Weeks When Publishing Happens
To misquote Stalin. It's been a very busy few weeks in terms of stuff finding readers.
THE SWORD UNBOUND is in the hands of reviewers and early readers, which is GREAT and LOVELY and not nerve-wracking AT ALL. Initial reviews seem positive; lots of people felt that the ending of THE SWORD DEFIANT was a bit open-ended, whereas this seems to have surprised people for how final the ending appears for a mid-trilogy book. So, on average, nailing it.
(Preorders are always prized. And Inkstone Books will be doing a hardcover edition.)
THE SWORD CURRENTLY CALLED TRIUMPHANT is done, in first draft anyway. The draft was more solid than I thought. Soon, it'll go to some beta readers, and to the editor in May, but it's pretty much there. It's set twenty years after the first two books - and given there's so much emphasis on the events of twenty years before the series starts, things get interestingly generational; the great-grandson of one character shows up. (If Book 1 was 'Gar's fantasy midlife crisis', Book 3 is 'Gar comes to terms with his own mortality. A bit.')
Oh, speaking of which, it was my birthday. My beloved deli took time away from pretty k-pop boys to draw a portrait of Tolkien. J-Hope and JRRT, together at last.
DAGGER IN THE HEART, my weird industrial-horror eschatological train campaign for the HEART rpg, is crowdfunding - and, indeed, funded - right now. There's still time to hop on the backer train and push us to those sweet sweet stretch goals.
RRD interviewed me here, and you can watch the launch party here if you've got two hours to kill, or just want to fast-forward in search of screenshots of me laughing like a baboon.
DAGGER was immensely fun to work on - and a really great escape valve too, as I was doing it in parallel with Moria. Every time I had to suppress an idea because it was too strange or loud for Middle-earth, I could throw it into the whirling scrap-metal-and-rotten-meat blender of the Heart and use it for DAGGER. And there's Sar's fantastically atmospheric art, making it sing.
I also really, really love the backer kit video RRD put together. I had no idea this was coming, and it's brilliant.
Also crowdfunding - Season 3 of Ludonarrative Dissents, the Stolze/Wallis/Payton rpg analysis podcast. On kickstarter here.
MORIA: THROUGH THE DOORS OF DURIN is at last out, to backers anyway. To my immense relief, it's been well received. I was immensely nervous about this one - on the one hand, Moria is THE dungeon, the first and darkest, laden with so much significance and anticipation. On the other - it's not a classic funhouse dungeon, or a labyrinth of traps and monsters.
It's mostly a silent, melancholic ruin, so the challenge was making creeping around and exploration feel as nerve-wracking and exciting as a more conventional dungeon crawl. And the book is set before Balin's expedition, so writing it felt like... like...like trying to organise a wild party with brawling and gambling in a very old and precious mansion, but they're also setting up for a world-record domino rally in the middle of this antique country house so you've got be careful not to tip too many dominoes or damage the immensely valuable gilt ornamentation while hosting the rowdiest rave possible.
You know, that universal experience that everyone recognises. That.
Anyway. It's out. It's done (again). I feel like I promised Moria at the end of DARKENING OF MIRKWOOD, more than a decade ago, and it's so very, very satisfying to say that I kept my promise.
(God, how insanely self-centred that reads. While I was lead writer, Moria was of course a collaboration. Francesco remains the Lord of the Rings, Shawn Tomkin & Matt Click provided the Solo material that perfectly complements the regular dungeon, the cover art by Antonio de Luca is amazing, have you SEEN Francesco Mattioli's map, and the whole process was made perfectly smooth by Fria Lagan. Shoulders of giants, etc.)
Also finished this month, in first draft at any rate - my next One Ring Thing, a new adventure anthology, sort of half-way between the structure of DARKENING/RUINS OF THE LOST REALM and TALES. Seven adventures, but spanning decades - and pushing the timeline right up to the edge of the Great Years.
Also out to backers, and the biggest thing in this email in terms of word count and physical-capability-to-stop-bullets-at-least-when-it's-printed, is THE BORELLUS CONNECTION, the ABSOLUTELY GIGANTIC campaign for THE FALL OF DELTA GREEN, by me & Ken Hite. This one's been a long time coming - it was mostly written pre-covid. 400+ pages, ten adventures from Laos to Baltimore via Turkey, Marseille, and Easter Island.
Next is… well, that’s a really good question. There are a bunch of ongoing projects like Trail of Cthulhu 2nd edition, my silly halfling murder mystery game, and a bunch of unannounced things, and I’ll soon have editorial notes and rewrites to do on Book 3, but it’s also a time for examining the current crop of idea-seedlings and seeing which of them might be viable. Imagine a Venn diagram with overlapping circles of MIGHT BE COMMERCIALLY APPEALING, INTERESTING TO ME, WITHIN THE HORIZON OF MY ABILITY and CAN ACTUALLY BE DONE AS A 120K-OR-LESS NOVEL, and you’re trying to find the ideas at the intersection of all of them. I’ll nurture a few seedlings, then proffer them to my agent’s pitiless gaze. But first, a few weeks of reading randomly, ambling around, making scribbles in notebooks, and writing pages of terrible zeroth drafts.
I’ll be in Barcelona in the middle of next month, at the Shadowlands Convention, along with Ken and Robin. I have no idea what we’ll be doing there, other than talking GUMSHOE and looking at art. Which, honestly, sounds idyllic.
Currently Reading: I've said yes to blurbing a bunch of ARCs, which means trying to read stuff on my iPad, which isn't ideal. Also, one of the kids got me Eithne Shortall's THE LODGERS as a birthday present, which is a million miles away from what I'd normally read.
I've got Jeff Noon's GOGMAGOG sitting on a shelf, waiting for an opening.
As always, thank you for reading. Questions, comments or requests for specific stuff are always welcome.