Michael J. Sullivan's Blog, page 82

The Company You Keep

Back at the beginning of the year I did a blog post called The Digital Feast where I talked about my entry into the fantasy writer community along with some of the newer authors writing books with assassins and thieves such as:
Mark LawrenceJon SprunkDouglas HulickMazarkis WilliamsAt the time I think I had sufficient sales to appear on about two dozen author's pages in the Customers Also Bought listings. It was a nice beginning and I was happy to see that I was starting to find readers of other authors also buying my books.

Well, it's been a few months since then and now all the books have been released.  As mentioned in my Road Signs post I'm always looking for indications of new milestones, so I thought it was time to peek back at the cross selling lists to see how I'm doing.

I'm pleased to report that the number of author's pages I now appear on has tripled to 75 including names such as: Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks, Carol Berg, Chris Evans, Daniel Abraham, Daniel Polansky, Dave Duncan, David Anthony Durham, David Chandler, Douglas Hulick, Guy Gavriel Kay, Ian C. Esselemont, J.V. Jones, James Barclay, James Enge, James S.A. Corey,  Joe Abercrombie, K. J. Parker, Kate Elliott, Ken Scholes, Kevin Hearne, L.E. Modest Jr., Mark Charan Newton, Mark Lawrence, Martha Wells, N.K. Jemisin, Patrick Rothfuss, Paul Hoffman, Paul Kearney, Peter V. Brett, Peter Vance Orullian, Richard K. Morgan, Richard Kadrey, Robert V.S. Redick, Robin Hobb, Rowena Cory Daniels, Sam Sykes, Scott Lynch, Stephen R. Lawhead, Steven Erickson, Stina Leicht, Tad Williams, Terry Goodkind, Tom Lloyd, and Trudi Canavan.

But the big surprise came when I found my name in the Top 5 of some of the most popular and highly respected authors in fantasy:

Author 1 2 3 4 5 Brandon Sanderson P. Rothfuss R. Hobb M.J. Sullivan G.R.R. Martin J. Abercrombie Patrick Rothfuss B. Sanderson G.R.R. Martin M.J. SullivanJ. Abercrombie P.V. Brett Joe Abercrombie B. Sanderson Steven Erickson Scott Lynch M.J. SullivanP.V. Brett Brent Weeks P. Rothfuss B. Sanderson Peter V. Brett M.J. SullivanJ. Abercrombie Scott Lynch B. Sanderson P. Rothfuss J. Abercrombie M.J. Sullivan R. Hobb Daniel Abraham B. Sanderson Joe Abercrombie P. Rothfuss M.J. Sullivan D.A. Durham Guy Gavriel Kay B. Sanderson P. Rothfuss J. Abercrombie M.J. Sullivan R. Hobb Ken Scholes B. Sanderson M.J. SullivanJ. Abercrombie R.V.S. Redick P. Rothfuss
I'm never sure how to interpret these charts. They feel more like astrology than astronomy. Just because I am on another author's page doesn't mean I'm doing as well as they are, the number of variables are legion, and it doesn't account for non-Amazon sales. But back when I was self-published I remember being thrilled when I hit the 16th spot on Sanderson's and Rothfuss's  lists and I don't think I ever climbed higher than 14 so to be 3rd (and behind such industry heavy weights as Martin and Hobb) is pretty surreal.

But that's not the end of the good news. In the past, I've usually found myself on a few pages where I was the #1 or #2 cross sales but that number has grown considerably and I'm now featured on every book's page for these 25 authors:

Ken Scholes
Mark Lawrence
Jon Spurnk
Mazarkis Williams
David Chandler
Paul Hoffman
Peter Vance Orullian
Sam Sykes
Gail Martin
Alex Pehov
Amanda Downum
Blake Charlton
Chris Wooding
Colin Buchanan
Courtney Schafer
Daniel Polansky
Dave Duncan
James Barclay
James Enge
John R. Fultz
Lorna Freeman
M.D. Lachlan
Markus Heitz
Stephen Deas
Stina Leicht
Teresa Frohock
So if I was happy in January then I'm ecstatic as March comes to a close. The books continue to do well and appear on several Amazon lists including:
Best Selling (Historical Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Action & Adventure) Top Rated (Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Action & Adventure)Most Wished For (Historical Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Genre Fiction)I'm pleased to see that the road signs seem to indicate another milestone has been reached, but as with all such milestones, I'm left wondering what they really mean. As I mentioned, this isn't a science, and all sorts of conclusions could be drawn that have no real basis in fact, but I've decided to believe that these "also bought" appearances are a sign that my books are becoming more popular, rather than less. I think that is a fair and safe theory as more and more people seem to be finding them. I'm hoping that the road ahead will be a long one, and in the meantime, thanks to all those on who's pages I'm piggybacking.

The Library of Congress Speech

Since I appeared at the Library of Congress a few weeks ago, a number of people have requested I take a moment here and describe how things went. I could have written a blog post on it, but my wife actually took video of much of the event. As You Tube has a length restriction, and as I wouldn't want to bore you with the entire speech, I decided to provide a heavily edited synopsis. Hopefully this will give you an idea how things went, and what topics were covered.
Keep in mind this is the first time my wife ever used her new Flip camera, and it is my first time editing film with Windows Live Movie Maker. Robin thinks she had the camera on the wrong resolution setting, and the lighting was poor, so I look a bit like I'm in the Witness Relocation Program through the first half.  Also there's no concern that I'll be invited to do a Ted talk, for as I mention in the video, I am not a public speaker—but I realize now—I really didn't need to point that out.

On Writing

From the cover of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I live in a glass house, so I don't do book reviews.  I've found that there are enough people anxious to give their opinions and judgments that as a writer I needn't pour anymore gasoline on that fire. You might expect that authors would have wonderful insights. Who better to evaluate a building than a carpenter or architect. And yet writers I think, make very poor reviewers for the same reason carpenters or architects would not make the best judges of houses. For while they live in them, most houses are built for non-industry residents. Architects  might focus on the placement of load bearing walls, and carpenters on the quality of drywall, or the zinc content of the nails. Assuming the house is structurally sound, most residents don't care about such things. For them it's closet space and the fact that the toilet paper dispenser is in an awkward place. And just as the best evaluators of homes are residents that live there, the best judges of books are readers. Authors would be picky about the strangest things. I know, I'm one of them, and because I've spent years training myself to see imperfections in my own writing, I can't turn that off when I look at others' works. Also being an author makes writing book reviews feel akin to being a deer who puts on an orange vest and goes hunting whitetail each year along with the other sportsmen, unless all you're doing is raving about a book, and if that's all you're doing that's not a review—that's gushing.  Not that any author has a problem with gushing. The more gushing the better.
All that said, I recently read my first book about the craft of writing—On Writing, by Stephen King—and while I want to share some thoughts I have concerning it, I want to be clear, this is not a review.
I read On Writing mostly out of curiosity. For those of you who don't know, while I have written upwards of some twenty novels and published six in ten languages as well as a couple of short stories, I don't actually have any formal—and not even much informal—education in creative writing. Someone recently wrote me stating that her friends insist writers must have a degree in writing in order to create a good novel. She asked my opinion, wondering what my credentials were. I had to reply that I don't have any. Outside of one creative writing class I had in tenth grade, I've had no education in creative writing at all.

After high school I attended one year at an art school. Precious little English taught there, I can tell you. Then a semester or two at a community college, where I only took commercial art classes until I landed a job, after that I never resumed college.  I did not take any seminars. I did not read any books on writing. I spoke to no one who had any interest in writing much less experience, talent, or skill, and I did not join a writing group until after my first book (Crown) was published. All I did was read and write, but I did that a lot and for a long time. Mostly in a remote house in a snowbound northern section of Vermont. Just imagine any number of martial arts films, or maybe Rocky IV (the one in Russia) and I'm certain you can picture me in a simple house alone in a snowy mountain wilderness spending day after day practicing and catching flies with chopsticks. 
Given my isolation I was curious about what I might have missed, and what other writers do. Having heard so many good things about King's book, and liking King's work, I read it to see how I measured up. I wanted to know how a real writer worked.
I assumed the contrast to be night and day and yet I was surprised to find so many similarities. As King mentions, he is known to be a prolific author and yet he only writes for about three hours a day—the length of time it usually takes for him to complete 2000 words, which allows him to finish a rough draft in about three months. Now that I have resumed writing after years of intensive editing, I find I do just about the same. I used to write faster, but I'm getting older now—King also mentioned experiencing the same change. Still I had thought I was lazy. Most people work eight hours a day, right? Of course exactly how much of an eight hour day are people productive, not just responding to email, speaking on the phone and such? Writers do that stuff too we just don't lump that part into what we usually call work hours. And as a writer, I work all the time really—even while sleeping. Just two days ago I was in a New York hotel room in the middle of the night with a sort of nightmare, but luckily I had my notebook and pen on the nightstand. I took them, crossed the room to the light that bled in from the window and jotted down notes. Ideas just don't understand "work hours."
Still I was pleasantly amazed to find that King and I both write from nine in the morning to around noon, depending on how well things are going, and how long it takes to get 2000 words done. His writing/editing relationship with his wife is eerily similar to my wife and I, right down to reading manuscripts in the car on long trips and having me trying to sneak peeks at where she is, while I should instead be concentrating on driving.
Given that I was not part of any workshop or school course that might account of the standardization  of attitude, I was stunned to find his opinions and conclusions about the craft mimicked my own.  So similar were many of the ideas about writing that I was glad I had finished my own series of writing tips before reading this, or I'd have a hard time separating out what were my thoughts and what were his.
The only point of contention I found was King's attitude on outlining, but I feel this might be more a matter of semantics. He defines the word "story" and the word "plot" differently than I do. He likes story and distrusts plot, suggesting (I think, if I understand him right) that story is the whole thing, setting, character and the events, but plot is only the events and needs to be subordinate to the other two. I on the other hand see story and plot as the same things, the "plot" is merely "story" applied to a written work as I can't imagine telling the plot of a story without including the characters and setting. I was left wondering if this might be at the heart of the difference, because—like me—he too takes walks and works out the story problems, as he did with The Stand, and that to me is outlining, but to him that might be considered something else. As big and with as many synonyms  as English has, we still appear to lack words for some things.
The most valuable bit of information was where he mentions grammar (which he used to teach) and suggests Warriner's English Grammar & Composition as a good book to learn from.  Again looking to find what I might have missed, I found a copy and have been studying it. He's right, it's a good book.
Also the last portion of On Writing is an account of his near fatal accident when a car hit him while he was walking along the roadside. This portion of the book I felt was some of the best writing I've read in decades. I was riveted. I laughed out loud once, and was brought near tears at another portion. It lacked the normal jaunty and irreverent tone of most of his works, less cute, less over-the-top. Maybe because it was real, or because I knew it was, but the power I found to be amazing and that portion alone was worth twice the cost of the book. It might also have been that I felt a certain kinship with him by that time, and while I'm not half the writer, I could easily imagine myself walking that road in the evening planning to go to a movie later with my wife and kids, when the unthinkable happens.
Like I said this isn't a review, but if you're one of the ones who have read my writing tips—the ones on the top of the side bar—and found them useful, you might also consider On Writing.
The part about the hair dryer is funny as hell.

Just Another Day at the Office

My cap, my notebook and pen, taken one Wednesday at the local O'Sullivan's pub where I am sometimes visited literally by Royce and Hadrian.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Live Audio

Today Recorded Books released Theft of Swords through audible.com. This audio book was recorded by Tim Gerard Reynolds, is 22 hours and 37 minutes long and sells for $41.99. I expect that the audio book will eventually populate through other venues such as Amazon (as Amazon owns Audible) in the next few days or weeks. If you prefer to obtain it there, it should appear on the standard Theft of Swords page under the audio book version.
I haven't heard the recording yet. I've only listened to the short sample on the Audible site. And as I do not get a complimentary copy, I will need to buy my own if I want to hear it—which of course I do. I've never bought audio books before, never even investigated them and to be honest I was surprised by the price. $41.99 seems expensive for a book,  but apparently in this case it's cheap. When you consider that Theft of Swords is an omnibus, and a single book (about 10 hours long) on Audible is usually $27.99, they should have charged $55.98 for Theft.
Despite this it still seems pricy. I couldn't imagine spending even $27.99 for all the books I "read," and yet I've heard of people whose only source of books are audio. My wife however, tells me that Audible and other places have Netflix-like offers, where you pay for a membership and are then able to…well you don't have to listen to me, here is what Audible actually says on their site:
Get your first 3 months for only $7.49/month* and just $14.95/month thereafter. Cancel anytime. AudibleListener® Gold Membership With AudibleListener Gold, you can choose to download any of 100,000 audiobooks and more, and listen on your iPod®, iPhone®, BlackBerry, or 500+ MP3 players.Your membership includes: One monthly credit good for any audiobook you choose to download30% off any audiobook purchased without a creditFree daily subscription to The New York Times or The Wall Street JournalMember-exclusive sales and promotions
AudibleListener® Gold Membership Details
* Get the first 3 months of the AudibleListener® Gold membership plan for just $7.49 per month, which includes one credit. For your convenience, your membership will automatically renew each month and the monthly membership fee will be billed to the credit card you used when you registered with Audible. After the 3 months, your credit card will be billed the regular membership price of $14.95 per month. With your membership, you will receive one credit per month plus members-only discounts on all audio purchases. Cancel anytime, effective the next billing cycle. See the terms and policy applicable to Audible memberships.
So if I read this correctly, for your $14.95 per month you get to hear a book a month for no extra cost. $14.95 is the actual cover price that I charged for the original printed version of Emerald Storm, but here you're getting both Crown and Avempartha. So you would actually be getting each book for $7.50. That's less than the cost of mass market paperbacks and any of the ebook versions of my series including the ebook version of Percepliquis.
Under those conditions, I might be interested in trying this out, and if you know of other similar deals for audio books—in particular mine—let me know.

The World’s Biggest Bookstore

bookstore El Ateneo in Buenos Aires. Photography by josephina
When I was a kid, I had one of those super thick paperback editions of The Guinness Book of World Records. This was back in the seventies when Sterling Publishing made the books into a household name—back when they had the heavy cowboy-hatted twins riding motorcycles and the fella from Calcutta with the longest fingernails. Every kid in high school either had a copy, had leafed through their friend’s, or checked out the one in the school library.  Everyone knew the tallest man was the 8’ 11.1” Giant of Illinois, Robert Wadlow, and that the fattest man, Robert Earl Hughes, was buried in a piano box. He wasn’t, of course. In the article in Guinness, the sentence read:  “He was buried in a coffin the size of a piano case.” But everyone remembered it as being a piano case. There was the fastest car, the Blue Flame, and the smallest violin that could fit in the palm of your hand, and everyone knew each of these better than they knew questions on any up and coming test, but no one to my knowledge could even guess at the biggest bookstore.
Granted, while Barnes and Noble was founded in 1873, the push toward huge discount bookstores didn’t come into being until a hundred years later in the late 1970s, so it wasn’t such a big deal back then. Not that the biggest bookstore would have bumped the fastest car or the fattest man from the top ten list of things a teenager had to know. We had a lot on our plates, Farrah Fawcett posters, streakers, pet rocks, platform shoes, and if you didn’t know the entire script of Monty Python’s many routines, who was on Saturday Night Live, or had missed Happy Days or Mork and Mindy there was something wrong with you. 
Bookstores didn’t really get big until the 1980’s, and ’90’s when they became so prevalent that Nora Ephron created the movie You’ve Got Mail about the little bookstore in New York being put out of business by the monstrous discount bookstore. I can almost imagine independent sellers these days crying “Remember The Little Shop Around the Corner!”
One of the very first superstores was the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, Ontario. What started out as a bowling alley was converted in 1980 into the world’s largest book store boosting 20 km of bookshelves. It was also the location for a brief scene in the movie Short Circuit 2. Since then the title has been in dispute.


Guinness insists the biggest bookstore is the flagship Barnes and Noble located on 105 Fifth Avenue at 18th Street in New York, that occupies 154,250 square feet and contains 12.87 miles of bookshelves. At the same time the Strand Bookstore, is considered the world’s biggest bookstore in terms of shelf space. In the East Village, it boasts “18 miles of books.” On the other side of the country Powell’s City of Books, covers a whole city block and occupies more than 68,000 sq ft. They claim to be the world’s largest independent new-and-used bookstore. So how does the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Ontario maintain its crown? By defining “biggest” as being the store offering the most titles.
Why am I telling you all this? For one thing if you’re reading this blog you’re likely into books and might find it interesting which are the largest bookstores in the world—probably more so than who the tallest man was, or if in fact Robert Earl Hughes was indeed buried in a piano case. More importantly—as far as I’m concerned at least—is that the World’s Biggest Bookstore has chosen me as their featured author in their fantasy and science fiction section. 


To either side are a list of interview questions I answered as part of this promotion and endcap display, which Jessica Strider will post in full to her site later this week.
So if you’re in Ontario, wander in and check out the display or look for a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records. Being the World’s Biggest Bookstore by title, I’m pretty sure they’ll have it.  
While working on this post I found this site showing pictures of "The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World."

The World's Biggest Bookstore

bookstore El Ateneo in Buenos Aires. Photography by josephina
When I was a kid, I had one of those super thick paperback editions of The Guinness Book of World Records. This was back in the seventies when Sterling Publishing made the books into a household name—back when they had the heavy cowboy-hatted twins riding motorcycles and the fella from Calcutta with the longest fingernails. Every kid in high school either had a copy, had leafed through their friend's, or checked out the one in the school library.  Everyone knew the tallest man was the 8' 11.1" Giant of Illinois, Robert Wadlow, and that the fattest man, Robert Earl Hughes, was buried in a piano box. He wasn't, of course. In the article in Guinness, the sentence read:  "He was buried in a coffin the size of a piano case." But everyone remembered it as being a piano case. There was the fastest car, the Blue Flame, and the smallest violin that could fit in the palm of your hand, and everyone knew each of these better than they knew questions on any up and coming test, but no one to my knowledge could even guess at the biggest bookstore.
Granted, while Barnes and Noble was founded in 1873, the push toward huge discount bookstores didn't come into being until a hundred years later in the late 1970s, so it wasn't such a big deal back then. Not that the biggest bookstore would have bumped the fastest car or the fattest man from the top ten list of things a teenager had to know. We had a lot on our plates, Farrah Fawcett posters, streakers, pet rocks, platform shoes, and if you didn't know the entire script of Monty Python's many routines, who was on Saturday Night Live, or had missed Happy Days or Mork and Mindy there was something wrong with you. 
Bookstores didn't really get big until the 1980's, and '90's when they became so prevalent that Nora Ephron created the movie You've Got Mail about the little bookstore in New York being put out of business by the monstrous discount bookstore. I can almost imagine independent sellers these days crying "Remember The Little Shop Around the Corner!"
One of the very first superstores was the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, Ontario. What started out as a bowling alley was converted in 1980 into the world's largest book store boosting 20 km of bookshelves. It was also the location for a brief scene in the movie Short Circuit 2. Since then the title has been in dispute.


Guinness insists the biggest bookstore is the flagship Barnes and Noble located on 105 Fifth Avenue at 18th Street in New York, that occupies 154,250 square feet and contains 12.87 miles of bookshelves. At the same time the Strand Bookstore, is considered the world's biggest bookstore in terms of shelf space. In the East Village, it boasts "18 miles of books." On the other side of the country Powell's City of Books, covers a whole city block and occupies more than 68,000 sq ft. They claim to be the world's largest independent new-and-used bookstore. So how does the World's Biggest Bookstore in Ontario maintain its crown? By defining "biggest" as being the store offering the most titles.
Why am I telling you all this? For one thing if you're reading this blog you're likely into books and might find it interesting which are the largest bookstores in the world—probably more so than who the tallest man was, or if in fact Robert Earl Hughes was indeed buried in a piano case. More importantly—as far as I'm concerned at least—is that the World's Biggest Bookstore has chosen me as their featured author in their fantasy and science fiction section. 


To either side are a list of interview questions I answered as part of this promotion and endcap display, which Jessica Strider will post in full to her site later this week.
So if you're in Ontario, wander in and check out the display or look for a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records. Being the World's Biggest Bookstore by title, I'm pretty sure they'll have it.  
While working on this post I found this site showing pictures of "The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World."

Road Signs

There's been a new development in my career. Long time readers of this blog, or those who have slogged through the back posts, will know that I see my progress as a writer to be a bit like driving on a lonely highway through Ontario or maybe the Mojave Desert. The landscape remains an unchanging featureless plain that is so expansive it's often difficult to tell if I'm even moving. I can look at the Amazon ranks and the BookScan numbers, but that's like looking at the ground next to the car. You can see it moving, but there's no context. The blur of gravel and grass is memorizing, to the point it's hard to tell if you're going forward or back.
Beyond this you have questions that can't be answered. Are you making good time? How far to the next landmark? And what is the next landmark? 
Careers rarely come with maps, and if they do, they're always out of date. The roadside diners your heroes raved about were torn down years ago leaving you seeking your own version of that dreamscape. New towns spring up, others sprawl and a few fade away.  Still, there are signs and it is always exciting to see one.
For a couple years I've received a trickle of fan mail. The first few I read over and over with a big grin. People liked my books so much that they took the trouble to write me! The trickle turned into a fairly steady stream that demanded I spend time each day answering them. Funny how people are always shocked that an author will reply, as if we don't have time for our readers.
Recently there have been a couple of changes. I still get the wonderful fan messages from people who just want to let me know how much they appreciate what I wrote, but now I've noticed a couple of new types of emails.
The first is from people asking me to come to their organization to speak. This kind of thing never happened before. Robin had to push to get me a gig on a convention panel of twelve other unknown writers discussing what comes first, the character or the setting—clearly a burning question plaguing the literary community just as much as the chicken and egg dilemma is frustrating leading biologists. All of us were jammed into a hotel room behind a folding table where we had played an unintentional game of musical chairs as there were not enough seats. After a few of these I asked Robin not to bother.
Now without trying I'm receiving invitations. Librarians, book clubs, conventions, podcasts, they don't care what I talk about; they just want me to come speak for an hour. I'm an author not a politician or professor, so why they think I'm any good at speaking is a mystery. I have a whole bunch of appearances coming up in March and as you can see from the previous post, I just appeared at the Library of Congress where I delivered my presentation on the stage of the Pickford Theater, which is the kind of place you'd expect to see a Ted talk. I had a podium with an official seal and a working microphone. They also have a huge screen that I could have used to project images from this lovely computer system if I knew what I was doing. It was three-quarters of a world away from the folding table and jammed hotel room where honestly no one cared if I showed up or not.
The other new correspondence I've begun receiving are reading requests. Some are from aspiring writers asking for advice, but others are from publishers looking for me to provide endorsements to be printed on the covers of new books. I hate to turn anyone down, but multiple requests for me to read novels are too much considering how slow I read.
These requests for my time are road signs I never expected to see along the highway. I suppose I just assumed that authors just wrote each day, sent off their manuscripts, and received checks in the mail. Sure some celebrity names like King and Patterson might be asked to speak at some college commencement, or asked to read new releases for their endorsement, or newbie writers might approach them for advice—but me?
I saw these road signs fly by and realized I had crossed some line. Without a map I'm not sure exactly what it means: county line, state, whole new country? Who knows. Sometimes in this vast open landscape it's just nice to see something go by and know you're still moving forward.

Covering Crown

Most of you know by now that the Riyria Revelations was not originally published by Orbit. The series actually faced a very long road taking turns being self-published, small independent published, self-published again, and finally traditionally published through Orbit. These changes can perhaps be best followed by the changing covers of the first book of the series—The Crown Conspiracy.

Initially I never intended to publish the books for money. Before ebook readers were invented, when Amazon had only recently started turning a profit, I had decided to just post my books online for free download. I never sent them to a publisher, never sent a query to an agent. I had given up on that waste of time. I was going to write and put them on the Internet, feeling this was better than in a drawer.

I built a website and created this cover for the first book, which at that time I called Heirs to the Throne.



In all the time I had it on the Internet, I doubt a single person ever read it.

Then my wife found me an agent and I took the site down. My agent wasn’t thrilled with the title. Turned out no one was. I pondered the options for days until I settled on The Crown Conspiracy, that everyone agreed was much better.

When my agent was unable to get any traction, and eventually quit the industry for personal reasons, Robin and I set in motion plans to self-publish. This was still before the ebook evolution and we were saving up for the printing and warehousing costs. In the meantime I created this new cover that played off the new title.



My daughter hated it having a bias against computer generated art. Turns out she had a point, but the point became moot when before we could implement our plans for self-published world domination, I was offered a contract by AMI a small, independent publisher.

They inquired about what I would like to see on the cover. To give them an idea I pulled some images off the net, most by Alan Lee and sent them this concept art: (you'll notice that Nyphron Rising was at that time entitled Legends and Lore.)



They liked the look and feel and hired their own artist who returned with this sketch. 



I became concerned. The castle was too imposing, more like Dracula’s, the river looked like Harry Potter’s scar, and there was an aqueduct where the Winds Monastery should be. I also couldn’t figure out where they planned to put the title. With Robin’s encouragement I did a cover painting of my own and sent them this:



Which in their wisdom they changed to this:



After financial problems caused AMI to return the rights to me, I then had no choice but to self-published, but this was the Spring of 2008. 

Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Amazon released the first generation Kindles on November 19th 2007, but after selling out in five and a half hours, the devices remained out of stock for five months. Kindles became available in April 2008, the same time Ridan began selling the Riyria Revelations.

Then in 2011 I signed a contract with Orbit Books, changed the title, and work on the covers began all over again. This was the first cover idea I saw back in February of last year. A far cry from the simple, subtle landscapes that I created. 



Eventually this was paired down to the more shelf/series brand friendly:



And this is where we are today except that Royce and Hadrian have escaped and gone international.  Orbit’s UK arm produced this cover using Orbit’s original art.



But I have presently signed foreign language rights contracts or have deals pending with: The Czech Republic, Russia, Poland, Spain, France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Denmark, and most recently, Bulgaria.  The first of these covers have been appearing as the books are finally being released
overseas.









Funny how many different ways a single book can be packaged.

Talk About Heroic Literature in the Age of Grit

There is some debate over the benefits of being traditionally published. And when I chose that route, it was for specific goals, all of which I've succeeded in obtaining, and yet as with any endeavor  there are unexpected surprises. One of those was that people have been asking me to speak at conventions, libraries, and other functions.
One woman was almost giddy when I said yes to talking at her library, then stopped and softly mentioned. "How much do you charge?  We don't have a lot of money to spend."
I had to cover the phone so she didn't hear me laughing. When I composed myself I promptly demanded as my fee, the loftily sum of one bottle of water, but if that was too much I could bring my own. She didn't seem to believe me at first, then mentioned that the session was usually forty-five minutes and asked if I could talk that long. I explained the problem was usually getting me to shut up.
This sort of "celebrity status" invitations didn't used to happen, and never spontaneously. Now I get calls from the strangest of places asking if I would be so kind as to grace them with my presence. And it was no big deal until I was contacted by Helen Hester-Ossa. She wanted me to come talk at her library too, another forty-five minute chat followed by a Q&A session. Only Helen doesn't work at the local county branch where they have children's readings in the morning and adult education classes in the evenings.
Helen works at the Library Of Congress.
That little place down at 101 Independence Avenue, with the cupola capped dome that looks about the size of the capitol building.  The one with the over abundance of marble that houses more books than the library at Alexandria. In fact, the largest most prestigious library in the world.
Helen had seen an article about me in the Fairfax County Times (another unexpected development) and after visiting this website thought I would be a great choice for guest speaker in their Science Fiction/Fantasy forum.
The topic I'm to speak on is: "Traditional Heroic Fantasy vs Current Trends Toward the Gritty & Dark." The whole thing being sponsored by the library of Congress Professional Association, part of the What If…Science Fiction and Fantasy Forum.
It will be held at the Pickford Theater, Library of Congress, Madison Building (LM-302), 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20559  at Noon tomorrow, February 16th.
I'm no formal speaker. I know even less about talking publically than I do about writing, but I'll give it a shot. Hopefully people will ask questions I know the answers to, or at least be forgiving of a man who spends most of his time locked in a small room.







I was asked to speak at the Library of Congress.