Part IV

February 2nd, 2012 • 57 Comments

And you thought all I’d been doing was playing Skyrim and D&D with a selection of the world’s most bodacious fantasy authors, didn’t ya?  Admit it!  False!  For I can now reveal that I have finished a first draft of Part IV of my latest, which puts me about 80% of the way through.  Much work still to do when the first draft’s finished, mind you.  Publication is looking like late autumn in the UK, possibly a little later in the US.  Still no cast iron dates for ya, I’m afraid, but very much this year, anyway, so far as can be predicted in this unpredictable business of ours.  Soon as I’ve got a firm date it’ll be yours.  In the meantime, the sketchiest of synopses to whet your ravenous appetites:

“Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she’ll have to go back to bad old ways if she’s ever to see them again.  She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company.  But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own.  None bloodier.  Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust…”

And no, I’m not telling you anything else, no matter how much you plead in the comments.  You can give it a go, though, just in case I change my mind…

Category:news, progress

Forthcoming Appearances

January 31st, 2012 • 11 Comments

That you may all mark out time in your calendars now, my preliminary schedule…

3rd-5th February – SFX Weekender, Prestatyn, Wales.  It’s been a real laugh the last two years, with a bigger and better venue this time around, and I understand some 4000 attendees expected, which I believe makes it the UKs biggest genre event by some margin.  I’ll be on a couple of panels:

3pm, Friday 3rd: Elf Preservation – without magic and monsters it’s not fantasy, is it?

4pm, Friday 3rd: Signing at the Forbidden Planet stand.

5pm, Friday 3rd: SF&F Just a Minute hosted by Paul Cornell and featuring the comic talents of me, Sarah Pinborough, China Mieville, and Toby Whithouse.  This should be a scream.  Of undiluted frustration and shame.

4pm, Saturday 4th: It’s not a story it’s a map – does fantasy place worldbuilding over character?

6th-9th April – Eastercon, Heathrow.  Looks as if I may be on a couple of panels related to the writing craft, but details as I have them.  I’ll certainly be haunting the bar if nothing else.

26th June – Middlesbrough Literary Festival for a reading and Q&A.

5th-7th October – Swedish Fantasy and Sci-Fi Convention, Stockholm, where I’ll be a guest of honour, would you believe.

2nd-4th November – GenreCon in Sydney, Australia.  This is a new event combining authors and enthusiasts from various genres.  It looks as though I’ll also be touring in Australia as part of this visit, but the exact details are very much up in the air.

More details as I have them….

 

Category:appearances

An Action Tour-de-Force

January 27th, 2012 • 16 Comments

Time was I used to post every whiff of opinion about my books that google could sniff out.  Scrag end mention on an inactive LiveJournal account?  You’re in!  These days, I have to say, I’m a little more circumspect.  The quantity of opinion out there, it weighs heavy, and outside of the scramble of promotion surrounding a new release, it takes something particularly insightful, inflammatory, noteworthy or (of course) grovellingly complimentary to arouse my interest.

But fitting firmly into the insightful category is a balanced and (unsurprisingly) finely written assessment of The Heroes from writer Elizabeth Bear, who I met last weekend in Detroit.  She calls me vivid and muscular.  Well, alright, my writing style…

Also fitting into the satisfying arena of respect of ones peers (alright, great superiors) is a mention from the doyen of gritty fantasists, GRRM, in his Hugo Recommendations (I know, I’m not holding my breath), where he calls The Heroes, “an action tour de force”.  OK, I admit, he preferred Patrick Rothfuss.  But those big-beards always stick together.  Maybe I need to get some small-beard fantasy author buddies to take ‘em down, like my old mates Peter Brett and Brent Weeks:

Mind you, they’re both looking a bit on the bushy side.  And why does my head seem so small in that photograph?

Category:reviews

ConFusion

January 24th, 2012 • 19 Comments

Back from Detroit, somewhat jet-lagged and with a cold, but had a brilliant time – can’t remember more fun at a convention, in fact.  Some highlights?

Doing a reading alongside Robin Hobb.

Being taught the correct coastguard method of sticking my ass out while shooting by Myke Cole.

Being mistaken for Admiral Akbar by John Scalzi.

Visiting Subterranean Press’s warehouse of awesome books, nerf guns and foam-rubber swords.

I accidentally shot Brent Weeks with an arrow.  Then he tried to kill me with a sword.  Then I tried to kill him with a dagger.  Then, while I plotted on how I would rob Pat Rothfuss’s manservant’s strongbox, he tried to pick my pocket.  Then we kissed.  And the whole thing was never mentioned again.  It all happened in a game of D&D, incidentally…

Meeting a whole load of hugely enthusiastic readers, bloggers and fans.

I even signed a few books.  And licked one.  And sat on panels and haunted the bar with far more articulate authors like Pat Rothfuss, Peter V. Brett, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Michelle Sagara West, Bradley Beaulieu, Douglas Hulick, Saladin Ahmed, Jim Hines, Cat Rambo, Merrie Haskell, Howard A Jones, Tobias Buckell and I daresay others I apologise for overlooking . . . it really was an incredible author attendance, and great to put faces to names that I have long been aware of, admired, envied, and dreamed of destroying.

Overall I was treated wonderfully well by the convention and by the guys from Subterranean Press, I had a blast.  Incidentally, Justin of Staffer’s Musings stood up for three hours in order to record the authorial D&D game, so an edited version may appear at some point, on the off chance that some of the readers of this blog can think of nothing more entertaining to do with their limited time on earth than watch some other folks roll dice…

EDIT: You can catch Myke Cole’s account of DMing the all-star authorial D&D game over here.  Brent Weeks gives his account of the playing experience over there.  It was quite the nostalgic laugh.  Unlikely as it may be, I look forward to the day that daring thief Darque Shadeaux enters the fray once more.  Or at least hides behind it at a safe distance…

Category:appearances

Gone Fishing

January 18th, 2012 • 39 Comments

I’m off up to London and thence to Detroit City to participate in Epic Confusion, where activities will include an all-star authorial D&D session featuring:

Brent Weeks – Cleric

Scott Lynch – Gnome Illusionist

Elizabeth Bear – Ranger

Jim Hines – Fighter

Peter Brett – Monk

Pat Rothfuss – Wizard

Joe Abercrombie – Thief

And being Dungeon Mastered by Myke Cole and Saladin Ahmed.

How cool is that?  Alright, so it’s not exactly cool as most of the world’s population would define the term.  But I still reckon it’s pretty cool, if you know what I mean.  I’ve even broken my dice out of cold storage.  The feel of those cool plastic edges in my palm, like an old warrior unearthing his old broadsword from his war-chest, preparing to enter battle one last time against insurmountable odds …  Well, alright, not much like that at all.

See you next week.

Category:appearances

Uncharted 3

January 12th, 2012 • 23 Comments

I really am spoiling you lot with the level of posting on this blog as late.  It is positively snowing high quality bloggage around here.  Let us see whether this continues into – I don’t know – the second half of January?  Anyway, to the matter.  The latest game wot I have played is Uncharted 3, and it’s a humdinger.  I’d have to place it 2nd in the games of 2011, which was an excellent year for games, as it goes, just behind Skyrim, although the two are difficult to compare, in a way, since Skyrim gave me about 100 hours of pleasure and Uncharted 3 gave me, well, perhaps 20.  I don’t feel sore about that, particularly, it’s just an observation.  In fact the comparison between Uncharted 3 and Skyrim is an instructive one because they are in many ways polar opposites in their design and approach.  Skyrim presents a massive open world and lets you do as you will.  Uncharted 3 presents a strictly limited world and you have to do what it wants you to, with the occasional illusion of choice.  Skyrim’s gameplay is a little bit hokey, lumpy, and jerky round the edges.  Uncharted 3 is slicker than Slick McSlickerson.  Everyone’s experience of Skyrim will be utterly unique.  Everyone’s experience of Uncharted 3 will be utterly the same.  Skyrim is filled with hundreds of rather bland and unmemorable characters with slightly rubbish dialogue and no sense of humour.  Uncharted 3 has a few beautifully designed and animated people with sparky and believable relationships and cheeky one-liners.  Skyrim is as long as you want, but it can get kind of repetitive.  Uncharted 3 only has so much to offer, but that’s packed with incident and event.  You see what I’m saying, or must I labour the point some more?  It doesn’t happen often, so once I’ve found a point I really like to give it a hammering.

Anyway, Uncharted really does exude personality, and captures that devil-may-care, Indiana Jones light adventure vibe better than anything else going.  A lot of that is in the beautiful animation of the lead character and the way he interacts with apparently unimportant parts of his surroundings just as you run past, the offhand quips and panicky noises he makes during combat, it all creates a magnificent sense of involvement with the world.  And the character work, acting, cut-scenes are pretty much industry leaders to my mind.  You get some truly stunning set pieces, fleeing through a burning chateau as it collapses around you, or through an ocean liner as it capsizes, poseidon adventure styley, camera swooping cinematically to cover the desperate action.  I found myself frequently chortling with delight.  Possibly even more so than when organising my inventory on Skyrim…

Category:games