000-175,000, which I thought I could knock off in 12 months. Slight errors at the planning stage (chronic overambition, incompetence, failure, that kind of thing) have led to the book getting quite a bit longer than that - I'm guessing it'll work out about 220,000 now. Longer books take longer to write, you'll be surprised to learn.

Then there are the distractions and pressures that come with having books out there in the marketplace and (relatively) successful. Interviews, blogging, responding to email, endlessly searching for anyone talking about you, checking your amazon sales ranks every hour in four different countries, etc. That vital work all takes up time and energy one could have expended writing. And though I'm doing a lot less of the day job these days, it's funny how the pace of writing doesn't necessarily increase to match (more on this in due course, perhaps).

Then, given that this is a standalone book, I decided to take a different approach. With a series, one would desire to write the entire thing before the first book is published, so if some brilliant idea occurs while writing the last you can just alter the first here or there to match. In the real world this tends not to be possible, since a man's gotta eat and so on, and generally you'll have to publish the first book before you've written the rest, which means you need to be pretty damn sure of where you're going if you want your last book to be any good. It means a lot of revising and thinking as you go along. An awful lot, in the case of The First Law. Because Best Served Cold is a standalone I thought, aha, I'll just Bosh out a first draft quick sharp, not worry too much about getting it right, then revise and edit much more heavily than usual en masse, giving much greater economy of scale! The shackles are off! I am free! Free! Problem is I know I've left a lot of stuff that needs a lot of work behind, and that's going to mean more editing than with the previous books, which is going to mean more time after the first draft is finished to get things right, and etc.

So cut the sh*t, Joe, can you just tell us what authors will never bloody tell us, and say where are you actually up to with this book? Well, er, yes, thanks for asking. It's in seven parts, and I'm just finishing the first draft of the fifth part, so about three quarters of the way through. Well, that doesn't seem so bad, it's only May, a whole eleven months before the original pub date! True, I still hope to have the first draft finished and then thoroughly revised to my own satisfaction maybe end of August. Two months for some furious editing, polish and tidy up, and a month for copy edit and back and forth, have the bastard well and truly nailed by the end of the year. Proofs out, all hail my genius, unprecedented combination of critical and commercial success, buried under an avalanche of cash and awards, no, no, not another Hugo, I couldn't possibly, oh alright then just one more, mansion in the country with pool shaped like a magic sword, right?

But I know what you're thinking now. If it's all finished before the end of the year, why the f*ck does anyone need to move the pub date from April to June?

Come closer, closer. No, even closer. Not that close, I can smell you. And attend, as I reveal to you the hidden mysteries of the dark arts of publishing.

There's a lot more to it than just getting it typeset, proof-reading for errors, then boshing it off to the printers and counting the cash. For one thing the production department of a big publisher may have dozens of books going through at a time, from many different imprints, and everything has to take its place in the queue. They can't just be twiddling their thumbs waiting for that one author you like to finish their manuscript. These things can take some time.

But there are much more time-consuming processes than the obvious ones of physically producing the product. If you're going to give a book the best chance of selling well then booksellers need to know when it's going to appear some time in advance. The more warning they get, the further in advance they can plan their buying, the better chance of getting better display space and support. Editors need some time to get folks in their own company enthused about a book - the publicists, the reps who will try to sell books on to booksellers, the rights department who may be trying to sell the book to other markets. The longer you have and the firmer the date, the better chance of prising some marketing cash from the gripping fingers of the soul-less money men (I don't mean it, I really don't). The more time you have between finishing the final edit and publishing the book means more time to get proofs out to reviewers and more time for them to read the book, which means more chance of it getting reviews, of there being some buzz, or at least some awareness of the existence of a book before it comes out. All of this is going to help sales. Indeed, for a little known author it could make the difference between some exposure and none, between some sales and very few.

Then there is the question of scheduling. A publisher doesn't want to be releasing two similar books too close together, because they'll end up competing with each other, not only for the generous cash of the book-buying public, but also for the attention of the marketing within their own organisation, the reps who go out and try and sell the books to booksellers, and the booksellers themselves who need to fill their shelves. They don't want to be saying, "this book is the most important epic fantasy released anywhere this month ... apart from this one which we also have, which is just as good if not better, well, not better, but ... where are you going?" Schedules get filled up, books have to be moved around other books, and the later the delay occurs the worse the problem, which is why sometimes a small delay in delivery can mean publication has to be shifted months later, into the next free slot.

So you can see there are a compelling stack of reasons why it's in the best interests of a book to have 9-12 months between delivery of a first draft and publication. With the really big, well-established authors it's less important. Booksellers, reps and readers aren't going to say no to A Dance With Dragons because it doesn't turn up on time, for example, but if you push it down to less than six months you're limiting editing time, proof-reading time, putting added pressure on everyone involved and taking some risks with the quality of the output. Ever wondered why books that are long-delayed may seem sloppily edited? Wonder no longer...

Phew. So that's why we've decided to move the publication date of Best Served Cold back a couple of months at this early stage, to reduce the pressure on the writing somewhat, to ensure the editing time isn't squeezed, to give the book the best chance as it goes through the pipes of marketing, repping, selling and so on. The God of Publication Dates is a jealous god, and it's best to upset it as little as possible. Best to move the book now, nice and early, to avoid disappointment later. Yours and mine. We all want the best possible product, after all.

So, as I say, Best Served Cold, June 2009, stick it in your diaries. I'm entirely confident it won't have to go back any further than that.

Honest...

Labels: announcements, news, process

Monday, 25 February 2008

Big Fish, Little Fish

The UK Mass-Market Paperbacks of Before They are Hanged (seen here on the right - the smaller one) turned up from the publisher today. They're due out mid-march and will swiftly replace the Trade Paperback edition (seen here on the left - the bigger one) which will go out of print.

Seemed a good moment to discuss the strange ins and outs of different editions, which I must confess I don't entirely understand, but here goes...

It holds generally true that a novel is released first in hardback, then in trade paperback (the hardback pages in a paperback binding, so generally a larger format paperback, sometimes, especially in the US, a truly flipping enormous one), then, perhaps a year after first being released, when committed readers of the author in question will already have bought the more expensive editions, in a mass-market paperback (small format, dodgier paper and printing) which will hopefully be the edition that sticks around on the shelves for at least a few years to come.

Of course, different publishers all have their own recipes when it comes to this type of thing. Many of them, especially smaller presses, only print trade editions, and don't go mass-market (Pyr, my US publisher, is one such). Others are only mass-market imprints, who tend to take books that others have already printed in trade editions (J'ailu, my French Publisher, had previously only published mass-market, but are starting this year to do Trade editions as well). Orbit in the US have been experimenting with putting some fantasy series straight into mass-market paperback and releasing them in rapid succession (even a month apart). Heyne, my German publisher, do only one paperback edition that is somewhere between a trade and a mass-market edition.

Gollancz, my UK (and main) publisher, do all three types (hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market), but they tend to release the hardcover and trade paperbacks together. There's a relatively short print run of hardcovers, which are usually bought by collectors. They don't tend to reprint these because only the 1st/1st is really of interest. The trade paperback edition is therefore the one that generally finds its way onto bookshop shelves and into the sweaty hands of early adopters. Once that edition has been out for around a year and sales have dropped off, and hopefully just before the author's next book is published in trade, a mass-market paperback is released and the trade edition phased out. This hopefully produces a new round of interest in the old book and reaches some markets that are usually closed to trade editions - some outlets, like railway stations and airports only carry mass-market formats and some bookshops just prefer to promote them for whatever reason.

So you can see how this approach makes perfect sense with, say, a crime writer. Each book promotes the next, and after reading a few mass-markets by an author a given reader might choose to get the next book early and move up to a more expensive edition. It becomes a little more problematic in the case of a fantasy series, though (doesn't everything), especially one by an unknown author. Let's say you get into the series a couple of months after the second book comes out, having read good reviews. You buy the first in mass-market, since it's the only format available in the bookshops. You then scramble to buy the second, but find it's only available in this irritatingly much larger format. You'll have no choice but to buy it in trade, or to wait for the mass-market of the second, but then you'll be in the same position with the third book.

Annoying, especially when amazon doesn't really specify what format it is, just says paperback, and gives the dimensions (like anyone checks the dimensions when they buy a book), but it's hard to see a better way of doing things, unfortunately. So for those irritated by a lack of matching books, I can only do what I always do, and blame my editor.

While we're on the subject, see laid out before your disbelieving eyes all five UK editions of Before They are Hanged:



Top Left - UK Uncorrected Manuscript Proof. Has a glossy rather than a textured cover, without foil, and isn't properly set therefore has more pages and is considerably chunkier than the production editions. Sent well prior to general release to reviewers, industry notables, and unscrupulous cads who then stick them on e-bay.

Top Centre - UK Hardcover. Only about 1,000 printed and getting pretty scarce, if the number of people e-mailing me to complain about not being able to find one is anything to go by. See the foil upon its lavishly textured wrap-around cover complete with photograph of the author gleam like the moon upon the sea.

Top Right - UK Book Club Hardcover. A small format hardback printed by the UK SF book club and sold only to its members. Again, a glossy, unfoiled cover.

Bottom Left - UK Trade Paperback, the workhorse edition, complete with textured paper and foil.

Bottom Right - UK Mass-Market Paperback, soon to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Smaller pages and hence more of them. Also incidentally includes a teaser chapter for the next book at the end, since it will be available in trade at pretty much the same time...

Labels: process

Saturday, 5 January 2008

Progress Report

I've noticed that readers can sometimes get a little ... irritated ... when authors don't keep them informed as to what's going on, particularly with regard to publication dates etc. So in the interests of full transparency, I thought I'd begin the year with a little progress report:

The Blade Itself is coming out in France with J'ailu in February in hardcover under the title "L'eloquence de l'epee" (The Eloquence of the Blade). That'll be the third foreign language edition to appear (as well as Spanish and German). Looks like Russian and Dutch will be out at some point later on this year as well. Czech, Polish, and Finnish rights have been sold but I've no news on when those editions might be published. You'll know when I know...

Before They are Hanged will be out in UK Mass Market Paperback in February, then in Trade Paperback with Pyr across the US in March.

Last Argument of Kings will be out in UK Hardback and Trade Paperback on March 20th, then hopefully in the US a brief few months later (maybe September). And my trilogy will stand complete before the world! Woooooooh!

Best Served Cold. Hmmmm. I've done the first draft of two and a half parts out of seven, and the rest is basically planned out to a point which I'm mostly happy with. So around 70,000 words, somewhat over a third of the way through. Trying a slightly different approach of forging ahead then revising large blocks, rather than constantly reading over and tweaking as I go. It should prove more efficient, but is tough on the confidence since the product day-to-day is lower quality. Still, slightly behind my ideal schedule to make the delivery date of mid-May '08. A variety of factors are responsible - one year old kicking me in the face all night, heavier than anticipated workload of the day job, an increase in interviews and distractions and other little bits of writing as more books get out there in more countries.

Chiefly, though, it's just the difficulty of writing new characters more or less from scratch. I'm finding they take a while to mature and settle in the mind. A couple of them have worked well from the off, but others, particularly the central character, are proving more elusive. With The First Law a lot of the ideas had been hanging around in my mind for years, and I spent two or three years writing The Blade Itself and another six months or so editing, so there was plenty of time with no pressure of deadlines for the characters to take concrete shape to the point where writing them was, well, not effortless, but certainly instinctive. Then Last Argument of Kings was particularly easy to write, since the characters and situations were all well established - I pretty much knew where I was going, the towers were built and it was just a question of knocking them down as effectively as possible. This is proving a lot more difficult.

Ironically, the positive responses that the other books are producing only make work on new material harder (not that I'd rather have bad reviews, oh no). The weight of expectation does begin to tell on one, especially given that the new work is something of a departure - hopefully keeping what's good about the trilogy and delivering it in a more compact form, but with less of the familiar epic fantasy trappings. Will people like it less? Will they get all teary-eyed for the sunny valleys of long ago when I wrote stuff they liked? Will I pick up some new readers, but lose a load of old ones? Will it be too much of a departure for them, or not enough? Worse still, will I like it less?

It's strange that, as a writer, you're always at least one book ahead of your readers, so while people are still reading and discussing The Blade Itself for the first time in the US, I'm writing stuff that probably won't even be published there for a couple of years (if it ever is, of course). "Yeah," you think, "you liked that, but how about some appreciation for what I'm doing NOW?" Even your editor is unlikely to read things and have an opinion until you're some way into them. In a way the approval for those old projects, that were completed so long ago that they almost feel like someone else's work now, only tends to undermine confidence in the new one. In the words of the narrator from Conan the Barbarian (who has taught me some of my most important life lessons), "truly, success can test one's metal as surely as the strongest adversary."

So it's been going slower than I'd hoped. But doesn't everything always? And publication is set for April '09, so there should still be ample time. Although it wouldn't be ideal (since it would eat into development time for the next book), I think I could still deliver as late as August if I really had to and still comfortably hit the pub date. Which is just as well since I have a feeling this will need a good deal more editing than The First Law books did. Still, day job commitments should drop off half way through January and I hope that work rate will improve drastically at that point, and the whole thing will become way easier.

As for specifics of content, I'll probably leave off talking about that until Last Argument of Kings has been out a while, as there are some characters in common, and I do hate spoilers. Let me only say this:

"A very dangerous woman is betrayed by her employer, her brother killed and she left maimed. So she sets out to seek vengeance on him and the six men who helped, and recruits a set of mismatched and untrustworthy allies - a master poisoner and his unlikely apprentice, a psychopathic convict obsessed with numbers, a Northman trying to escape a life of violence and failing (not who you're thinking), a torturer (not who you're thinking), and an over-the-hill mercenary who'd do anything for one last drink. Soon the most deadly killer in the world is dispatched to put an end to their schemes for good, while in the background, and then the foreground, a bitter war rages for control of Styria. The results, as one would expect, are fast and furious, occasionally humorous, always unpredictable, and very, very bloody."

The bottom line, then? It's going fine, and you'll get it when it's done. The same shit that all the other authors say, basically.

Not that anyone was asking...

Labels: news, process

Sunday, 25 November 2007

ARCs

Ahhhhhh, look what's arrived:


Uncorrected Manuscript Proofs, Advance Reader Copies, Galleys, all used pretty interchangably to describe things like these, nearly finished but still slightly unfinished books sent out to reviewers, booksellers, other writers (and a few lucky competition winners) to promote a title.

It's a book. It's an un-proofread book, which means it has a few errors still in it (hence uncorrected manuscript proof). It's printed on less good paper than the final one. It isn't properly typeset, so the lines are further apart, and hence the book ends up a fair bit thicker than an actual trade paperback will do, as you can tell from this superb photograph of an ARC (on the left) and a trade paperback (on the right) of BTAH.


You might also be able to tell from this that the ARC has a glossy cover rather than a beautifully textured one, it has no embossing or foil or any of those other wondrous inventions that cause fantasy fans to flock to my books like moths to a flame. It has no quotes from reviews or other authors on the back, like the finished book probably will, but instead features the usual synopsis plus thrilling bullet points (of slightly questionable truth, but hey, who's counting) intended to promote the book to booksellers, reviewers, and industry-insider-types. The Last Argument of Kings proof says, in fact:

"The gripping conclusion to this must-read fantasy trilogy"

"No-holds-barred action that will set the fantasy world on fire"

"Addictive reading for fans of George RR Martin and Robert Jordan"

"Highly promotable author who has received great critical acclaim"

"100% sales increase between Book 1 and Book 2"

Make of those what you will ...

There is also, as it happens, a disclaimer inside every proof that goes out, that says something like, "This reader's copy is for promotional purposes and review by the recipient. Any duplication, sale, or distribution to the public is a violation of law." But it doesn't stop a flourishing market in these things on e-bay and the like, with proofs often reaching very high prices. 130 of Her Majesty's Pounds Stirling? They must be mental. Everyone turns a blind eye to this because, well, it's all publicity, ain't it? Not that authors or publishers see a penny from such sales, he moans with little grace. But hey, if you expected grace, you can't have been following this blog very closely.

Anyway, the bottom line as relates to this particular title, is that some (though not yet all) proofs of Last Argument of Kings will now be in the mail. To reviewers and bloggers (so we may see some early responses relatively soon) and, of course, to competition winners (yes, I'm talking about YOU Josh Meyer).

Remember, the dice shall be selecting a new winner in 5, count them, FIVE, days. Can you taste the excitement? CAN YOU?

Labels: process

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Proof-Reading

Not so long ago I launched a scathing attack on reviewers who blame editors for bad books. Alright, not an attack, I just said I thought it was a bit weird, when you've no idea what the editor did or didn't do. I made the point that, ultimately, an author has the right of refusal on changes and has to be responsible for the finished work. Poor proof-reading as a criticism I gave similarly short shrift. The author reads the proofs too, you know - they should be checking for errors, and again have the ultimate responsibility for the blah, blah, blah.

Then this lot arrived:


Not the tea, the page proofs. For those unfamiliar, when these turn up from the publisher it is the final chance to catch errors. The manuscript has been edited and desk-edited. Now the author, plus a paid proof-reader, sit down and examine the proofs which are, in theory, the final setting of the book, just on loose-leaf A4 rather than in a bound hardback, paperback, or whatever. There should hopefully be very few changes to make at this point. A spelling error or two. The odd double 'the', stuff like that. No re-writing of any significance, certainly. In fact, the author is supposed to pay for any changes made at this point (though my dark masters at Gollancz, being nice folks as dark masters go, have let me off so far).

It's hugely exciting when you see page proofs of your work for the first time (at least for me, I don't get out much). Even in this age of word-processors and desktop publishing, there's still something about seeing a book properly typeset. It gives the work extra authority. It seems suddenly something more than that nonsense you dreamed up alone in a dark room.

Unfortunately, the novelty does somewhat wane with time. Especially when you see page proofs of a book for the second or third time - for a mass-market or a foreign edition, say. There's also a strange effect that seems to happen after a book has been out for a while. All that stuff you thought you went over so carefully, that stuff you combed, and straightened, and flicked at until it was all perfect, suddenly some of it doesn't seem quite right anymore. You start to see clumsy constructions, words repeated too close together, and above all, the dreaded things you'd do differently now.

You squint at the page thinking, "bloody hell, can this really be the same version I proof read last time? This can't be right!" You drag an old edition down from the shelf (I do, as it happens, keep a shelf-full of my own books to hand, don't hate me) and you leaf through til you find the spot and, "bloody hell it is the right version! How did I never notice how rubbish that is?" For some reason, sequences you always thought were great at the time are particularly prone to this - perhaps, having written them and thought they were good you mentally put them to one side, then pay less attention in the edit, while re-writing, polishing and improving the weaker parts to the point where they're actually better.

Then, of course, there's that strange feeling of shiftless panic you get when it's actually time to hand the proofs back and let go of your work. Ever have it when you're posting a letter? You raise it to the slot in the postbox then suddenly you think - hold on, this is the right letter, isn't it? The envelope's got something in it, right? I put a stamp on it, didn't I? Then there's this odd sensation of horror as you finally drop the thing in the box and can't retrieve it any longer. The button is pushed. Multiply that by a thousand and that's the feeling of finishing the proofs, for me at least. No big moment of wey-hey! Now I can have the one cigarette a year I allow myself only when I finish a book like James Caan in Misery! Just a long, slow moment of - Shit. What did I get wrong?

March is going to be a big month for me. And perhaps for you too, if you're a reader of me, who knows? Before They are Hanged is coming out in the US, then in the UK in mass-market paperback, then Last Argument of Kings in the UK in hardcover and trade paperback. Great. The downside is that all three sets of proofs have turned up to read at once. Now the Last Argument of Kings I don't mind so much. Firstly, it's a brilliant, brilliant book (ha ha). Secondly, I haven't yet been able to just sit down and read it right through in a set form. Thirdly, I'm sure I'll find quite a few little corrections I want to make.

But I also have two very slightly different versions of Before They are Hanged to read. Better yet, I read it already a couple of months ago when I read the entire series back to back looking for howling plot-holes, and sudden changes of character hair-colour and the like. I read proofs of the UK trade editions before it was published last year. Furthermore, of course, I've read and re-read the entire thing while copy-editing and editing, I've read every chapter while writing, I've gone over and over, cutting down and refining, cutting down and refining, until I know it like God Save our Gracious Queen, just without the misty-eyed nostalgia.

I mean, Before They Are Hanged, it's a brilliant, brilliant book (ha ha). Of course it is. But please, just for a year or two...

Can I not read it again?

Labels: process