Blog Tour & Book Giveaways
I’m back from a wedding trip into the great north, where for the first time ever I visited Lake Geneva, which, for those of you not in the know, is the birthplace of Dungeons & Dragons.
That’s not why the couple we were visiting got married there, and I might have forgotten to mention it to them, so they’ll probably be mystified about why those mugs I gave them as a wedding gift were full of 20 sided dice.
Kidding — that last part didn’t happen.
Anyway, I’m continuing my blog tour recap. Here’s where I’ve been, including some book giveaways! More to come soon.
Blog Hop: My Writing Process & 3 Writers You Want to Meet
Many thanks to my old friend Lillian Duggan for inviting me to take part in the “My Writing Process” Blog Hop. I’ve known Lillian since we were proofreaders and then editors at Macmillan Computer Publishing some twenty years ago when we were barely in our twenties ourselves. We’ve kept in touch through the years, and she’s developed a passion for writing and all things Spanish, especially Spain. In recent years she’s honed her español skills and begun translating from Spanish to English. Over the years she’s been paid to write and/or edit textbooks, news articles, financial articles, and computer books, and had her short story, The Orchid, published online in August of 2013. You can find her online here.
State of the Blog
With the year winding down, I thought I’d write up a post on the Jones blog itself.
In the last 12 months I’ve gone from 2500 unique visitors a month to well over 7000 unique vistors a month, and the number of visits, hits, and page views has more than quadrupled. I want to thank you for that — although, judging from many of the links, many of those visiting come from Russian sites COMPLETELY unrelated to anything here on this blog. I still don’t quite understand why that’s happening. But, hey, if you’re an English reading Russian and want to visit, you’re welcome.
The most popular posts are a strange grab bag.
Turnover
Monday I turned over the text of When the Goddess Wakes to my editor at St. Martin’s. Over the next little while I’ll be waiting for his feedback, and the feedback of a few more important beta readers. Over the years I’ve developed a network of really brilliant friends who are giving of their time and energy and wisdom, and they help my work immeasurably.
While it lifts my spirits to cross this threshold, the race doesn’t feel over, since I know there will be final tweaks and adjustments. I’ll probably take a few days off to relax once the entire copyediting pass is complete (or maybe not — any more I tend to be compulsively working on story construction or outlining even when I’m not writing) but for now I’m turning my eye to other projects.
Hanuvar
He Will Find a Way, or Make One
When their walls were breached at last, the people of Volanus fought block by block, house by house, until most fell with sword in hand. Less than a thousand survivors were led away in chains.
The city’s treasuries were looted, its temples defiled, and then, to sate their emperor’s thirst for vengeance, the mages of the Dervan Empire cursed Volanus and sowed its fields with salt. They overlooked only one detail: the greatest Volani general had escaped alive.
Against the might of a vast empire, Hanuvar had only an aging sword arm, a lifetime of wisdom… and the greatest military mind in the world, set upon a single goal. No matter where they’d been sent, from the festering capital to the furthest outpost of the Dervan Empire, Hanuvar would find his people. Every last one of them. And he would set them free.
— From the Codex of Hanuvar Cabera
Hanuvar is coming to bookstores near you in August 0f 2023, from Baen Books. The first book is titled Lord of a Shattered Land. For more details about the book deal, visit my blog announcement. The second books arrives only a few months later, in October of 2023, and is titled City of Marble and Blood. I’m hard at work revising book three.
As of August of 2022, Hanuvar stars in thirty-three short stories, only seven of which have been published. In order they are:
- “The Way of Serpents,” first published in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2016 Program Guide and then reprinted in Issue 0 of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, 2018.
- “Crypt of Stars,” printed in Tales From the Magician’s Skull, Issue 1, 2018.
- “The Second Death of Hanuvar,” printed in Tales From the Magician’s Skull, Issue 3, 2019.
- “A Stone’s Throw,” printed in Heroic Fiction Quarterly #40, 2019.
- “Course of Blood,” printed in the anthology Galactic Stew, available for order here.
- “From the Darkness Beneath” in Terra Incognita, available here.
- “Shroud of Feathers” appeared in issue 6 of Tales From the Magician’s Skull.
Fourteen occur in a sequence that has been organized into a first collection now making the rounds through publishers. Fifteen more occur in a sequence that forms a second collection. The aforementioned “From the Darkness Beneath” occurs outside this sequence.
About the Tales
The Hanuvar stories are naturally rooted in my love of heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery, particularly as crafted by Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett, and Harold Lamb. They’re inspired by my abiding interest in Hannibal of Carthage, my love of hardboiled fiction techniques, and my long-time desire to spin standalone tales that make a larger epic, like the novellas of Harold Lamb’s Khlit the Cossack.
It’s ironic to me that these stories are perhaps my least well known, because I’m not sure there’s anything I enjoy writing quite as much. Originally I had thought I had enough ideas for three or four collections, but the ideas just keep coming, and I’ve kept planning, and at this point I’m aiming for six large collections, each of which is full of interconnected themes and recurring characters and then ends in a kind of “season climax.”
A New Day Dawns
It’s been a busy few months. The daze of the promotions phase of the business is finally over and I’ve returned to drafting the third and final book of the new trilogy. I assume that if you’ve been following the blog, you know what trilogy that is! Progress should accelerate after the winter holidays, and I’m expecting completion of the rough draft by April of 2020 at the latest. So far it seems to be following the outline pretty closely, which is good news.
I’ve also started preliminary work on the, uh, work that will follow this one, after meeting with the illustrious Bob Mecoy, literary agent, to discuss what ought to be next, and somehow I’ve been drafting a few short stories and essays. I keep thinking I’ll get back here more often to blog, but that may be a little more rare these days. I’d like to keep up the writing pace, which means less time spent blogging. I do think I ought to check in a little more often than once a month, though! If you’ve stuck with me this long, try checking in every Friday.
Hope you’re heading toward a good holiday season!
Spread the Word
Joseph Goodman and I owe a collective thank-you to a few friends who helped promote the Kickstarter for Tales From the Magician’s Skull. Now we are returning the favor by bringing their projects to your attention. These are all publishers of fiction much like that which you find in Tales From The Magician’s Skull. (In fact, you may have seen their advertisements in the magazine.) We think you’ll enjoy their work. So without further ado, please check these out when you get a chance:
Cirsova Presents: 35th Anniversary Edition of Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars Books
Cirsova Publishing is teaming up once again with Michael Tierney to publish his all new SFF time-travel adventure set in his Wild Stars universe, Wild Star Rising! You can back their Indiegogo here. Plus, to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Wild Stars, Cirsova will be releasing all-new premium magazine-style editions of the Wild Stars graphic novel, Book of Circles, and the hybrid comic/novel, Force Majeure. They’ll also be reprinting a new 2019 edition of last year’s Kickstarter-exclusive illustrated novella, Time Warmageddon.
Sword-and-sorcery from DMR
DMR has just released a free e-book, The Infernal Bargain and Other Stories, which you can download simply by signing up for their mailing list. Check out this page for more info!
DMR has also just released a sword-and-sorcery compilation titled Death Dealers & Diabolists. This anthology will take you from fifth-century Constantinople to Dark Age Finland to places beyond imagining. You will encounter a former gladiatrix in the employ of demon summoners, an overly ambitious barbarian chieftain, a doddering pyromancer, and incarnations of holy 
warriors of India.
Death Dealers & Diabolists contains eight exciting tales of swords and sorcery by an assortment of talented authors, including Buzz Dixon (writer for the Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Thundarr the Barbarian cartoons) and Keith Taylor (author of the Bard series). You can read an interview with author Buzz Dixon here. And you can purchase the book at the DMR site!
The Mystery of Todd McAulty, Part 1
Todd McAulty (apparently in Venice, or something)
If you’re a regular to my blog, you’ve probably seen me talking about my early days in the industry, and how John O’Neill invited me aboard the Black Gate staff after my work for Flashing Swords magazine. I quickly grew to know the rest of the staff, and many of the regular writers. Over the years I’ve met an awful lot of the magazine’s mainstays, especially those with whom I maintained regular correspondence — apart from one reclusive, hirsute Canadian: Todd McAulty.
I first noticed his name attached to several popular stories in the early issues of Black Gate, and he was a noted reviewer — his long review of Lords of Swords in Black Gate 8 was the first to draw real attention to that worthy book, the first I was ever anthologized within. Following on that review we struck up a lively email correspondence, which carried on for years.
Yet Todd never appeared in person at any conventions, and when I turned up twice in Canada, he was notably absent. I began to suspect something strange was afoot, especially after I noticed a couple of stylistic details in the writing he’d been submitting to Black Gate. More on that in a minute.
Locus Review
My new book, For the Killing of Kings, received a glowing review from Locus, courtesy of reviewer Rich Horton. Click here for all the specifics.
I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I blogged here. As is always the case with me, silence here generally means I’m really busy elsewhere. It’s pretty much the same activity that occupied me last month, but now some of it is wrapped up:
1. Copyedit changes are now back to the copyeditor, and the sequel to For the Killing of Kings (now firmly titled Upon the Flight of the Queen) won’t be seen again by me until I look over any proofreader concerns. And it will be published in November. You can even pre-order it! I don’t think the cover copy on the pre-order version is final — it certainly isn’t quite correct, as it mentions 9 realms, and there are only 5. Not sure how that happened…