http://corabuhlert.com/2019/01/17/science-fiction-is-dying-again-the-hopepunk-edition/
There have been some interesting reactions to the definitions of hopepunk as a genre.
I think this sums things up nicely.
Category: Writing
So! A brief catch up.
Since the last post I have been to Sign Club again (fun!) and a Deaf Awareness day at work (v interesting). I also decided to try something new and exercise-ish in the form of aerial hoop, which is not dissimilar to static trapeze but on a suspended hoop instead. Turns out you need lots of upper body strength for that.
I have no upper body strength at all (which is kind of the point), so probably just as well I’m only doing it every second week, alternating with Sign! Gives me a chance to be able to get past the frankly impressive levels of stiffness involved. The nice thing is that being twenty years older and probably four stone heavier than most of the lithe young things there, I am in no way going to be anything but a lot slower and less good than them (not at this level of fitness anyhow) so I feel precisely zero urge to keep up. We take turns: they do the next move and the one after that, and I keep working on the first one.
I’ll get there eventually of course, and the stiffness tells me it’s working exactly the muscles I wanted to shape up, so I’m happy as a slightly unco-ordinated clam…š And glad I didn’t try this at an age where being far and away the bottom of the class would have made me feel crappy. Bonus about getting older: I am far less likely to give a damn unless I accidentally hurt someone’s feelings or something of the sort.
So that lot is one day a week. As for the other six…..
Writing:
It’s all hotting up now! Holly 4 is in the last throes of edits and about to go out to betas. I’ve recut so it should come in somewhere around 40k words. Also, Wes has done another of his fabulous covers, which I can’t wait to show you!
Release date tbc but probably mid-March. And then it’s on to editing Holly 5, which is already written….
So as ever, it’s all go at the gasworks. Watch this space for confirmation of the release date and cover reveal!
More information as I have it….
š
JAC.
Ooh, look! A nice review of “The Locket” from CNC Books Blog. NB it’s at the end so you’ll need to click through to the blog.
Thanks to Lelia for taking the time to review it- much appreciated!
JAC
Once again, big surprise, I find myself with
an overload of books read but not yet reviewed
so I think itās time for a roundup or two.
Donāt Get Mad, Get Even
Colin Goodwin
2QT Limited, July 2015
ISBN 978-1-910077-60-3
Trade Paperback
This book had me chuckling quite a bit with its premiseāblackmailing an English villageās cricket club to either winĀ a trophy or lose its playing ground. Along with this audacious crime, we have village ladies who truly appreciate the hired ringerās skills and a shady real estate development plan. Itās all great fun even with sabotage and perhaps a little murder.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, August 2017.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cat in an Alphabet Endgame
The Midnight Louie Mysteries #28
Carole Nelson Douglas
Wishlist Publishing, August 2016
ISBN 978-1-943175-05-5
Trade Paperback
I confess, I put off reading this as long as I possibly could, so long Iām really embarrassed butā¦
View original post 620 more words
Hi all:
Bit of a surreal day today. Went to a funeral which was held in a natural burial place; not a graveyard, but a very beautiful stretch of woodland sloping down to the sea. There are no grave markers, though you can see the mounds for a few years till the soil settles a bit, and as we walked down the path to where the grave was, at first it’s a bit disconcerting, seeing all the mounds under the trees, some more recent and others barely discernible. Most were covered in woodland flowers and undergrowth – not as if they were unkempt, but as if they were being reclaimed by nature.
The coffin was made of wickerwork, and the bouquets were simple cut flowers, no oasis or cellophane. The grave was under the canopy of a most beautiful beech tree, with other trees closely around. I looked up during the service, and was fascinated by the moving mosaic of leaves, layer upon layer of them. The sun glowed through the higher leaves, and now and then there was a blink of blue sky as the branches shifted and whispered in the breeze. It was really lovely, actually, and looking around at the other grave sites, I really liked that slowly, the mounds settle back into the ground and become part of the woodland. They’re tall and proud at the beginning, when you need the marker, but gradually as the sadness of grief fades and the happiness surfaces, the mound also fades and the woodland stops being background to grief, and comes back into focus as a place of peace to sit and be thankful for the good memories.
That really appeals to me. For me, a quiet, sunny space filled with leaf-whisper and the dappling of sun through the leaves is perfect for dealing with grief; not lonely silence, but filled with enough sound and movement to keep your brain occupied while your heart quietly breaks, and quietly mends itself, though it takes a long time.
One of the moments during the service that made me wobble a bit was the readings as they used one – sometimes called “What is dying?” – that we had at my Dad’s funeral. He died last year, just before our wedding. That reading was one I first heard at the funeral of the father of a good friend. It talks of dying as standing on the seashore watching a ship carrying cargo which disappears over the horizon. It’s lovely: have a quick look at the link above (the rest of this blog will make a lot more sense if you do!)
I loved it. I sent it home to my parents as my mum plays the organ at a lot of funerals and my Dad’s choir used to sing at them, so it’s always useful to know these things in case the family are having trouble finding something relevant. My Dad had always loved sailing and the sea, so he really liked the reading too. It always makes me think of him, and certainly it did today. I miss him, the old bugger. I found myself standing at the funeral for one person and crying for another, which was also weird.
My Dad found school very difficult as a child, and that included reading. He said once that he read maybe five books from the time he was a teen to that point (his early seventies, maybe?) But at that point we went on a mission to get him reading. I had persuaded my Mum to read Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice. She didn’t like fantasy until she read Hobb and discovered it wasn’t like she had thought, and she was sure that my Dad would enjoy it too, but he was an awkward one and not necessarily inclined to oblige. So we left it on the table, slightly in the way. When he came in, he looked at it and read the blurb and said “What’s this?”
“Oh, sorry, is that in your way?” I moved it onto the side. “It’s the book I just finished reading.”
“Is it good?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s epically good,” I told him, and went off burbling about it being really exciting and gripping and all the stuff I thought might appeal. “But you wouldn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I know you’re not right bothered. Anyhow I lent it to Mum and she loved it so I’m going to see if (my sister) wants to read it.”
I left it at that and wandered off, and sure enough when I went back into the kitchen a couple of hours later it had mysteriously gone. He loved the book, of course, and was up till all hours reading it several nights in a row. Less than a week later I caught him sneaking into the other room to see if he could find the second one in the bookshelf… and he did read the whole trilogy.
After that, there was a rather lovely thing where he would come and ask my Mum rather hesitantly what she thought he might like next. Mum, having been a school teacher, is pretty good at judging that sort of thing, and he went from kids books like Stig of the Dump, which he loved, to James Herriot and Nevill Shute, and by the time of his death he was part way through Oliver Twist. To me, that is just the most amazing thing, to suddenly discover the joy of words so late in life, and I’m so proud that he stuck with it all the way up to Dickens (I know the classics can be a bit Marmite, but I love Dickens’ use of words, so it’s amazing to be able to share that enjoyment with someone discovering it for the first time). I am so proud and pleased that he did start, and kept going nearly to the end of his life, when his Parkinson’s intervened. He gained so much pleasure from it until then; I love that that was a gift we were able to give him. It feels like a real privilege.
I don’t think he ever read any of my books apart from one short story, The Black-Eyed Susan, which had a sailing ship in it. He really liked it and wanted to read Song of the Ice Lord after, as it also involves ships and war, which were two things he was quite interested in, but sadly his illness intervened and he never got that far. Whether he would have enjoyed it or not I can’t tell you, but I think he would have liked the shipspirits.
What are the shipspirits? In Song, the warrior/sailor tribes that make up the Skral people have a complex relationship with their ships, to which they attribute a sort of benificent awareness, and when each ship becomes too old to repair, the tribe haul them to a very secret and sacred place, the ships’ graveyard, where they are laid to rest in honour. Maran and Lodden, a bard and a engineer of sorts, travel across the island where Maran’s people live. Lodden, who comes from a far country, is awed to see the row upon row of ships along the hillside, the older ones crumbling into flat, shapeless mounds while the newer ones stand high and stark.
…Sound familiar?
As I looked around the burial ground today, with the grave-mounds unmarked and settling into the earth, it felt as if someone had taken the pictures in my head and made it real, just on a smaller scale (and with less snow!). That’s why it was doubly eerie when they started reading the poem; Song is dedicated to my friend’s father, at whose funeral I first heard the poem that gave me the idea of the shipspirits- but that poem, the poem at my Dad’s funeral, was the very same one they read today.
Today, the combination of the burial site and the reading made me shiver, though not in a bad way. Song of the Ice Lord is about grief and loss, but it is also about coming to terms with losing the people you love, and understanding that while we remember them with love, they never really leave us.
I will leave you with the last part of the poem in the version we heard today, as the soul-ship disappears over the horizon and is lost to sight:
“And just at the moment when someone at my side says
“She is gone!”
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout
“She is here at last!” “
Take care, all.
JAC.
– – –
NB Song of the Ice Lord is quite randomly on a 99c deal at the moment, if you’re interested. Oddly enough, we organised it weeks ago before there was any question of a funeral at all. Synchronicity is a weird, weird, thing.
Right now I am sitting on the floor next to a table under which my dog is hiding from the fireworks, poor lad. He will settle and go to sleep if I’m here but if not he gets really anxious and goes on patrol. In fact, he far prefers it if OH and I are in the same room (collie herding instincts kicking in, we think) but he’ll settle for me sitting on the floor next to him, and I don’t mind, as he’s a love. I am, however, going to have to keep this short, as otherwise my legs will go to sleep and I’ll fall over when i do have to get up. Besides which, jerk chicken for tea (ALL THE NOMS!).
Anyhow. This year, as usual, I am hoping to take part in NaNoWriMo. My page, if you’re doing it, is here.The past three years being what they are, it didn’t go specially well, but so far this year I did manage to get far enough ahead to spend a weekend dog-wrangling without falling too far behind.
Every year there is a great discussion over whether it’s worth doing Wrimo or not, and I think it’s very much dependent on how you work. Last three years I’ve been too burnt out to relish the challenge, but mostly it appeals to my geekly side – I want to see that barchart advancing in a steady manner, dammit! And as always, even though what you get down is not going to be top quality, what first draft ever is? For me, it’s a good way to have a specific goal, and get down a chunk of words that I otherwise would not have done.
The other side of it, of course, is that everyone in my family knows that in November you’ll get no sense out of me at all because I’m doing Wrimo, so I can get away with prioritising my writing then in a way that doesn’t happen the rest of the year, because it’s a specific, measured challenge in a specific, limited amount of time. So though I try to set aside a chunk of time every day for writing that I can, the only time other considerations don’t really present themselves to impinge on that is during Wrimo. Very useful.
The novel I’m NaNoing is the third in the new series and as you see, it’s currently about 15k words. Stuff is getting sticky for the heroine, and back at the ranch (so to speak) it’s all going to kick off for the hero too, so exciting times…!
Meanwhile back IRL, I am working through edits on the sequel to Sprig of Holly, which will be called The Holly and the Ivy. I hope to have a cover done for it by Wesley Souza, the incredibly talented guy who did the cover for Sprig, which I totally love! So watch out for that, hopefully before Christmas (fingers crossed the edits are not too involved!)
And in the meantime, we are working on this year’s Christmas Lites — the anthology a pile of us do every year to raise funds for victims of domestic violence. All monies go straight into the coffers of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and if possible I might try to get some of the other authors to come and guest in the run up to that. So, y’know, busy busy.
But for now, enough! the fireworks have quietened, the dog has relaxed, I have severe pins and needles in my legs, and it’s time to put the oven on for my current favourite food ever. Then tea, a last circuit with the Luxury Lurcher, and an early night with the laptop to try and do a bit of catch-up on the NaNo count!
It’s all good…
Have an excellent week, peeps, and will catch you the other side…
JAC.
While I remember:
Free copy of The Scarred ArtisanĀ if anyone wants one?
You sign up to the mailing list to get it but can always unsubscribe later- there’s a link at the bottom of any email that gets sent out.
Please note, this is one of the shorts from Song of the Ice Lord so if you’ve read that, you’ve probably already got this!
in which case try The Black-Eyed Susan free here:
Oh! Hello.
Let me just shift these tumbleweeds out of the way, Iām sure there used to be a blog here somewhere.
Aha! Here we goā¦ Lord, itās a bit dusty isnāt it? Pass me that duster will you?
There, thatās better.
Give me a moment and Iāll crank up the generatorā¦ See the lights flicker – orange, yellow, white and weāre on!
Wow. Itās been a while, hasnāt it? Weāve been in the Great Blog Void and fingers crossed, we may be just getting across to the other side. Letās see, when was the last time I put something up on hereā¦? About a year back I think. Rude!
But itās been a hell of a year.
So. I wonāt go through the list of joys and woes which have made the last 12 months what they have been but the main points (in chronological order) include: adopting an elderly lurcher in October 2015, who has been a constant source of joy, irritation and laughter, and whose arrival was accompanied by that of a small colony of (empty!) poo bags which have invaded the pockets of every garment I possess. Said lurcher is very beautiful and has his own fanclub in the village, so we are now known as the dogās owners in much the same way as members of a starās entourage; basically, we just hold the lead. Bless him. Heās thirteen in April, which is quite old for a lurcher, but thinks he is a puppy still. Given how beautiful he is now, I suspect he was unbearably cute as a pup. My lovely dogā¦.
On a much less happy note, cancer. There was already a family member undergoing treatment (with a good outcome, fortunately) when my Dad who had Parkinsons was diagnosed with terminal cancer. That was at Christmas; it took him very suddenly at Easter. So that called a stop to pretty much everything for a while, and it really wasnāt kind that two weeks after he died, my mum lost her little cat, which slept on her bed every night, or that shortly after my sisterās much beloved dog had to be put down, both due to malign growths. (I don’t know why there is so much cancer about this year; other friends have also been lost to cancer, including the lovely Katy Sozaeva, whose encouragement right at the beginning of my writing career kept me going in a time of doubt.)
But, by necessity, once the funeral was over we had to get going again, as our wedding was at the end of July, which kept my mum and the rest of us busy just at that weird point where everythingās done and the madness is over and all that is left is the empty chair and the quiet.
The wedding had been designed with the idea of not stressing my Dad out, so it was just the two immediate families in a pub on the moors, followed by roast beef sarnies in a yurt outside the house, and live music by a very talented friend (as well as my sister, a kazoo, the lurcher who apparently knows how to bark in time, etc). I came in to āBring me Sunshineā by Morecambe and Wise, wearing black jeans, a black and silver corset and a purple coat my mum made from a pattern called āPirate Queenā, which will tickle anyone who knows about my lifelong penchant for pirates (and I may use that phrase as a title at some point now Iāve invented it). She even put pockets in it. My wedding dress had pockets!! I was very pleased about that. I hate not having pockets.
My mum also made some tremendous glimmering blue brocade waistcoats for the blokes, and my new husband looked splendid; channelling his inner pirate, clearly, though that was just incidental. In a surprise move, my mum even made a waistcoat for the dog who, when we put it on for a photo, seemed completely content and wandered off to steal (another) beef sarnie without waiting for us to take it off him again. My sister did the flowers, which were some of the most beautiful Iāve ever seen.
The bridesmaids, who had chosen their own dresses, all chose white in different styles, and all looked very stylish and very much themselves. The yurt was magical! We loved the yurt. The weather was mizzlish, but this is Yorkshire, and it does mizzle with style ā besides which a dull sky actually suits the photos better ā it makes all the people look really vivid and there are so many smiles that each photo is pretty sunny in any case. I don’t tend to put up pics of friends or family for reasons of privacy but here’s one of me having been persuaded to channel my inner Mary Poppins. Spit spot!
(The photographer was Richard Edwards who is extremely good, btw)
Apart from the missing family members, it was two shades better than I had hoped in pretty much every aspect you could think of. We sang āThe Wild Roverā for my Dad, laughed and cried, often at the same time, had splendid local food and drink (ok, mostly, the wine was from Hampshire and the bubbly came from Cornwall), sang and chattered. All the olds got caught up in a vicious competition to see who could blow the biggest bubble (there were bubbles instead of confetti) and in most of the photos, someone appears to be laughing their head off. In any case, I enjoyed every moment of it. It was *such* fun ā and about perfect.
Then, after that, newlywed life kicked in which as far as I can tell is very much like normal life but when absolutely nothing has got done in the house for about five months. The washing was tremendous and the garden had gone mad. The bathroom doorhandle fell off, the kitchen light stopped working and the downpipe for the rainbarrel was hanging in place apparently only because of the spiderwebs around it, though the same spiders had seen fit to make a massive web of the entire inside of the lean-to where I keep flowerpots and gardening gloves, so I had to fight my way in in with a crystal containing the light of Earendil in order to retrieve the trowel, which Shelob had taken a fancy to. I went back to work and discovered my inbox, which usually holds about 85 items, had hit 1600 in my absence, and started to wonder whether I shouldnāt go back and have another chat with Shelob about that there gardening forkā¦! And then we ran out of teabags at a critical point (nooooooo!).
So, a bit of elbow grease and weāre coming up to date on all of the aboveā¦ but in the meantime, what of the damn books, which is why weāre here?
Weeelllllllll. Now it gets complex.
Last time you looked I was writing Mother, right? Well, my editor said it would be better if I cut the backstory. So I did, but it was about 15k words I was cutting, so I figured Iād release it as a short. So I rounded it off, but that meant doing a few explanatory bits. So when it hit 45k words I sent it back to the editor in question, who came back and said āHow does Suze come in?ā
Damndamndamn. That little 5 word question would then require about a 45k word answer. So in it went, but then the chronology was all wrong, so I changed it, but then it was all wrong the other way, and this isnāt even the right damned book!! But it made sense to get the prequel right before going onto the sequel in case something significant went in that would cause repercussions later. I kid you not, that damn book (now called Flight from Shantar) has been over a year in the editing, and it got to the point where I couldnāt even see it any more. The one bright spot was when I got a bit click-happy with spellcheck and changed every instance of the word āShantarā in the novel Flight from Shantar to āSHATNERā!!!… Thank goodness for the Undo button! (Though I still havenāt given up entirely on Flight from SHATNER!! ā you *know* it would sell and sellā¦..!)
Anyhow, it was all a bit irrelevant in any case, as I was too burnt out for anything in the first half of the year, and too busy sorting out Dadās paperwork for my Mum. Once Iād got a bit of mojo back after that I went on a reading binge instead, which is always salutaryā¦ and then, come the beginning of July, just as the wedding stuff was really hotting up, I dreamed this great character, and it was a bit compulsive. I couldnāt get him and his heroine out of my head and there was stuff to be done, so I figured it was time to make some notes and just download the bugger.
BUT these characters are arsey and not inclined to play nicely.
Some notes! Yeah right, in the same sense as a map with a scale of 1:1.
So by the end of August, these ānotesā had taken the form of a 110k word book. At the time of writing, Iām 120k into book 2 and books 3 & 4 are all mapped out. As soon as I get to a sensible stopping place, Iām putting Flight back together and sending it to the editors (with the hope that fresh eyes will be able to sort out the chronology more easily than I can), so with a bit of luck that wonāt need too much in the way of rewrites and might be out in early 2017. The new Christmas Lites anthology is due in December. I have a short story (currently 10k) in editing which is a sequel to Sprig of Holly, and when all that is put to bed, Mother of the Shantar is already 85k done, (Shatner, heheheheh) and ready to start culling characters!
Man, if I didnāt already have a fulltime job I would be adequately provided with writing hours just from this lot!!
So yes, as far as you lot are concerned, Iāve been off the radar for a rather long time with little enough to show on the actual publications page but a short story in last yearās Christmas Lites anthology (though I did help design the cover, which I totally love). But I havenāt let the writing drop ā ohhhh nooooo ā and Iām hoping the next 18 months or so should bring you the occasional release to remind you who I am.
Weāll see, eh?
Anyhow, there may be a couple of cover reveals and other interesting news brewing in the meantime, but that all very much tbc…
The new lot though, the new lot is looking interesting and this time Iām playing with the somewhat random idea of writing the entire thing before I release any of it, so that in theory youāll be able to read the entire story arc from start to finish with only a couple of weeks’ wait from one book to the next. If anyone has any thoughts about that, Iād be really interested to hear them. Might be a good plan, might be stupid ā no idea at the moment.
Just wait till you meet the Wolf and Lyse, though!!
I think youāre going to like themā¦.
Till later:
JAC
Just a short update:
Song of the Ice Lord
Cover is done and rather splendid ā reveal should be in a couple of days, and hopefully some time in the next week or so pre-orders should be available. Files for the paperback are uploaded and assuming they pass review, the first proof should be ordered later on today, and is likely to arrive in the UK this time next week. Excited!!
Flight from Shantar:
Currently just short of 110k words (Iām getting on with finishing that while waiting for Song to be processed). The story is nearly finished but will need a bit of rearranging and then some pretty hardcore editing for tone and consistency. It needs a deal more work, but hopefully it will make a good, taut story by the end of it. A couple more bits of tidy-up and then Iāll print it out and start scribbling on it!
Book 3:
Still lurking around 100k words but though not much writing is happening till I finish with the others, plotting and sense-checking is ongoing, which means all the various plot-strands and motivations are starting to fall into place in a more sensible manner. Again, lots of work to be done, and it wouldnāt surprise me if the wordcount gets split between two books eventually ā the 100k is missing a lot of characterās storylines – but the frame is in place and the bodywork is starting to take shape. So even thatās progressing, albeit slowly.
Lastly there are three short stories embedded into the text of Song and Iām thinking of releasing them as free shorts, provisionally titled āThe Last Dragonā, āThe Scarred Artisanā and āThe Widowās Sonā (though the last is a rubbish title and hopefully likely to morph into something snappier).
Get me with the progress!! I have a good feeling about this year though… Fingers crossed!
Right. Back to it.
Cover reveal for Song should be in the next week or so, and release date before the end of the month so as always, watch this space for progress.
All the best:
JAC
*****
Dear all:
Developments, and itās getting exciting.
Flight from Shantar and book 3 set aside for the moment while Iām working to release Song of the Ice Lord. Clocking in at somewhere around 95k words, Iāve had it back from both editors and there is only one small rewrite still to finish, which should be done in the next few days I hope, after which it will be off to Trish for formatting.
Iām currently in discussion about the cover ā it will feature the bird Tiris, and possibly the stone circle which plays an important part in the proceedings. I would quite like to have the protagonist, Lodden, on the cover, but many stock photos look really modern, even the ones in old-fashioned clothes, and that would spoil it entirely. I shall investigate but probably going with the simplest image possible, and then maybe something a bit more ornate in terms of the font. Getting there though(rah! I love that bit!)
So, it will be three or four weeks before I get my slot for the cover, and I should imagine something similar for queuing for formatting, but if all goes well I might be set for a July release… If I can push it forward Iāll try for midsummer though. That would be pleasing, but it doesnāt usually slide earlier so much as later!
Weāll see. Depends on the queues and how well the paperback file works though, (not to mention posting times for the proof. I WISH theyād do that from the UK ā it adds a week on quite unnecessarily, and thatās when you pay three times for the postage what you pay for the proof itself!)
And then… well, then onto Flight and Book 3, but it will be good all the same!
More as I know it:
JAC
Dear all:
Itās been a while since I last gave you an update, I know, but itās not that Iāve forgotten you. Iām ensconced deep in the writing cave, doing my best to actually finish some stuff for you ā and itās starting to move a bit at last. Very exciting! So let me tell you a little about whatās been going on…
Book 3: This is now at 80 thousand words or so, and there is still much work to be done. Iām aiming to make this a proper fantasy-sized book but it all depends where the story breaks. Of course the larger story arc is hardly begun yet, but currently Iām thinking this should be a three-paperback story arc and come in nicely as a kind-of trilogy.
The flipside to that is that itās just too messy having two novellas in one as a starter, so there may be a re-branding along the line to clarify this. This would involve the loss of many of the reviews that are currently up though, and I really value your reviews, so I need to think about how best to manage that. Watch this space.
Flight from Shantar: This is a prequel to events in the On Dark Shores series, and tells of the journey to bring the Mother of the Shantar from the heartlands of her country and smuggle her into Mardon, the country which has only recently been at war with her own. It links in with the arrival of Jack and Vansel in On Dark Shores, and introduces you to characters who will play a large part in Book 3.
This is now at 80k words and nearly at the end of the first draft…. Another ten thousand words (ish) should join up the gaps, then thereāll be a bit of rearrangement before I send it off to the editors to be attacked with scalpels… The second half has had a bit of work already (ie it came back with the comment āHow did Suze get involved?ā ā a small question requiring a 40k word answer!), so itāll be structural stuff on the first half, and word-polishing on the second. Baby steps, people!
But in the meantime…
Song of the Ice Lord: This is a story from the ancient history of the world of On Dark Shores, set millennia before the current storyline. A dark and terrifying being known as the Ice Lord precipitates the world into a devastating war. Country after country falls before him, until only a few survivors are left, gathered on the Skral islands, and having finished with the rest, the Ice Lord is coming for them. Only the determination of a one-handed craftsman, a young Skral bard and a half-blind Shantara will stand between the Ice Lord and the death of a world…
This is now in its second edit (ie structural stuff done, word-polishing attempted) and currently at about 90k words, though this may be subject to further scalpelling. Hopefully not much though… Iām getting it back from one editor tomorrow, but the other probably wonāt finish with it till partway through April, so in the hiatus Iāll be inputting any edits from Julia and working on the other stories. Updates will follow….
So, progress! I am talking to a designer about covers for Song, and as soon as the final edits are back and input, that will be going off to the formatters. Hopefully sometime over the summer there might even be a release! Hurrah! I make no promises though, given my appalling record to date…
I know you are probably a bit cross as the one you really want to read is Book 3, but bear with me – at the moment Iām juggling 3 stories which is a silly idea… Soon to be 2 though, and with a bit of luck, in a couple of monthsā time youāll have something to be getting on with while Iām concentrating on untangling the events back in Scarlock where, let me tell you, itās getting dangerous to leave the house at night. And WAIT till you find out a bit more about Copeland! Canāt wait tell you all the gossip Iāve discovered!
Right. Enough squeeing, more writing. I will be interested to see what you think, though, of all of them. Hopefully you will enjoy them even if they are sequentially challenged…. Also, if you havenāt signed up to the email list on Amazon.com (not UK, the one on the .com author page) please do as that way theyāll definitely tell you when the next one hits cyberspace. Which might not be so very long now, rah!
Well, thatās my fifteen mins of fresh air. Back to the writing cave!
Have a good one, all:
JAC
Wandering On Dark Shores.... 