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Three Book Contract

While in New York last week, amongst doing many other things — including some sight-seeing and some amazing meals — I signed a new three-book contract with St. Martin’s. This pleases me mightily, as you might expect.

The first book is slated to be released about a year from now, is titled For the Killing of Kings, and is far and away the longest book I’ve ever written, sitting at about 150 thousand words. That’s almost twice the length of my first novel, The Desert of Souls, and more in keeping with the size modern fantasy readers seem to like. The rough draft of the second is of approximately the same length and the third is planned to be similar.

Those of you who like the pacing of my prose might fear I’ve finally surrendered to trends and begun to pad, but it’s not so. I saw “big fat fantasy” authors who could keep their pacing going — writers like Scott Lynch and Mark Lawrence and Mike Sullivan — and decided I could try my own hand at it.

Here’s the current “cover copy” and elevator pitch. I expect both will be more finely honed in the coming months, but this should give some idea of what this whole thing’s about:

Second Degree

Who has two thumbs and a second degree black belt in Shotokan Karate?

A fair number of people, probably, but now that number includes me as well! Still quite excited about that. Here I am moments after the graduation ceremony.

And what do you do after you get a second degree black belt? In my case, celebrate with a dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants… then start training for the third degree black belt. Only four more years…

Sad News

Last last month Bob Weinberg passed away. Pulp scholar, anthologist, writer, and all-around great guy, Bob has been a fixture in science fiction, fantasy, and pulps for longer than I’ve been alive. My heart goes out to his family and friends.

I didn’t know Bob well, but I had the pleasure to meet with him several times over the years. I was first introduced to him a little before he wrote the introduction to one of the Harold Lamb anthologies I edited (Swords from the West). I got to know him better when I met him at conventions over the years. He was one of the few people I knew at my first World Fantasy Convention, and greeted me warmly. And he was always there at every single pulp convention I attended, smiling, witty, sometimes curmurdgeonly, though in a gentle and teasing way. He was extremely knowledgeable about the fields of fiction I love, and always had a good story to tell about some of my genre heroes.

I liked him, a lot, and falsely assumed that he’d always be a fixture at the conventions. Certainly he seemed to have boundless energy the first few times we interacted. He’d appeared tired the last two times I bumped into him, and I saw on Facebook that he’d had some recent medical issues. I also thought I’d seen that he’d pulled through them. I wish I’d kept closer track.

Locus has a detailed obituary detailing all of this fine man’s accomplishments, including his winning of the Stoker Award. He will be missed.

Setting Course

Just when I thought I couldn’t get busier, I got busier. It’s good stuff, though. In addition to working on line edits, I’m now suddenly contemplating cover ideas and even initial cover copy. That’s exciting.

So it looks like the new book really will be titled For the Killing of Kings. It’s projected to be the first of three, and I’m not completely sure what the series will be called. I hope to have some sketches and other news about it to share with you next week, along with a bunch of other cool things. For now, though, I need to get back to line edits and work on some cover copy.

Staying Busy

Not much new to report here. I’m head down over a new manuscript but super busy with home stuff at the same time. I’ve been reading a lot of great RPG supplements I’ll tell you about when I get to catch my breath, and I remain super excited about some board games I’ve been perusing/playing. Alas, covering all of these things in the detail they deserve takes more time than I currently have. So I’ll simply leave you with this:

But Wait, There’s More!

Whew! Is it 11:00 already? It’s been a busy morning. Guess I’d best keep things short.

First, I’m proud to announce that after years of practice, I’ve finally qualified for my second degree black belt. Hopefully this level of fitness will help delay the ravages of middle age!

Second, I’ve just had an article published in REH: Two-Gun Raconteur on one of my favorite, and under-appreciated, Robert E. Howard stories. You can check it out, along with a bevy of great articles, at the link.

Third, the sleep issues seem finally to be settling down. Fingers crossed that it’s finally under control!

Various and Sundry

There’s a lot going on here, so I’ll keep from any attempt at a long, profound post.

Here’s the highlights reel from the last few days:

1. Finally saw “Stranger Things,” and found it almost as good as I’d been promised it would be. Those actors were fantastic, and the pacing and script were excellent. Highly recommended — unless you work with traumatized kids, in which case maybe not. I deliberately had kept from learning anything about the plot, so wasn’t able to forewarn my wife, who was having some tough times by the end of episode three.

Jacobson Wins Chesley!

In July I mentioned that the talented Tyler Jacobs0n was nominated for a Chesley award for the cover he drew for Beyond the Pool of Stars.

Well, I’m pleased to announce that he WON that Chesley award! Congratulations, Tyler!

You can find more of his fantastic art right here.

 

 

Bretwalda and Other Adventures

For the first time in the last half dozen years I missed GenCon. Between the excellence of the Writer’s Symposium — which is growing at a phenomenal rate — the friends and fans to meet or reconnect with, and the sheer size of the game room stuffed full of wonderful things to see, it has become one of my must stops. Especially since it’s the only large convention that’s only a few hours away.

Alas, a perfect storm of events crowned by a family wedding made it impossible for me to attend this year. I did swing through Indianapolis the weekend of GenCon on the way to that wedding, but didn’t get anywhere close to downtown.

Elkins Again or At Last

As I was logging on to the interwebs this morning I received four notifications of new posts on the ‘ol web site. Traffic here hasn’t been as heavy lately — probably because I haven’t been on the site as often — so I was pleased. Except that all the posts were from trendily mis-spelled names, replies to old posts, and each was a single line of word salad encouragement rife with typos.

In short, it was spam, all from an IP in St. Petersburg. I still am awaiting some kind of explanation about how that nonsense helps anyone. Do these people get PAID to create spam? They must. And what does anyone get out of it? The mind boggles.

Right. So here’s what I MEANT to say today. Two interesting things are happening that have nothing to do with any of the problems and dilemmas we’re currently riding out in our republic.