Kyra Halland's Blog, page 57

Urdaisunia Now Available From Amazon

I'm very pleased and excited to announce that Urdaisunia is now available in Kindle format from Amazon! You can get it here.

Epub format (for Nook, Sony, iPad, and all other readers) and the paperback edition will follow shortly. I'm formatting the paperback right now, and waiting to hear back from one of the epub vendors I'm going to use about some formatting. If what I want to try to do with them doesn't work, I still have a working, valid epub format file I can use.

Stay tuned; I'll add buy links as Urdaisunia becomes available at different retailers.

Urdaisunia Book Extras #4: Sumerian Influences

When I first started writing Urdaisunia back in the early 90s, I was interested in really really ancient civilizations. I also wanted to write something that wasn't in the usual medieval-European-influenced fantasy setting. Ancient Sumeria fit the bill perfectly. It's so old it makes Ancient Greece and Rome look like whippersnappers, and had a rich and influential culture and level of development. The physical setting (read about my fascination with desert settings here) offered a lot of possibiities for conflict, and I also found the Sumerian pantheon and mythology fascinating. And then there was the idea of a great and ancient civilization falling into ruin, which is also full of possible stories. We didn't have the internet back then, or at least not in its current form, where you can find out anything about anything with just a few clicks, but we do have it now, so here are some links to things that have inspired Urdaisunia.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has a long-term exhibit called Iraq's Ancient Past with a lot of pictures and information about Sumeria and the archaeological work that has been done on the sites there. The headress of Queen Puabi, which inspired the headdress of Shairu-Az in Urdaisunia, is the third picture down. Here is more about Queen Puabi, including a video of some museum workers dressing a mannequin in the headdress and jeweled cloak that were found on Puabi's remains in her tomb. Also on the Penn Museum site is a feature where you can make your name in cuneiform. The picture on this post is my last name the way the Sumerians would have written it.

You can see more of Queen Puabi's headdress and jewelry at Sumerian Shakespeare. The site also has images and translations of Sumerian writings.

The International World History Project has an extensive section devoted to Sumeria. You can read a rundown of the gods and goddesses, a summary of Sumerian history and culture, and a section of the creation myth which gives a sampling of the divine soap opera the gods and goddesses had going on (a major influence on Urdaisunia!).

And, of course, we have to have ziggurats. The first and third pictures were particularly influential in how I envisioned the Royal Palace and the Temple of Ar at Zir.

A few more odds and ends: some ancient ships, and some Bronze Age swords. In Urdaisunia, these are the swords the Urdai used before the Conquest; the Sazars' swords are a new model and were inspired by Japanese katana.

Urdaisunia was only loosely inspired by Sumeria, so don't look to the novel for any kind of historical accuracy. But it was a fun world to play in, and I'll probably go back to it someday.

Finally, let me leave you with a musical tribute to the ancient world:

Into the Dark

(Just a note: it seems kind of egotistical to write these musings about what my writing is like. My justification is, I'm an unknown quantity, and I hope that if readers have some idea what to expect from my books, they'll be more likely to give them a try. Or maybe it's just ego :D )

So, on the sidebar here, my stories are described as "dark-edged." What does that mean? Horror? Occult? Grimdark (that is, life sucks, the bad guys win, and everyone else dies)?

Nope, that's not it. I like romance, happy endings, and fluffy rainbow bunnies (aren't they cute?) as much as, or maybe even more than, anyone else. But, as a scripture says, "It must needs be that there is an opposition in all things." How can you fully appreciate joy if you've never felt sorrow, or safety if you've never been in danger? Good unopposed by evil loses its significance, and life in the face of death is more precious and meaningful. Nobility and selflessness in the face of evil and greed mean more; love, honor, and integrity are at war with lust, deviousness, and expediency, and prove in the end, sometimes after a long struggle, to be more rewarding.

So I place the characters in my books in situations where they have to face the darkness, both in the world and within themselves, and make difficult choices. Death, loss, betrayal, madness, pain, hardship, hatred, abuse, deprivation, sorrow, and temptation are all things they have to deal with. Sometimes they make the right choices for the wrong reasons, sometimes they make the wrong choices for the right reasons, sometimes they make the right choices for the right reasons even though it's hard and things still don't work out, and, in the face of pain, loss, discouragement, despair, and temptation, they have to reaffirm their commitment to what they believe is right.

Don't despair, though; like I said, I love happy endings. Or at least, hopeful-for-now endings. And those endings are more satisfying when the characters have earned them. They are forced to learn and grow and discover what kind of men and women they really are and can be; they pass through the fire and come out stronger and better. The darker the tunnel, the brighter the light at the end of it.

(Image credit: Expell-HUN, stock.xchang)

Urdaisunia Book Extras #3 and Release Update

The Spotify playlist for Urdaisunia is now posted on the book page. You don't have to listen to the playlist to enjoy the book, but I always like to have some songs that set the mood for what I'm writing or that have lyrics that go along with it, and thought it would be fun to share this. Most of the songs are pretty self-explanatory as to why they go with the book, but one, "Brothers on Diamir," doesn't seem so closely related. It's about a tragic mountain-climbing incident in the Himalayas, which doesn't really have anything to do with the story of Urdaisunia, but the epic, tragic scope of it goes well with the battle scene and the aftermath, plus the theme of brothers is important to the story.

Also, for "The Secret's In the Keeping," you have to just ignore the last two lines because they don't go with the story at all.

I do have a fondness for female-fronted European symphonic metal bands, but there's a variety of music on the playlist and I hope you'll find something you like and that will give you a taste of what Urdaisunia is like.

This playlist thing is an experiment, and I'd like feedback on how it works. I'm especially interested in knowing how/if it works if you don't have Spotify; I was having trouble testing this because every time I started the playlist, my Spotify would start up automatically. Spotify is awesome, though, and it's free, so if it's available in your country you might consider getting it. If anyone is totally unable to use either the link or the embedded playlist or even see them, let me know and I'll also just post the song titles and artists.

After looking at the calendar and where I am and how things are going, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about a Feb. 18 release date for Urdaisunia. There's a part of me that firmly believes that making plans and setting deadlines is just a way of saying to the cosmos, "Oh yeah? You and what army?" So, just to be safe, I'll say that barring any unforeseen circumstances, difficulties, zombie apocalypses (apocalypsi?), etc., I expect to have Urdaisunia uploaded to various online ebook retailers by Feb. 18. It takes a little while--from 24-48 hours to a couple of weeks--for new books to actually go live on the sites, so I will put up buy links to the various retailers as that happens.

Urdaisunia Book Extras #2

Here's another sneak peek at Urdainsunia, the map. This will also be included in the book, but it's fun to have it online too. It's not the best map ever; as I've said, I'm an independent author with no production budget other than what I spent to license the cover illustration, so I can't afford to pay someone who actually knows how to draw to do a map for me. But, all things considered, I don't think it turned out too bad.

Urdaisunia Book Extras #1

The first of the Urdaisunia book extras is now posted, the Cast of Characters. (This list will also be included in the ebook and print editions.)

In books with more than a few characters, I always appreciated having a who's who to refer to, especially if there are complicated family relationships, which Urdaisunia has. Also lots of gods - you'll notice on the list, I've separated out the gods who actually make an appearance or are mentioned by name from all the others. There are a lot more from the list I could have mentioned by name in the novel, but I figure the twenty or so I already have are enough to keep track of. The rest are included because you can tell a lot about a culture by the gods it worships, plus I put a lot of work into making up this list. A lot of the names and gods are either taken more or less directly from Sumerian mythology, or heavily inspired by it. (The Sumerian influences on Urdaisunia are another topic for another blog post.)

Enjoy this extra sneak peek into the world and people of Urdaisunia!

Progress!

I'm pleased to report that I finished the copyedits of Urdaisunia today, a whole week ahead of schedule! I'm feeling a little more confident about a mid-February release date, though it might be a little optimistic to think I can do the proofread and the ebook building by then. This week I'll work on the map and the Who's Who; watch for those to be posted here on my site too.

The big revision pass on The Lost Book of Anggird is nearly done, too. I'm shooting for Thursday or Friday of next week, and in the meantime I'll be rounding up some test readers for it.

What else is going on? I mentioned the Daughter of the Wildings series as being a future project. It actually isn't all that future--Book 1 is already a complete first draft, and I'm planning Book 2 and just about ready to write it. Since I hate it when the next book in a series takes forever to come out and also when the author seems to lose their way in the middle of the series, my plan with Daughter of the Wildings is to have all five books in first draft before I get into revisions and start releasing them. That way I can keep the whole storyline and continuity under control, and readers can begin reading the series knowing that it's complete.

Also, I forgot to mention last time that I'm also planning paperback editions of my books. So if you prefer paper over ebooks, you won't be left out.

Finally, I signed up on Spotify, and learned they have a feature where you can put a Spotify playlist on your blog or website. So, yay, playlists! I get a lot of inspiration from music as I write, and thought it would be fun to share some of the music that goes with my stories. You can enjoy them without listening to the playlists, of course, but if you want some mood music to go with the reading, or to get a feel for the mood of the book, you can check out the playlist. So watch for that, too.