Random End of Year Giveway (14/12/2014)

News this week? Is there any? Not much. The third of my Bulldog Drummond novellas has finished editing. I enjoyed writing them, but I don’t think the first one has sold nearly well enough for there to be any more (I base this purely on the non-existant amazon ranking). There is an audio version now available, if anyone is into that sort of thing. Elite: Wanted looks like it’s kicking Empires’ butt, which wasn’t supposed to happen (yay – go Elite!). Nathan Hawke continues to fiddle with a few short stories.

Usually at this time of the year I do some sort of post that says where various projects are at. So . . .

The dragons and the thief-taker

There’s no sight of a US publisher for The Black Mausoleum, Dragon Queen, The Splintered Gods or The Silver Kings, or for the Thief-Taker series. Both should be available via online retailers, and this seems to have started working a lot better than it did a couple of years ago. They do all appear to be available from Amazon. Dragon Queen came out in paperpack in the summer. The Splintered Gods is out and The Silver Kings is into the later stages of the edit process and should come out in June, I think. This series seems to have settled into a set of devoted followers, to if you’re one of those, thank you. Zafir has been something of a ride. She’ll probably linger with me as one of the best characters I’ve ever written, but damn is she hard to live with.

Nathan Hawke

The omnibus is out there.  As with the later dragons books, there is no US publisher but it’s available from online retailers. There are three rather long short stories which are going to come out as e-books over the first half of next year. If they sell, there may be some more novels to follow – that’s down to Nathan’s publisher being convinced enough that they’re going to make any money out of them. I liked writing Gallow and I’d like to do some more. If you’re a Gallow fan, please help that happen by buying copies for all your friends as Christmas presents.

Gavin Deas

Elite was fun but it doesn’t look like there are going to be any more in the near future. Extraction/Infiltration hasn’t had nearly enough review coverage to turn into decent sales, I fear, but it’s a bit early to know for sure.

S J Deas

Lots of positive review coverage for The Royalist. The Protector, William Falkland’s second mystery, is written, edited, and coming out in June (I think, or maybe September) and the paperback of the Royalist comes out in March (again, I *think*). I’m hopeful this series will continue.

Anyway… Most of you are just here for the free book, right…?

So this week’s giveaway is… a mystery. Several mysteries, in fact, because I’m going to rob a book from the Gollancz offices (they’re all on holiday until like the middle of March or something) for every five entries[1]. I’ll take requests, but I might not be able to honour them (in fact there’s a pretty good chance I won’t, but I’ll try). I’ll be keeping half an eye open for double entries, but only half of one

So – to enter the great random end-of-year book draw, all you have to do it comment on this post before January 1st and say hello or happy Christmas or something that’s at least not obscene and I’ll randomly select lucky victims for free books. That’s it, although if there’s a specific Gollancz title you’d like me to try and pilfer then say so in the comment! So far no one has complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, but  it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far. Am currently up to date, in that all recent winners have been posted. Obviously all the winners from this particular competition won’t be gettin gtheir books until the new year…

(it’s open worldwide, but deliveries outside Europe can take about two months)

[1] in the unlikely event that we get past fifty entries, I’ll have to drop the prize ratio in order to not go bankrupt…