Jen Williams's Blog, page 7
December 27, 2011
Waving a Blood-Stained Flag for Old School Pulp Fantasy
Hello all, hope you had an excellent Yule and all that. I'm spending today eating too much chocolate and playing Skyrim (death to all giant spiders!) but I thought I'd just pop up to point you in the direction of this rather lovely review of The Copper Promise.
I am tremendously proud to be described as a "successor to the Pulp authors of the 1920s and 30s"; it's a part of fantasy I love dearly, and I hope I'm doing it justice.
(and of course you can go and buy the first part of The Copper Promise over here, and secret invisible pixies will bless your bottom...)
December 24, 2011
Wishing You a Fabulous Yule! With Optional Sprouts
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It's that time - the first box of Matchmakers is already half finished, there's a giant piece of meat defrosting in the kitchen and the cat is trying to open the presents with the power of her mind.
I hope you're all having a most excellent and joyous Christmas holiday, with the teeniest of hangovers and no sprouts (unless you like sprouts, in which case I hope everyone around the dinner table donates theirs to you).
And if you happen to be getting a Kindle for Christmas, I hope you might consider entering the universe of The Copper Promise for a bit of pulp fantasy action - it's here, and it wants to give your Kindle an xmas smooch.*
*apologies for the blatant plug, but the novelty of hearing people say "I've bought your book!" has yet to wear off. I doubt it will.December 22, 2011
The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel is here!
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Well, technically it was here yesterday, but Amazon were a little faster out of the block than I expected, and my book was all suddenly available and I had no time to write a blog post! Goodness me. So, you can buy it here. I hope you do, and I hope you like it. J
But yes! Very exciting. It was a strange feeling, seeing my cover up there on that big proper website, next to other books with proper covers, and now anyone can read it. Excitement! Terror! Snoopy dancing! I went through the whole range of writerly emotions (snoopy dancing is an emotion, shhhh).
So, what do I think you should know about The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel?
It's a novella, and it's the first of a series of four. I wanted to write a sword and sorcery serial, one that would be a quick and fun read, full of adventure, peril and occasional scary bits.
You can download it straight on to your kindle if you have one, or you can download various bits of kindle software from Amazon that will let you read it on your computer like a kindle. It's also possible, I am told, to get an "app" on your "super-intelligent awesome-phone", although that level of technology is a bit beyond me, to be honest.
I have been lucky enough to get a few good reviews already. There is this rather spectacular one over at Colin F. Barnes' website, which I am well chuffed about, Adam Christopher has done a marvellous blog post about it, and there are a few great write-ups on Amazon now too. The reviews that are up are especially lovely for me as they all (so far) seem to really get what I was trying to do with this series; the novellas are, in their own small way, a love letter to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, as well as the reams of adventurous fantasy they inspired, and it seems there is a great deal of love out there for this kind of "pulp" fiction.
And so, I must say a huge thank you to everyone who has bought a copy so far, and all those fabulous people leaving reviews and spreading the word; you are aces, and I owe you all some sort of fancy drink with an umbrella in.
December 21, 2011
The Copper Promise: An Early Review
Part one of The Copper Promise will be with us tomorrow (probably around lunchtime, by my estimates) but until then here is a lovely review by Colin F. Barnes, a writer and editor responsible for many cool and scary things, such as The City of Hell anthology (a beautiful looking thing which is currently lurking on my kindle).
Now, I shall go back to staring anxiously at the amazon page, hoping I don't experience some sort of technical cock-uppery...
December 19, 2011
Beware, Here Be Covers: The Copper Promise has its face on
Here it is! Partly to stop myself from getting overexcited and plonking The Copper Promise up before everything is quite ready, and partly because it is so pretty... a little look at the cover. The Copper Promise Part 1: Ghosts of the Citadel will be available as an ebook on the 22nd of December, which is to say Thursday, which is to say the winter solstice, which is to say... soon.
If you would like to receive exclusive news, stories and general blatherings about the series, drop me a line at copperpromise@sennydreadful.com
December 15, 2011
Extract of The Copper Promise at GeekPlanetOnline! Snoopy Dance Ahoy!
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A bit of late night news! The lovely people at GeekPlanetOnline are hosting an exclusive extract of The Copper Promise, giving you a sneaky peek at the world of the haunted Citadel.
Choosing the extract was a tricky process: what can I put up without spoilerfication? How long should it be and what do I want to reveal? In the end I chose a sequence that I hope is fun but also poses a number of questions. I'd love to know what you all think!
December 12, 2011
The Copper Promise: Frivolous Anticipatory Post
It's been a busy week or so, what with getting The Copper Promise ready for its Winter Solstice release date, and all the other December related nonsense that crops up at this time of year (bah, humbug) so I've been a bit light on the blog posts recently – many apologies.
Hopefully, it will be worth it. This whole project has subjected me to a pretty steep learning curve; writing a serial, writing a serial made up of novellas, self-publishing, marketing, how to spread the word without being annoying... And in a way it's a weirdly personal project too – ultimately, I have to trust my own judgement and hope that my eventual readers are as ready to embrace old school serial fantasy in the same way that I have done. I am very aware that I have taken certain risks… Sword and sorcery done for fun might not be very, well, fashionable, at the moment, and I'll admit I'm not sure how people feel about novellas these days, especially novellas that are designed to leave you wanting to read the next one... is that annoying? Will everyone hate me? Will I receive tiny decapitated goblins in the post, with cut and paste notes demanding "UPDATE OR THE UNSEELIE GETS IT!"? Will people leave steaming piles of dragon dung on my doorstep? Will burly knights give me dirty looks outside Morrisons? I do not know.
Oh well. The Copper Promise has been a lot of fun to write, regardless of supernatural vengeance, and either way it will be released out into the world kicking, screaming, and smelling faintly of mead on the 22nd of December (please address all dragon dung to my upstairs neighbour).
December 1, 2011
The Copper Promise Part 1: Release date!
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I am pleased to announce that the ebook of The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel will be available to buy from Amazon on the 22nd of December.
The Citadel of Creos: silent, forbidden, haunted. No person in their right mind would attempt to explore it, but then, as Wydrin was fond of saying, adventurers are rarely in their right mind, especially when large amounts of coin are involved.
For the young Lord Frith, the secrets within are his key to a bloody revenge; for Sebastian, exiled from his order for crimes he'd rather not talk about, thank you very much, it is a distraction from his recent disgrace. And Wydrin? For Wydrin it means fortune and fame, or at least the seeds of a good story she can embellish later.
But something ancient and hungry lies restless in the hidden depths of the Citadel, and the long years of its imprisonment are nearly at an end. The three adventurers are about to find out that ghosts are the least of their problems.
The first in a four part novella series, The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel is a sword and sorcery adventure full of danger, discovery, and dubious ale.
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Ghosts of the Citadel is the first of four novellas, but it will not end there. Next year I will be releasing a number of short stories set in the same world, featuring events taking place before and after The Copper Promise storyline.
If you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions or sexy fanart (please send me your sexy fanart) then you can contact me at copperpromise@sennydreadful.com Email me also if you would like to be included in the Copper Promise mailing list; this way I can tell you exciting things, like when the second part is coming out, and sometimes send you lovely things, like snippets of artwork, competitions and exclusive short stories only available to people on the mailing list. Eventually, I hope there will be badges.
November 19, 2011
Cornwall Holipops
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Back from a week in Cornwall, which we largely spent eating, moving very slowly from pub to pub, and taking rather Scooby-Doo-esque photos in the dark, whilst demons watched us from the inky night.
I love the wildness of Cornwall, the on-the-edge-of-things feel to it. When you journey through the Cornish countryside and look out at the ominous rolling hills and the dark clusters of trees, you could well be looking out at Narnia, The Shire, or Westeros. In many ways these bits of England are the birthplace of Fantasy, and that pleases me.
Not only that, but the land at the very edges of this country feels old. I'm a sceptic down to my very bones, but when walking past a graveyard in the sort of dark you just don't get in London, it's all too easy to believe that a restless spirit might be haunting this tree or that stone. Ancient knights fight ghostly battles, over and over for the rest of eternity in these bleak fields. The shade of a drowned woman haunts the well at the local pub. And, you know, you get more serial killers where there's lots of grass. Fact.
November 10, 2011
Strong Female Character Wishlist
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Blundering my way through The Copper Promise Part 2 for Nanowrimo (tentatively titled "Wydrin and the Bloody Helm") – quite good fun so far, slightly behind, not consuming enough caffeine.
One of the characters in particular, the eponymous Wydrin, is a complete lark to write. She's a mercenary, selling her sword for fortune and glory, and she is, I'm finding, great fun; brave, rude, tactless, irresponsible. In short she's exactly the sort of female character I like to see, and last night I got to thinking about what it is I like in a strong female character.
(Marty likes to tease me by saying that I like no lady characters at all. That I prefer, in fact, a complete sausagefest, and that may be true to an extent, but this is mainly because so many female characters drive me barmy).
Here are 3 things that I require in a decent female character:
1) She has a purpose outside of being a love interest for the main, male character.
2) If she is the main character, then she must have a purpose besides trying to get off with someone.
3) She is more than simply a man with boobs and conditioned hair.
Take, for example, Being Human, the excellent supernatural drama series from the BBC. I adore Being Human, let me say that from the outset, but I felt that towards the end they managed to ruin Annie's character by sending her off to the Love Interest stable in the last series. To begin with, Annie had one of the best storylines in the show – the mystery over who killed her in the first place swiftly became a tragedy, followed by a rousing conclusion where she stood up for herself and generally kicked arse. Brilliant stuff. In the last series, following a couple of years of slightly flirty looks being exchanged, she fell suddenly and obsessively in love with Mitchell (he is very pretty indeed, but really, bad choice). Her character became rather whingey and annoying, her main goal in "life" was to save Mitchell, and I found that I really didn't care any more. Very sad.
In comparison, I always hold up Farscape as a fine example of How to Do Female Characters Well. It's chock full of them, for a start, and they're all wildly different. Zhaan and Chiana are vibrant, and weird, and they can kick your arse all over the shop. They also do not need men to drive their storylines. You might argue that Aeryn Sun comes close to being a Man with Boobs, but I would say that her peacekeeper background actually does a good job of making that an explainable, vital part of her character. AND the ship is a girl. Come on. More Farscapes please.
Perhaps I am terribly fussy. Perhaps a lot of female characters simply aren't aimed at me (I don't read romantic fiction and I don't watch rom-coms) but I don't think I'm asking for too much; give me ladies who have fully fledged personalities, and something to do other than writing their beau's name on the back of their exercise book.
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