Ian Irvine's Blog, page 6

Mapping The Tainted Realm

I love maps. I’ve got hundreds of them in my office, plus oodles of atlases and books of ancient and historical maps, geological maps, bathymetric maps, atlases of history, atlases of space and the universe. Any fantasy novel that doesn’t have at least one map – and some of my books have had many pages of them – feels deficient. It has an empty dimension; an opportunity wasted.

Central Hightspall

Having said that, the map from Vengeance is a little sketchy. Surely there’s more to the place than this?

Well, yes, there is and will be. A lot more.

The Tainted Realm is a big story but it takes place in a small area, and this was deliberate. All my Three Worlds books roam over vast areas – continents, in some cases – and people occasionally pop through a portal to briefly rummage around in another world, before retreating to safety, greatly scarred by the experience. And serves them right!

Almost all the action in Vengeance takes place in a few small areas in the centre of the island now called Hightspall, a once great realm now crumbling under its own decadence and a series of natural disasters. These areas are:

Cython, the secret underground realm of the bitter, dispossessed and vengeful Cythonians;
The Seethings, a blistering geothermal plain dotted with boiling mud pools, geysers and poisonous ponds, next to a trio of active volcanoes called The Vomits;
 The wrythen’s lair at Precipitous Crag; and
Palace Ricinus in Hightspall’s capital city, which is called Caulderon, on Lake Fumerous.

The action in Book 2, Rebellion, roams a little more widely, though still within a an area you could drive across in a day – assuming there were any roads.

Alert readers may notice a passing similarity between Central Hightspall and the central volcanic plateau of the North Island of New Zealand, and they’d be right. My first degree was in geology and I’m still fascinated by volcanoes. Where better to look at them than this part of NZ, which is one of the most volcanically active places on Earth, and the site of more of the most disastrous volcanic eruptions of the past million years than anywhere else, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano. I spent a lot of time studying the geology and geography before creating the map, though it’s inspired by the area, not based on it.

But I’ll talk more about world-building in another post.

[This post is revised and updated from one I posted on my Blogger blog back in 2011.]

Filed under: The Tainted Realm, Three Worlds series

The Well of Echoes Audiobooks are Coming

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve signed a contract for the audiobooks of The Well of Echoes Quartet. The audiobooks will be done by Bolinda Publishers, who have done such a great job on The View from the Mirror and The Tainted Realm Audiobooks. The Well of Echoes books will be close to 110 hours in total, and they’ll be available world-wide on CD and by download. I’ll let you know when they’re published.

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If anyone’s looking for The View from the Mirror audiobooks, or The Tainted Realm audiobooks, you can listen to samples or get the CDs here.

http://www.bolinda.com/aus/search/results.aspx?/1/-/10/0/1/1/1/1/1/4/Ian%20Irvine

They’re also available for download at Audible.com, Audible.co.uk, iTunes and at all the other usual places. Happy listening!

Filed under: Audiobooks, The Tainted Realm, Three Worlds series

8-Legged Writer’s Block

Writing is hard at the best of times, but when I went upstairs to my office when it was still dark, I didn’t expect to see this hairy charmer glaring at me from the screen of my iMac.

One would have to be made of sterner stuff than I am, to write in such company. It’s 4.1 inches across.

What’s it hunting?

Filed under: Writer's Life

Kate Forsyth Fuddling Her Words

Aussie fantasy author Kate Forsyth, who’s written dozens of books and is published in more than a dozen countries, had a moving article in the weekend magazines about her lifelong struggle with the spoken word, in particular, stuttering and spoonerisms.

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/fuddling-up-my-mucking-words-again-20121112-29751.html

Filed under: Aussie authors

My Amazing Agent

A terrific article in the weekend magazines a couple of weeks ago about Selwa Anthony, literary agent extraordinaire. Selwa has been my literary agent for the past 16 years and she is indeed one in a million – and arguably the best agent in Australia.

Selwa Anthony

Unfortunately the great success of some of her authors has meant that Selwa rarely takes on new authors, because she’s so busy looking after the careers of her current stable.

Some of Selwa’s most excellent authors now published all over the world include (I’m mainly focusing on the ‘fantasy cabal’, AKA the ‘ratbags group’, and honorary associates thereof):

Kate Morton who, with her fourth book just out and already worldwide sales of around 8 million, is well on the way to becoming one of Australia’s all-time biggest selling authors. http://www.katemorton.com/
Kim Wilkins, who has published more than 20 novels in the fields of fantasy, horror and recently, women’s fiction, and won innumerable awards. Kim recently scored a mega-deal for German publication (writing as Kimberly Freeman). http://kimberleyfreeman.com/
Josephine Pennicott, who has also published fantasy in the past, and also recently inked a great German deal for Poet’s Cottage. http://josephinepennicott.com/
The amazingly original Richard Harland, whose YA steampunk Worldshaker series has had terrific success internationally and picked up several major awards in France. http://www.richardharland.net/
Bestselling and multi-award winning thriller writer Katherine Howell, http://www.katherinehowell.com/
Jess Shirvington, whom I posted about here just the other day, http://www.jessicashirvington.com/
Belinda Alexandra, whose novel White Gardenia began a series of international bestsellers,  http://www.facebook.com/BelindaAlexandraAuthor
Not to mention my humble self.

The article about Selwa is here: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/lifestyle/neverending-story-20121029-28e7x.html

Filed under: Publishing and Agents

To my Lovely Facebook Fans

To my thousands of Facebook fans, http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author, who:

are an unending source of enthusiasm, encouragement, advice and good humour that lifts my heart at the beginning and the end of each writing day;
cheerfully and thoughtfully answer my questions about diverse topics such as the availability of my books, suggestions for book and series’ titles, ebooks and the future of books, and a thousand other topics;
constantly beg me for news about the next book and read it as soon as it comes out;
bring backpacks full of lovely, battered, well-loved books to my signings;
laugh at my jokes, no matter how feeble;
Criticise me some of the times I need it;
share the horror of my office spider experiences;
make my lime liqueur recipe and tell me how much they like it – http://ian-irvine.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/ians-lime-liqueur-recipe.html;
and generally encourage me in ways great and small –

Thank you.

Russian hardcovers

Filed under: Ian on the Web

What about my Books for Children?

From time to time, people ask me when I’m going to write more books for children and young adults – in particular, they ask when I’m going to write more books in the Runcible Jones series, and about Ike and Mellie from Grim and Grimmer. Or like my little Sorcerer’s Tower books which had such a great response from school librarians – apparently they were just the thing for reluctant readers in middle and upper primary school. The answer, I’m afraid, is not in the immediate future.

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Interview with Trent Jamieson

I have another interview up, this time on Trent Jamieson’s Trentonomicon. Trent is the author of the terrific trilogy, The Business of Death, and an all-round nice guy. The interview is here:

http://www.trentjamieson.com/?p=2344

Filed under: The Tainted Realm

Interview for Fantasy Book Review site

I recently did a long Skype interview with Ryan Lawler about my books generally, and The Tainted Realm trilogy in particular, for fantasybookreview.co.uk.

We had a very pleasant talk and Ryan asked some terrific questions.

Here are the links:

http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/fbrblog/fbr-cast-010-interview-with-ian-irvine/ (Fantasy Book Review page with hyperlinks and an embedded audio player).

http://feeds.feedburner.com/fbrcast (the RSS feed)
http://archive.org/details/FbrCast010-InterviewWithIanIrvine (where the interview is hosted).
http://itun.es/i6Dt5sM (the iTunes link to the interview).


Filed under: The Tainted Realm

Spielberg Deal for Jessica Shirvington

Last year  the brilliant Aussie author Jessica Shirvington, author of a wildly successful series of YA supernatural fantasies beginning with Embrace, did a guest post for my blog. For those who may not have heard, Jess has recently signed a deal with Stephen Spielberg to make a US TV series from these books. It’s fantastic news, not just for Jess, but for all Australian writers, and I hope it goes brilliantly.

The post can be found here: http://ian-irvine.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/jessica-shirvington-murky-waters-of.html

And Jess’s brand new Facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/Shirvington

Filed under: Aussie authors