Tales from the Lone-lands
Hello.
There are enough of you wonderful subscribers that I've had to upgrade to a paid tier for the buttondown newsletter service. I do not begrudge this; indeed, I cheer it as a measure of success. And you are, personally, worth the 8.03 cents in my eyes.
News! I shall be appearing (again) at Cymera Festival in Edinburgh in early June.
News! The Gutter Prayer is (I'm told) an Amazon US daily deal!
THE SWORD DEFIANT has had some more lovely reviews. I'll flag this one from Out of this World SF - "This is an absolute must read for every fantasy aficionado. Get your preorders in now because you don't want to waste a single moment plunging into this one once it is officially published."
The sequel's nearly ready for submission. It'll go to my editor next week, and then come back to me with an edit letter and a great many comments, and then I'll send in a revised draft. But I'm turning my thoughts to the final book in the trilogy, which I'm really looking forward to. While I've planned the last book in the Black Iron Legacy, this is the first time I've actually gotten to write the capstone of a series, and I hope I'll enjoy it. I suspect I will - I like building on things and weaving together disparate elements. Parsimonious solutions are something I enjoy.
You are hereby entitled to remind me of this hubris in a few months time, when I complain on twitter about how hard it is to write final books.
My next project for The One Ring roleplaying game, Tales from the Lone-Lands, has been officially announced. It's an anthology of six adventures set in the Lone-lands of Eriador - similar in structure to the Tales from Wilderland I wrote all the way back in 2011.
That's the ruined city of Tharbad, there. Isn't it scenic?
(And yes, I'm still working on Moria.)
Current reading: Cloud Atlas. The First Ghosts. And about to start a biography of Paracelsus.
Current listening: The excellent Publishing Rodeo podcast. (Also, Temporal Discussion: the Knightmare podcast, but that's considerably more niche.)
It was my birthday at the start of March, and in, er, my own honour, I've dug up a Black Iron story I wrote several years ago for an anthology that never happened. It's set about twenty years before The Gutter Prayer, much earlier in the career of Saint Aleena. Enjoy this mildly secret URL - https://garhanrahan.com/the-blessing-of-the-saint/
I've a rotten cold and the rain's blattering against the window, but brighter times are ahead.
Thanks for reading,
Gar