Brian McClellan's Blog, page 36

Gemmell Morningstar Award

I was delighted and honored Friday afternoon to find out that Promise of Blood had won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut novel. I was totally blown away by the news. I was up against some really cool books and to come away with the win was amazing. After all, a fantasy author is eligible for the David Gemmell Legend Award every year they've put out a book, but you only get a shot at the Morningstar Award once. So how cool is it that I get to put this awesome trophy on my shelf?

Congratulations to Mark Lawrence for winning the Legend Award for best novel for the excellent Emperor of Thorns, and for his artist Jason Chan for taking home the Ravenheart Award for best cover art. Very well deserved on both accounts.

Cover Reveal: Servant of the Crown

Art by Rene Aigner. Type by Isaac Stewart.

The new Powder Mage novella, Servant of the Crown, is almost ready. I’m giving it an official release date of June 24th, though it’s likely it’ll be available mid-next week direct from this website, after which the various other platforms will go up as they are approved.

The novella picks up right after the end (but before the epilogue) of Forsworn, and shows us a very different Adro from the point of view of a young Captain Tamas.

Bonus: the two novellas side-by-side:

Cover Reveal: Servant of the Crown

The new Powder Mage novella, Servant of the Crown, is almost ready. I’m giving it an official release date of June 24th, though it’s likely it’ll be available mid-next week direct from this website, after which the various other platforms will go up as they are approved. The novella picks up right after the end (but
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"The Face in the Window"

"Taniel is a powder mage, a flintlock marksman with the ability to imbibe common black powder to strengthen his mind, body, and senses, as well as shoot over long distances. Sent into short-term exile by his father, he’s supposed to see some of the world and cool his head, to learn something besides life in the Adran army. His arrival in exile, however, coincides with the eruption of a bloody new conflict as the colony of Fatrasta rises up against its Kez suppressers.

Taniel has certain talents that the Fatrastan militia could very well use, and he just can’t help but get involved…"

I hate to say that I have a new short story out, because "Face in the Window" isn't actually new. It came out in the February 6th issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, an online magazine dedicated to adventure fantasy and the erights have just recently reverted back to me. I have decided to repackage and sell it myself because so many people seem to have missed it, and because Amazon won't let me turn it into an audiobook unless I have it under my own name.

I want to make something very clear. The story is still available for free from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and I encourage you to download it from them, or to purchase the issue of the magazine where it was first published.

If you'd like to get a copy from me, however, it is (or shortly will be) available from your favorite ebookstore. A comprehensive list with links can be found here.

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In other news, the new Powder Mage novella is looking great and will hopefully be out by mid to late June. I have a cover artist (the talented Rene Aigner, who did the cover of Forsworn) and a copy editor all lined up. It's going through the third group of beta-readers right now. If you're not familiar with the Powder Mage short fiction, you can check out all the others in Forsworn, "Hope's End," and "The Girl of Hrusch Avenue."

“The Face in the Window”

“Taniel is a powder mage, a flintlock marksman with the ability to imbibe common black powder to strengthen his mind, body, and senses, as well as shoot over long distances. Sent into short-term exile by his father, he’s supposed to see some of the world and cool his head, to learn something besides life in
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Amazon and Hachette

A brief comment on the Amazon/Hachette debacle: As some of you may have caught previously, my publisher Hachette is currently in a dispute with Amazon. Amazon, like a petulant child, has thrown a fit. They’ve raised prices on Hachette books, are shipping them late (even the ones marked Prime that should arrive in two days),
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Amazon and Hachette

A brief comment on the Amazon/Hachette debacle:

As some of you may have caught previously, my publisher Hachette is currently in a dispute with Amazon. Amazon, like a petulant child, has thrown a fit. They've raised prices on Hachette books, are shipping them late (even the ones marked Prime that should arrive in two days), and are making pre-orders "unavailable." My own books have suffered from the first two items but I have no idea how long until they take the "buy" buttons off my books. Many authors who depend on their books to provide a portion or all of their income are hanging on by a thread, and this kind of behavior by a distributor as big as Amazon is enough to destroy careers.

Please share this information with your friends and family and encourage them to purchase their books from Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, their local independent bookstores, or even directly from the author.

You can find out more following this link.

Update

Hey guys! I turned in the edits for Autumn Republic on Monday! And that means that every sentence this week will end in an exclamation point! Yay! Okay, that’s enough of that. Book three edits are turned in, about which I’m extremely happy. The next step is going to be copy edits. I’m not quite sure
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Update

Hey guys! I turned in the edits for Autumn Republic on Monday! And that means that every sentence this week will end in an exclamation point! Yay!
Okay, that's enough of that. Book three edits are turned in, about which I'm extremely happy. The next step is going to be copy edits. I'm not quite sure when I'll be getting those back, so to fill the time I'm going to work on another bit of Powder Mage short fiction. My plan is for this to be a novella that starts off about where Forsworn ends, picking up with Tamas' point of view. I've got most of the novella outlined and I hope to start writing it either today or tomorrow. The working title is Servant of the Crown.

Other than that, not much going on. I got most of my garden in yesterday. I ordered a new package of bees to start a second honeybee hive because the first one isn't doing so hot and it's going to take all summer to nurse it back to health.

I'm over on Tor.com's Rocket Talk podcast chatting with Delilah Dawson and Justin Landon about genre terms, short fiction, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

More reviews are coming in for Crimson Campaign. They are predominantly positive, which delights me to no end. Right now all the Amazon reviews are either 4 or 5 star, although I'm sure that will change sooner or later. Over on SFF World, Rob Bedford compares the writing to both Joe Abercrombie and Glen Cook, which I'm sure does the both of them great disservice.

Signed Copies of Crimson Campaign

Most of you know that I sell signed copies of Promise of Blood through my website. I had held off selling copies of Crimson Campaign myself for a couple of reasons, but in light of this whole Amazon-Hachette kerfuffle and the uncertainty and unreliability of getting the hardcover from Amazon, I’ve decided to go ahead and
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