Simon has finally sent me through all his comments on the first draft of The Adamantine Palace and it seems like we’re still on the same sort of wavelength. Nothing that requires any major rework by the looks of it. Work on King of the Crags is now suspended for the summer, to be resumed in September (probably).
First Reader is immensely smug. The first thing Simon’s notes say are: ‘My most serious quibble is with the end…’
Damn. Out-voted.
Bear with me on the numerous typos and other mistakes littering this passage. The keyboard writes and having writ moves on, and doesn’t come back to sort that sort of thing out until the very end.
I heard a rumour… It was just a rumour…
I heard a rumour… What have you done to her…?
-Siouxsie Sioux: Arabian Knights-
Probably the first thing I ever finished that was worth reading, this started life as an exercise in descriptive prose and ended up surprising me. With thanks to Lord Byron.
We can all thank/blame Simon Spanton at Gollancz for this, and my agent John Jarrold for sending him my way. I’d spend the last couple of years writing books far faster than anyone was reading them, I had a backlog of several years of submissions queuing to be looked at and I was looking for something else to do. I’d probably been annoying the hell out of John bugging him every few weeks about what was going to get sent out to whom and when. Patience, is one of those virtues where someone else got most of mine. Simon, meanwhile, was on the hunt for someone who’d write something sexy, snide and action-packed with dragons in it. No busty bimbo riders either (I think that’s a quote, but I could be wrong).
Right thing at the right time. It took me and my muse a weekend to sketch out the skeleton of a trilogy and everything to fit together perfectly almost first time (this happens more often than you might think). I think it took about a week to send a first pitch back to Gollancz. Five chapters, one trailer and one synopsis later and we had a deal. The day after that, the Germans bought it too. After two decades of getting absolutely nowhere, that big blue hand that works for the Lottery was finally pointing at me. Or that’s how it felt.
TAP is finished and with Simon now and with only the proof-reading left to go, nothing much is going to change. Whether it’s sexy, snide and action-packed you’ll be able to judge for yourselves, but I can promise that the dragons kick ass. They aren’t reasonable, rational, thinking creatures, they don’t speak in a clipped English accent, they aren’t cute and cuddly, you can’t bargain with them and they don’t have a convenient weak spot just under their left armpit. They were a lot of fun. Other people seem to think so too.
“The book is an entertaining mix of Pern and Westeros, with the knowing characterisation of Abercrombie and the endearment of Novik.” SFFworld.
“…full of everything that I like about fantasy right now; strong characters, a complex plot and loads of dragons.” Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review.
“I’m getting very sick of bloody trilogies; can someone write a book that ENDS please?” Sandstorm Reviews.
As of November 2008, the first draft of this is done. I’m not going to say too much about this for now, until at least a few people have read The Adamantine Palace. Suffice to say that it picks up right where The Adamantine Palace left off. There are a couple of new major characters and one or two of the minor figures from TAP are getting beefed up. The pace is maybe a little more measured than TAP - I suspect this will please some and disappoint others. On the other hand, it isn’t finished until it’s finished. Mooted chapters on dragon anatomy and a cameo appearance by a flight of were-ducks have been firmly rejected, however.
This isn’t much more than a collection of characters, ideas and an ending at the moment. I’ve got an opening, a few scenes scetched out, and a few characters from The Adamantine Palace who don’t have a part in King of the Crags will be making a return. Oh, and you might get to find out how the dragons came to be.
Written in 2006. This one sort of works in parallel with the stories of the dragon-realms. The Taiytakai, the Moon-Sorcerers of the Diamond Isles and even the dragons themselves (or at least the acknowledgement of their existence within my fantasy worlds) were all conceived with Thief-Taker. If there are any more dragon books to come, they may start here.
Written in 2007, this was a deviation from the usual fantasy stuff to try and do something different. Needs a bit of work this one before it could ever see the light of day.