Michael Livingston's Blog, page 5

2016 Spring and Summer Appearances

2015 was an exciting year for me, with the release of the Crécy Casebook and The Shards of Heaven, the publication of a short story, and a few articles published hither and yon.

Oh, plus I wrote another novel.

All of which is to say that, well, 2016 is looking to be fairly exciting, as well.

I don’t have my full fall and winter schedule nailed down yet — and I’m sure there will be one or two events given the paperback release of The Shards of Heaven (October 25) and the hardback release of The Gates of Hell (November 15) — but I can tell you a few places you can see me this spring and summer:

April 21-24: Jordancon in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m on a few panels, and I’ll also be giving an exciting talk on medieval goodness.
May 12: The International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I’ll be speaking about some Crécy-related matters at 10am. My visit will be a brief one.
May 13: The Book Expo of America in Chicago, Illinois. I’ll be signing books in the Tor booth, probably around 3pm.
May 13-15: The SFWA Nebula Conference in Chicago, Illinois. I’m currently scheduled for a couple of panels and an exciting talk on medieval goodness.
July 5-6: The International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK. I’ll be leading a tour of Pontefract Castle, giving a presentation on Crécy, and then partaking in a panel about military history. Plus visiting a pub or two.

That’s it so far. I hope to see you somewhere at some point for something!

Cover-up: The Gates of Hell

A little less than a year ago, I was talking about the design of the cover for The Shards of Heaven, my debut novel from Tor Books. Now here I am to talk about the design of the cover for its sequel, The Gates of Hell, which will be published this Fall. Time flies!

First, here it is:

The Gates of Hell (Shards #2)

I know, right?

So, how did this amazing cover happen?

Mostly because artists are artists and they do amazing things. We had already talked editorially about keeping the same “feel” for the covers in the series, so when I was asked if I had any thoughts about the cover for Book 2, here’s what I wrote to my editor, Claire Eddy:

In this case, I’d like to see Juba on the cover, perhaps wearing a toga praetexta (a white toga with a broad purple border). I would very much like for some portion of his skin to be showing, so that we can see that he is of North African origin, young, and strong. If some “action” element is needed, you could splatter some blood across his chest (neatly symbolic because the toga praetexta is supposed to signify peace). If you need to go to “fantasy,” put Juba in a more common tunic and put the Aegis of Zeus over it (a Macedonian breastplate with the Shard at its center).

The real key, I emphasized, was that we have a person of color on the cover. I had some plot reasons for this — Juba is really important to the next stage in this story — but I also had some social ones, too, like the fact that there’s a kind of latent and self-perpetuating racism in the covers of too many fantasy novels. Simply put, they tend to be whiter than a Trump rally. So if my Historical Fantasy — set in Rome, no less — could in some small way stand as a balance for that, I was all for it.

In some form, this information went to the art department and thence to Larry Rostant, the artist who executed the magnificent cover for Shards.

As it turned out, Larry actually shot both options I had presented: Juba in the bloodied toga and Juba in the breastplate. Tor editorial presented both options to me. They were leaning toward the breastplate one (I don’t think I can show it to you all, sorry), because they worried that the toga one was too bloody. But they wanted to know what I thought.

I voted toga. Bloodiness and all.

So here we are: a new cover, a new book. I hope you’ll join me in the next stage of this grand adventure.

And just you wait until you see the cover for Book 3 next year!

Shards of Heaven: Alive and Well

The Shards of Heaven

So it’s been three weeks since the release of my novel The Shards of Heaven, and things have obviously been busy!

I wouldn’t have known it before going through this experience, but having a book launch on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving was rough in some ways. For one thing, folks tend to be pretty busy with other things. I know I am. It’s also so late in the year that many of those publicity-boosting “Best of 2015” lists and award campaigns are apparently pretty much locked in place (though whether Shards would deserve such slots is obviously another question). As an academic, a late November launch also meant that at the very moment my book needed that big initial push … I found myself in the throes of end-of-term grading. Only today have I climbed out from the stacks of research papers and blue books.

All that aside, it’s still been good times. Absolutely amazing times.

I wake up every day and walk past a bookshelf that has The Shards of Heaven on it … and I can’t tell you how much that makes me smile.

It also happens that my free time (hahahaha) has been locked down by my need to complete the sequel to The Shards of Heaven, entitled The Temples of the Ark, which was also due in November. I suppose that should go up there in that bit about how busy I am, except that I can tell you that Temples — which is done, and all set to be released next year — is full of awesome. Seriously. In Shards I had to set the stage, and in Temples I got to play on it.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

In between all that, I’ve been doing interviews, writing guest posts on blogs, and generally trying to flog Shards whenever and wherever possible. You’ll find on the Shards page here on my website a (hopefully) up-to-date listing of reviews, interviews, sneak-peeks, and other items associated with the book. It’s getting rather lengthy, which is pretty fabulous.

Upcoming author appearances can be found listed here on the site (just to the left there, if you’re looking at this outside of mobile). At the moment, they are:

December 19: Greenville, SC
January 4: Charlotte, NC
January 5: Chapel Hill, NC

So that’s about it.

If you have read the book, please know how much I appreciate you taking the chance on my words and my imagination. Thank you.

Last, if you read it and liked it … can I bother you to tell someone about it? A friend, a colleague, a family member, or even that shifty fellow on the bus. And, if you’re really feeling generous, feel free to give it a 5-star rating on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever you go for your reading insights.

Thanks again to you all.

 

Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.

Shards of Heaven: The Start is Nigh

The Shards of Heaven

On Tuesday, 24 November, my novel The Shards of Heaven will at long last be released. Pre-orders will arrive on doorsteps. Copies will be in stores. Over seven years since I finished it, the book will officially be born. 

A number of folks have asked me this week how it feels to be so near the Big Event, and my honest answer would have to be this: Finally. 

The release has been circled on my calendar for close to a year, you see. Yes, it’s shifted a bit — November 17, then November 10, now at last and for sure November 24 — but it’s always been a light at the end of the tunnel, and it has often seemed like it would never get here.

For the past year there’s been the general anxiousness about a big event, of course, but more than that, this year has been brutal. Even setting aside a rather enormous upheaval in my personal life, 2015 saw me finish a major academic book (The Battle of Crécy: A Casebook), make final edits to Shards, work on the maps for the book, pound through a high volume of publicity materials (over 20,000 words of it at last count), and start and finish the 103,000-word sequel to Shards … all while still trying to do my day-job of being a professor. It’s been rough. 

I remember asking Pat Rothfuss, just hours after selling the Shards Trilogy, what advice he would give to someone who had just sold a novel. He didn’t even hesitate. “Book Two will fuck up your life,” he said. 

And so it did. Or at least so my life was — whether the book was to blame or not. 

I’m not writing all this in need of pity or kudos or anything of the sort. As hard as this year was, I’m also pleased to say that it was full of incomparable joys. And I’m well aware that through it all I am living to see my dream come true of seeing my first novel hit the shelves. Plus, im happy to say, Book Two turned out amazing. 

The point I’m after in going through all this is to say that I’m meeting Tuesday with a relief I cannot adequately express. November 24 will mark the beginning of the life of the novel (go little book!). But it will also mark the closing of one long chapter in my life and the beginning of another. 

That’s the way of things, of course: when one door closes, another opens. So it always seems to be, and this Tuesday will be no exception.

What will this next chapter in my life bring? 

I can’t yet know for certain — though I can tell you that I started writing Book Three today.

Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.

Rosie Cotton the Dog

She’s adorable. In her way.

This is Rosie Cotton.

I know. But she grows on you.

For some months now I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. Longtime friends and family know that in early 2014 we lost an absolutely amazing member of our family, Sydney the Wondermutt. And while nothing could ever replace such a great companion, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a new furry friend. 

The day after my birthday, as it happens, I caught wind of just such a possible pup: 

Well hello, pup.

Actually, she’s not a pup at all, but a rescue situation: an adult French bulldog who’d spent her life as a breeder for a puppy mill. She was battered and beaten, mostly blind, unable to climb a step because she was so weak … and crushingly desperate for affection. 

I named her Rosie Cotton. And Lo! She is my muse! 

Feel the inspiration! Feel it!

 

Shards of Heaven: The First Booksigning

The Shards of Heaven

I had a booksigning last night … and it was wonderful and unforgettable.

I’ve signed books before — for Writers of the Future there was a rather large signing event, and I’ve signed things here and there since then — but an official booksigning for my novel (my own, my precious) was something quite different and extraordinary.

It’s real. It’s not a dream.

Every booksigning is special, of course, and I’ve no doubt that the first booksigning for a first book is always doubly so. But this … this was, in a word, impossible.

Let me tell you a story.

Twenty-five years ago I rode my bike to a bookstore in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had allowance money to spend, and that meant I had books to buy — books that I could stuff into my backpack and dream about as I pedaled across town.

Instead of buying books that day, I bought just one book: the newly released Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan — a book and an author I’d never heard of. I devoured it. And thus I became a fan of The Wheel of Time, which from that first novel turned out to be one of the most significant fantasy series in history.

The Wheel turns, as readers of Jordan know. And somehow that turning of time brought me to The Citadel, the alma mater of the man behind those books. I exchanged some emails with him, managing to establish a campus creative writing award in his honor. I had the extraordinary privilege of meeting him once, though he was already ill.

And then, in 2007, he was gone. James Rigney, the man the world knew by his pseudonym, Robert Jordan, died after a courageous battle with cardiac amyloidosis.

The Wheel turns.

Jim had been elected to join the South Carolina Academy of Authors before his untimely death, and somehow — because I was a professor at his alma mater, because I was known to be a fan — I was selected to give a key speech establishing his literary legacy at the posthumous induction ceremony. With his wife, Harriet, sitting in the front row before me, surrounded by his many family and friends, the speech I gave that night remains the most difficult I’ve ever delivered.

Harriet embraced me afterward. She invited me to give another talk about his legacy, this time alongside Brandon Sanderson, the up-and-coming (now long-since-arrived!) writer who’d been chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series.

Because of all that, I was asked to give a speech at the Charleston Library Society, talking more about Jim’s impact. Because of that, I gave a speech at a special event organized by the good people of Tar Valon, a fan organization dedicated to the Wheel of Time. Then came a performance at JordanCon. Then another. And another.

The Wheel turns.

Somewhere along the way, I sold The Shards of Heaven series. Brandon Sanderson — along with Harriet and the amazing Team Jordan, as Jim’s assistants Alan Romanczuk and Maria Simons came to be known — completed the main books of The Wheel of Time series. Then Team Jordan set out to publish the coda of Jim’s extraordinarily imaginative enterprise: The Wheel of Time Companion, a stunning encyclopedia of his invented world.

Before the booksigning last night — by the grace of whatever power has guided these strange steps in ways I cannot comprehend but for which I will be forever grateful — I was invited to join Harriet, Alan, Maria, their close circle of friends and family, and my fellow debut author, Jason Denzel, who is the founder of the massive Wheel of Time fan site Dragonmount. We talked. We laughed. We drank a bit, and we had some wonderful food.

The Wheel turns.

We drove to the bookstore, and as I stepped inside I saw not only the complete Wheel of Time Companion and Jason’s Mystic, but The Shards of Heaven, my own first novel. Truly there. Truly and unmistakably real.

Standing with Jason Denzel and Harriet McDougal beside our books … just seconds after I saw mine for the first time. (Photo: Amy Romanczuk)

And some minutes later, somehow — a quarter-century after I had picked up that first edition copy of the first book in the Wheel of Time — I found myself standing with Harriet, Jason, Alan, Maria — and by God Jim was there, too — reading a few pages from Shards.

All of which is to say that the experience was impossible and unforgettable and perfect. And that Jim was right. The line that made me fall in love with his world in that bookstore all those years ago is as true as ever:

The Wheel of Time turns.

“Oh gods, how do I spell my name again?!?” (Photo: Amy Romanczuk)

Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.

Shards Book Collecting Opportunity

The Shards of Heaven

How cool would it be to own not just a first edition copy of your favorite book, but a zero edition collector’s copy of it?

What is that, you ask?

And how can you get such a copy of The Shards of Heaven, which will most certainly become your favorite book until the release of the sequel, The Temples of the Ark?

Read on and find out!

Tomorrow night, the Barnes and Noble in Mt Pleasant, SC will host the release of the debut novel Mystic, by Jason Denzel, along with the long-awaited Wheel of Time Companion, by Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons.

This once-in-a-lifetime event will also feature the one and only pre-publication chance to get your hands on a hardback copy of my own debut novel, The Shards of Heaven. So it’s absolutely the place to be.

But wait! There’s more!

Because of a printer’s error, we found out last week that the entire first print run of The Shards of Heaven had to be pulped. That’s right, folks. Thousands upon thousands of copies of my book were in existence, only to be deemed unfit for public consumption because the printer had failed to insert two breathtaking maps into the book. (This is the reason for the suddenly changed release date, in case you were wondering.)

But the printer’s loss is your gain!

Tomorrow night at my signing I will have 60 copies of this otherwise pulped first printing of The Shards of Heaven. This limited supply of an exclusive misprinted edition will be collector’s items: the zero edition printing of a future international best-seller*!

(*pending sales)

What’s that you say?

You want the book, but you’re not sure you can do without the amazing maps?

Why you don’t have to!

Come to the booksigning, purchase your copy of this rare, zero-edition printing of The Shards of Heaven, and we will give you a gorgeous, oversized postcard featuring not just one but both of the two maps absolutely free!

That’s right! You get, for the price of a single hardback, a limited-edition collector’s copy of a future intergalactic bestseller** and a limited-edition postcard copy of the extraordinary maps to go with it!

(**pending sales and the invention of intergalactic travel)

AND AS IF THAT’S NOT ENOUGH…

Because I will not only be personally present at the booksigning, but I also happen to have a working right hand and a working pen, I will be signing and numbering these 60 collector’s copies!

It’s first come, first served, folks, so come early, line up, and tell your friends.

I’ll see you there!

Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.

Shards of Heaven Release Date Changed (Again)

The Shards of Heaven

About a year ago, The Shards of Heaven was scheduled for release on 17 November. Then, on 18 August, I wrote here on the site about the release date being changed to 10 November, largely so that I could take part in the big shared booksigning on 3 November (tomorrow!) for the releases of the Wheel of Time Companion and Jason Denzel’s new novel, Mystic.

Well, it turns out that neither of those release dates is correct. Last week, because of a fascinating printer’s error (about which I will likely share more at a later date), my release date had to be changed once again.

So, barring something very strange happening, The Shards of Heaven will now be released on 24 November.

Importantly, the good folks at Tor have insisted that we will still have books available for the booksigning tomorrow night at the Mt. Pleasant Barnes and Noble. I hope to see some folks there!

Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.

My Birthday Present: A Novel

Disneyworld Indiana Jones Show, 1992

So in a few weeks — on November 6th, in point of fact — I’ll be turning 40.

I confess I don’t feel like I’m 40. The notion seems preposterous to me. It seems so … adult.

On the other hand, I sure don’t look like that young pup in that picture above. Who is that kid?

As it happens, though, a few really cool things will be happening right around my birthday. On November 3rd I’ll be taking part in a big book launch and pre-release booksigning for The Shards of Heaven with some awesome fellow writers at a local Barnes and Noble.

A week later, on November 10th, the book will at last be officially released into the wild. I actually have no glorious plans for that occasion: I’ll probably just treat myself to a quiet dinner and take some time to reflect on the events of the past year. Or maybe sneak into local bookstores and turn all their copies face-out on the shelves.

And right between those two once-in-a-lifetime moments, my 40th birthday.

I for one believe that having my novel published with Tor is an absolutely legit and comprehensive present to mark the occasion, but if you disagree — if you feel like having the book out is simply not enough — then how about pre-ordering a copy of my book? Just head on down to your local bookstore or your favorite online bookseller or your local library and arrange to get your hands on The Shards of Heaven.

And then, if you read it and like it, you can post your review on Amazon or Goodreads or Barnes and Noble … or simply stand up at your desk in the office and loudly declare that you, too, will find a Shard and will know the power of the gods and that the next time someone takes your piece of cake from the break room — and we all know it clearly had your name on a Post-it note — they will pay! By the power of Poseidon, they will pay!

Or alternatively, you know, you can just tell a friend or two.

Either way. I’m easy.

Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.

Shards of Heaven: Read (a bit) for Free!

Over on Tor.com they have posted an excerpt of my forthcoming novel, The Shards of Heaven. 

That’s right. You can head on over there and read the entirety of the Prologue (which is no short thing). 

You can do this right now. For free. 

So I really don’t know why you’re still here. Go! Read! Enjoy!

Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.