Like moles
I have no idea why this newsletter is called that. I wrote the title two days ago and have completely forgotten, which gives a good idea of where my head is right now.
I failed to send out one of these in September, but honestly, if you're reading this and didn't hear about the million-dollar Moria kickstarter for the One Ring RPG, then something has gone very wrong along the way.
As of this morning, I'm 92,000 words of the way into Book 3 of Lands of the Firstborn, so well over the half-way point of the first draft. One last visit to the Dwarfholt remains, and then it's onto Necrad and the world's ending. This is my first time writing the end of a novel series, and I'm finding it an interesting experience. With tabletop campaigns of comparable complexity/length (something like DRACULA DOSSIER or PIRATES OF DRINAX), there's what I call the cone of possibility. The closer you write to the end of the adventure, the less you can know about the state of actual play, as you've got to account for an ever-expanding set of player decisions. With a trilogy, it's the opposite problem - I've got a set of plot threads to be resolved, and a rapidly decreasing word count in which to do it. I can't employ my usual trick of coming up with weirdness that I then retroactively explain - there's no room to add new stuff now. You go into the battle of book 3 with the weapons you've forged in the first two books, and there will be no relief until the book's ending.
(I read the original outline for the trilogy and I laugh.)
I'm also proofing Book 2, now officially titled THE SWORD UNBOUND, and I hope to share some cover art before too long.
It's also time to start thinking about what comes next. I've started trading emails with the redoubtable John Jarrold, discussing possibilities. A novel (for me, anyway) comes from the collision of multiple ideas, so a list of a dozen concepts is probably only one or two semi-viable books. And yes, the unfinished BLACK IRON 4 is still in the works.
(Wait! I had this clever metaphor about moles fumbling around in the dark, and making molehills, and how the process of going from a vague initial idea to a finished novel was like making a mountain out of a molehill. It was very clever and coherent.)
A lot of my initial ideas this time revolve around otherworlds and alternate dimensions, which is an interesting bit of pop self-psychoanalysis if I wanted to get into it.
Which I don't.
I must confess it would feel easier if someone just said "write THIS" - I'm always much more comfortable working to a brief, as opposed to trying to force my own weird obsessions onto other people ("would you like to read a book about, uh, a fictional 1980s text adventure that's also a ghost trap"). The recent Orbit panel on how to choose an idea was very useful in showing that everyone else's initial concepts are just as fragile and incohe - er, I'm told the approved term is 'more about the vibe than anything else" - which was reassuring.
Links & Miscellaneous:
I wrote a little adventure/setting vignette for ORBITAL BLUES, now on Kickstarter.
There's a charity auction finishing very soon, but if you're quick you can bid on a signed Sword Defiant - or name a character in Sword [SOMETHING BUT PROBABLY TRIUMPHANT].
Apparently, I have new book out from Black Library (it's an anthology that includes a short story I did for White Dwarf a few years ago)
Also out - TALES FROM THE LONE-LANDS.
I did a bunch of interviews promoting the Moria kickstarter, like this one and this one.
Speaking of Orbit panels, I'm on one in November.
And shortly after that, Dragonmeet.
I haven't listened to the new series of THE LOVECRAFT INVESTIGATIONS yet, but that's because I've gone back to listen from the start of series 1 again.
Recent Reading: A spate of British politics books (Rory Stewart's POLITICS ON THE EDGE, Ian Dunt's HOW WESTMINSTER works), and currently slogging through BLOOD IN THE MACHINE (about the Luddites) and a few books on Irish mythology. Oh, and Lavie Tidhar's BY FORCE ALONE which I'm very much enjoying.