Mike Jansen's Blog: The Chronicler - Posts Tagged "medieval"

The Failing God is almost here. Translating it from Dutch took a lot more time than expected, for many and varied reasons, but I finally received word that the manuscript is now at the final proofreading stage, which means I should be getting the finished and revised work somewhere in the first week of November. After that I will work through it with the people from JWK Fiction to get any typos or weird language out and after that we will start preparing the publishing part of the journey. The cover art and most other aspects were prepared a long time ago, so publishing will probably be a fairly straightforward process.

So, for my English readers, what is this "Failing God" anyway? Glad you ask. In 2011 I published my Dutch debut novel, "De Falende God" with Verschijnsel, my Dutch publisher. In short, it's a Dark Fantasy novel, as in pretty dark, with many characters and timelines that sometimes overlap. This means the main characters sometimes meet other main characters, even if they only see each other from a distance. The world is big, so is the story. All in all I have planned five full size novels to reach the finale. I am an avid Glen Cook reader, so obviously some of his style and ideas filter through, but I also like George R.R. Martin, earlier Robert Jordan work and I have been compared to Steven Erikson (although I still have to read his work.) The story is set in my world of Cranborn, a world that has been developing in my mind over the past twenty years. It's mostly a European, medieval setting, with obvious Viking influences, but it also contains references to many other cultures. Like I said before, it's a big world and a big story.

The first in the series is "The Failing God", it sets the stage for the sequels. "In Shadows of Times Past" is the title of book two, which appeared in Dutch book stores at the beginning of 2013. It will be translated and hopefully finished during 2014. Although there are some comparisons with above mentioned authors, I tend to stick to a certain plan and outline and I don't get carried away by ever more characters or word-consuming attention to detail that drag the pace of the story down to a snail's pace.

So far so good. In addition I am writing novellas to accompany the books, material that takes place in the distant past, that explains some of the stuff I write about in the actual novels that deal with the 'present day.' The history in the novels spans roughly 12.000 years, so there's a lot of ground to cover and looking at events in the past will give the readers a completely different view of the novels. (Or so I'm told by the Dutch readers of the print novel who have already enjoyed the extra background material.)

In all I hope, in fact I'm fairly certain, the translation will do the book justice and that it will resonate in the English market as it has done in the Dutch market.