What’s the Tome, Mr Wolf

Just call me Santiago…..

Out in the Gulf three days (ehm, that’d be three years actually, Richard – ed.) towed behind this bloody great fish, biggest thing I’ve ever had a hook in.  But I landed it, Sunday last, and finally got it on the scales.

247k.

Yeah, that’s 247 thousand words.  Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present The Dark Defiles – done at last.

I know a quarter million words isn’t considered all that big of a fish in the oceans of fantasy (Game of Thrones 284k, Deadhouse Gates 272k, Name of the Wind 259k, Dance with Dragons don’t even go there), but it’s still about half as long again as anything I’ve written before, so if you’re wondering what the fuck has been keeping me all this time, well, there’s that.  And the good news is that now it’s done, you’ll have a whole fifty percent more time and space than The Cold Commands in which to enjoy the final company of Ringil, Archeth and the Dragonbane.  Plus – and this is the big thing, for me – Defiles ties the Land Fit for Heroes trilogy definitively up.  All your questions answered, all outstanding narrative threads resolved, all debts paid.

Here’s the play-out.