Giveaway – Wintersmith (28/5/2013)

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I’m still quite taken with The Blood Juggler.

The proof for Dragon Queen is back with Gollancz. That was about 36 hours work 241443 words for any who care. So about twice as long as The Adamantine Palace and not much more than half the length of A Storm of Swords. Every book I write feels like it’s the best book I ever did and absolutely marvelous when I send it back after editing. Come the proofs, when to more books have gone in since, the shine has gone. Every time it’s the same – the book I’m just about finished writing is always the best one yet. I suppose it has to be that way but it’s happened enough times that the pattern’s pretty obvious. So, yeah… Dragon Queen… Best Stephen Deas book evaaar… maybe… Oh just go form your own opinion and never mind me.

Just for fun I’ve sent in an SF novel too – a bit of space opera, a good dash of cyberpunk nostalgia, plenty of sex and an severe attack of Tourette’s. The next couple of weeks are back to the historical novel and something else that I can’t talk about yet but REALLY REALLY WANT TO. Also we need to talk about Rude Supermarket.

This week’s free book needs little introduction, I suspect…

Usual deal – comment on this post before June 1st  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. No challenge this week but now that I’ve been introduced to Rude Supermarket, there may be a more interesting one coming up…

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, 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.

Giveaway – The Black Mausoleum (14/5/2013)

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So this week is being spent slaughtering all the spurious commas in Dragon Queen and discovering that, when you let a seven-year-old read your proofs, you a) discover that you wish you hadn’t let him read the opening battle scene or that it didn’t have quite so many entrails scattered about it and b) you might have thought you had a character called the Bloody Judge (remember him, King’s Assassin readers?) but actually you’ve got one called The Blood Juggler. I’m quite taken with The Blood Juggler . . .

Apparently the Adamantine Palace gets a mention in Glamour magazine in July. Yes, that bewildered laughter is mine. Yes, I’ll post a scan of it if/when I track it down once it’s out. And the short story for WFC suddenly behaved itself after I changed the gender of one protagonist and merged two secondary characters into one. Editing 6k words you can do these things…

So this week’s freebie, The Black Mausoleum: Gone are the political machinations and the wheels within wheels (don’t worry, they come back in Dragon Queen) – this is much more about survival and a rag-tag band of characters who really can’t stand each other. Probably the best cover in the series too. Signed and lined to the luck winner, of course.If you read it and like it, please tell people about it, post an amazon review or on Goodreads. Something like that.

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Usual deal – comment on this post before May 18th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Since it’s one of mine, I’ll sign and line it of you like.I’ll set a voluntary challenge this week, after my trials at historical fiction last week: the best or most memorable or simply favourite anachronism you’ve come across in film or book?

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, 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.

Book Giveaway – Cantata 104 (7/5/2013)

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News this week? The short story I was working on for World Fantasycon is a pile of poo and is getting thrown away, junked for a restart. Why are short stories so damn difficult? I’ve been noodling with some SF idea and have been told I have to watch Heat. Heat In Space anyone? Mostly I’ve been working on a historical detective novel set in the English Civil War, which has been far more fun than expected. Oh, and The Adamantine Palace is apparently going to Bulgaria. Yay Bulgaria. I’m crossing my fingers for a different cover, but I suspect everyone like Stephen Youll’s dragons too much.

This week’s giveaway is an old classic. Not one I’ve read but presumably it messes with your head since it’s Dick.

Usual deal – comment on this post before May 11th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Since it’s one of mine, I’ll sign and line it of you like.No challenge this week, although you’re welcome to keep going with the last one.

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, 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.

After Angmar (02/05/2013)

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Something a little different today. This is a piece of fiction that my wife Michaela wrote as an exercise for her writing group. It made me laugh. If you like it, please let her know. She’s @adamantine_lady on Twitter.

After Angmar

Stale air hit him as he opened the door to his flat. He carefully stepped over the small pile of junk mail and the local newspaper that covered his mat and kicked the door shut behind him. He crossed the sitting room without as much as a sideways glance. The kitchen light flickered into clinical life. He opened the grease-sodden take-away bag on the blistered Formica table, turned and took another beer from the fridge. ‘Probably shouldn’t', he thought. He’d already had several in the pub with Gimli earlier but their conversation had left him feeling even moodier than before. Maybe a last can would take off the edge. He stood in the doorway for a moment, can in one hand, kebab in the other and surveyed the cluttered mess that was his living room. His shoulders slumped and he let out a resigned sigh. This was what it had come to, was it? From a kingdom to a single, dingy room, littered with what little was left of his life. The piles of clothes, the magazines and books everywhere, the threadbare sofa, the glass surface on the table in front sticky and ringed with marks, the limp curtains. It was a dump and a million miles from the old glory of Angmar. He slumped into the sofa and closed his eyes for a minute. On days like today, it was hard not to feel bitter about those stupid meddling hobbits. No-one would ever forget the day they’d thrown the Ring into Mount Doom, they’d made sure of that. That day had changed everything.

Everything. For everyone. He took another swig from the can, tossed the half-eaten kebab onto the table, sank deeper into the sofa and switched on the television. Times had been tough after the ‘Ring incident’, for some more than for others.

Earlier tonight, after a few pints, Gimli had been all too eager to spill the beans on Legolas’s little get-together a couple of weeks back. He remembered the email. How it had made him feel seeing all the old familiar names. The brief spike of excitement that withered away into a sinking realisation that he wouldn’t go anyway. There was still too much bitterness and resentment; still no place for him. According to Gimli the turn-out had been pretty low, which made him feel a bit better, with only Elrond, Galadriel and Aragorn showing up  at the trendy cocktail bar that Legolas had chosen for a venue. “You know what he’s like”, Gimli had said, snorting into his beer, “all flash and not much bang.”Legolas had basically run the show, apparently, gloating about the opportunities he’d had since signing with a modelling agency. After a particularly smug “Archery doesn’t pay whereas this face does,” Gimli had been sorely tempted to deck him.

On the screen, some bleached has-been was going on about the latest season of “I’m a Celebrity; Get me out of here!” Yeah, he thought, try being the Ex-Witch-king of Angmar. And get me out of Peckham. He switched the television off in disgust, scrunched the empty can in his palm and heaved himself off the sofa, then shuffled into the hallway and took the damp packet of cigarettes out of the hoodie he’d left on the sideboard. He picked the letters and newspaper off the mat and returned to the lounge.

Several of the people Legolas had emailed had never replied and a couple of the mails had bounced. Not that the elf had expected to be able to round up everyone. People change, life gets in the way. And some dogs are perhaps best left asleep. Gollum, another no-show, was apparently now living in Dorset and had made several ill-fated attempts at working in customer services. There had been much speculation in the bar that night whether his schizophrenic personality and his frankly infuriating penchant for engaging customers in riddles instead of a straightforward answer might have had something to do with it. Either way, he never lasted long anywhere.

Elrond had seized the opportunity of Galadriel going to the toilet to complain that her moodiness and tension headaches ever since they’d gone self-employed as clairvoyants would drive him to drink one day. The look she gave him when she came back had said it all. Daggers. Gimli said they’d spent the rest of the evening apart from the others, bickering in one of the booths.By the end of the night, Elrond had been seriously worse for wear. They weren’t going to last the year, Gimli reckoned. Aragorn, meanwhile, had been no fun either, nursing his J2Os and muttering bitterly about his seven-steps recovery program.

Gimli. His only real friend these days, unlikely a candidate as he was out of that lot. The dwarf had found a job working for a construction company run by a shady man with an East European accent. Conditions were grim, shifts long and wages minimal.  Instead of making a noise about it Gimli had, quietly and with a grim determination, taken to supplementing his miserly income by selling off bits of scrap metal that mysteriously disappeared from the site. What he couldn’t shift, he hoarded. Old habits died hard but one day it would cost him his job.

He deserved better; most of them did after what they’d been through. Last anyone had heard of Saruman, he was living in a cardboard box under Charing Cross Arches. No wonder that email had bounced then.

He was smoking too much. Lighting the next with the last, often letting them turn to pillars of ash in his tray. An unhealthy habit perhaps but it kept him calm and gave him something to do. A little routine, a break in the day. It kept the thoughts at bay. Just like the beers did.

He was halfway through the local paper, leafing listlessly, not really reading, when something in the vacancies section caught his eye.

Once in a lifetime job opportunity!
Internationally renowned news agency recruiting now!
Are you charismatic and driven?
Prepared to go the extra mile and interested in joining a long-established team?
Then do not hesitate to contact us today on: Apocalypse.Riders@hotmail.com
Equine skills essential. Insectophobes need not apply

He paused for a moment, then carefully tore out the ad. He would get in touch first thing tomorrow. After all, what did he have to lose?

Book Giveaway – The Warlock’s Shadow (01/05/2013)

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Yay! May! It’s been an interesting couple of weeks again. The Splintered Gods (the sequel to Dragon Queen) has gone in to be edited even though there’s quite a bit wrong with it. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do but I pretty sure the plotting is solid and the characters are sound and the world is consistent and yet it’s missing something. Except for the bits with Zafir in and the bits with the Adamantine Man Tuuran. Zafir just kicks arse and steals every scene I write for her (possibly because she has a sodding great big dragon) and Tuuran, well, he’s just fun and straightforward. But it’s still missing something. Too much talking in some sections and not enough . . . something else. And it’s not action. Agency, possibly. And two more itty bitty contracts in the works (more when they’re signed).

The Splintered God isn’t the first book to go to edit with a palpable sense of missing something. This week I’m giving away a copy of the last one to do this to me. In the case of the Warlock’s Shadow the third quarter, at the time, lacked any sense of purpose. My editor at the time half-spotted the source of the problem, enough for me to see it to and so I think it’s fixed. In part it’s fixed by the presence of Tasahre, the most significant female character in the series (sorry about that ladies but the series was conceived as YA for boys. I’ll tried to compensate with Dragon Queen and its sequels…). I had fanmail today citing Tasahre as the “the favourite character of all the books I’ve ever read” and that’s pretty much what put it in mind to give a copy away.

warlocks shadow cover - shrunk

It doesn’t have any dragons in it but it does mention something about that that might just come back again in Dragon Queen. Usual deal – comment on this post before May 4th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Since it’s one of mine, I’ll sign and line it of you like. If you want a challenge for the comments, name your favourite female fantasy character. Personally I’m temped to go for Paksenarrion (if I’ve spelled her name correctly…)

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, 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.