I Am Spartacus (29/07/2013)

Posted in News

It’s been an appallingly badly kept secret for quite some time. Goodreads will tell you and now SFX in their review of The Crimson Shield have let the cat out of the bag that it was already pretty much out of any way.

I am SpartacusNathan Hawke. Look – here’s a picture by the very talented by Alejandro Colucci

cover lo-res

Yup, that’s me. Angry Man With An Axe. The protagonist looks kind of like that too. It’s a different kind of fantasy. No dragons and much more straightforward story-telling, I think. Some people have said some nice things and Gollancz have rounded them all up soall I have to do is cut and paste . . .

The Crimson Shield is a fast-paced and full of bloody battles.’ SFX

“Shades of David Gemmell… It’s about time someone good took up the torch for heroic fantasy. Inspiring characters, great plot and culture. I read this in one session, utterly absorbed” CONN IGGULDEN, bestselling author of the EMPEROR and CONQUEROR series of historical novels, and THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS

“A great mix of bloodied axes and brave warriors, an honest hero and the war that gets in his way” TOM LLOYD, author of the TWILIGHT REIGN series and the forthcoming MOON’S ARTIFICE

THE CRIMSON SHIELD is at once a huge adrenaline rush and a thoughtful examination of the destructive nature of war. The key protagonist, Gallow, is a cleverly constructed hero, full of conflict, confusion and bravery, a man who is unsure where his loyalties truly lie. A man driven by his upbringing and his love for his wife and family – factors that make very uncomfortable bedfellows. Mind you, he’s handy in a fight, very handy. Hawke has created a world with enough history, myth and folklore to make it believable. His prose is fluid, his dialogue crisp and his action very well-handled and visceral. It is not a long read and all the better for it. Entertaining, sometimes moving and always eminently readable. Highly recommended.” JAMES BARCLAY, author of the RAVEN and ELVES series of fantasy epics

“Reminds me of the tales that made me want to write novels in the first place” GILES KRISTIAN, bestselling author of the RAVEN historical books

“The simple fact the book has me guessing and speculating rather than ploughing into the next read is again testament to its quality of plot and story telling. I really do recommend this book, to fantasy or Historical Fiction fans.” ROBIN CARTER, Parmenion Books

“Bloody and interesting” Edi’s Book Lighthouse

I’ll put some more up about these books over the next few weeks. The first, The Crimson Shield is already out in the UK and available through online retailers in the US. In theory it might be in some bookshops over there too but ha ha. . . Look, if anyone actually sees a copy of a Nathan Hawke book in a US bookshop, send me a photo and I’ll send you an Angry Dragons T-shirt or a mug or something.

The second and third installments, Cold Redemption and The Last Bastion come out in August and September respectively so no messing about. Between those three and Dragon Queen, that’s a summer’s reading right there.

This week’s competition is going to be a Twitter thing as well – I have ten copies of either The Crimson Shield or the sequel, Cold Redemption (you get to choose) to give away. Usual deal – comment on this post before August 3rd  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series. This week we’re playing Viking Supermarket. So you need your comment to come up with something vaguely Vikingy. To enter the competition, you have to play the game. You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll only count the first entries – the rest are just for fun and showing off. You can also enter by re-tweeting the competition announcement on Twitter.

Extra points for humour and originality, not that extra points actually translates into anything useful :-p

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.

A Lazy Life of Sex and Mojitos (26/7/2013)

Posted in Critical Failures

I signed a new contract a couple of weeks back. I’ve got another one to sign right in front of me. I’ve got an offer on the table for some more. The last few weeks have been one big sigh of a long-held breath of thank-fuck-for-that. Because things have, for a while, been a little tense.

Now and then, when people ask what I do for a living and I tell them I write books, they act as though this is some amazing thing that makes me somehow immensely special. I’ve taken to simply rolling with that. I’m not sure I buy it. I think what I used to do was actually more challenging and took more training and more skill. For some reason it doesn’t strike me as all that clever that I write books. In part, I think, that stems from the sense of having pulled some great con trick on life so I get to do this thing that I largely greatly enjoy and somehow scrape a living out of it.

Now and then I also meet people who assume that being a writer equates with being rich. I’d laugh except it still hurts too much (stupid infection)

So far this year, then, work has consisted of the following:

  • Copy-editing and proof-reading various manuscripts coming out this year. Totally about 550k words.

  • Two proposals (unpaid) written for series of novellas / short stories. One has turned into a contract, one hasn’t and probably won’t.

  • Editorial revision of a ghost-written piece of about 100k words

  • Manuscript delivered for editing (The Splintered Gods, 210k words)

  • Speculative manuscript delivered (title TBA historical fiction, 80k words – kinda hopeful this one will sell)

  • Speculative manuscript delivered (SF, 100k words – no idea if this will sell)

  • Half a manuscript delivered for editing (BigSekkrit SF, 40k words)

So that’s 430k words delivered so far this year. For reference that’s about equivalent to A Storm of Swords.

The rest of the year is going to consist of:

  • Another manuscript delivery (Empires: Extraction 80k words)

  • Two novellas delivered (announcement soon, 30k words each)

  • Editing The Splintered Gods and BigSekkrit

  • One more speculative manuscript bashed into shape for delivery of about 120k

  • Starting work The Silver Kings or something else.

Which will bring the word count up to about 700k for the year, consisting effectively of three contracted novels and three speculative ones. In order to make ends meet this year, one of those speculative ones needs to sell for something more than a bottom-of-the-range advance. That’s to keep a family of four going who have fairly low overheads but with a penchant for an occasional extravagance.I guess if I was single without dependents I could get by on half that. And then it’s a different game again, I suppose, if you have a second income from somewhere.

In order to do this, I’m sat in front of a laptop working for 5-6 hours of almost every day of the year.

Don’t take this as a gripe in any way – I work a fairly average number of hours every week, I get to do it wherever I can take a laptop at whatever time of day I feel like and I’m largely beholden to no one doing a job that I largely enjoy. My point – my only point – is that for most of us, it’s not the lazy life of sex and mojitos that some people seem to think, dammit.

Book Giveaway – The Thief-Taker Series (22/07/13)

Posted in Uncategorized

What do Charlemagne, Catherine de Medici, Benjamin Franklin, Mahatma Ghandi, Rudolph Valentino and I all have in common? Pleurisy. Which was and still is like being knifed in the kidney every time you take a deep breath and so not much got done last week except a great deal of practice in controlled breathing. I’d like to mark it down as research but to be honest, any character who has this shit is pretty much going to lie very still taking very shallow breaths and whimpering until they either get better or die. And if they absolutely have to do something, it’s going to come with an extremely bad temper and a great deal of shouting and roaring in pain. Maybe they could function if they have access to something like morphine. A lot of morphine.

Also included in last week’s research was the discovery that A&E will indeed turf you out in your knickers and a dressing gown at 5:30am on a Sunday to “make your way home.”

I’m back to working on SF stuff. Empires: Extraction (working title). The whole of Europa has been turned into a neutrino detector, American special forces have come face to face with an alien in the Libyan desert and I think I’m about to break Docklands. Also, lasers, in the vacuum of space, are INVISIBLE.

INVISIBLE!

You know who you are.

Dragon Queen comes out in less than four weeks. Have I mentioned that one of the major characters is a cross-over from the Thief-Taker series? Have I? Here’s the opening of Dragon Queen is case I haven’t.

The King’s Assassin came out in mass-market form a couple of weeks back. Kind of over-shadowed by some other stuff, sadly, but week’s giveaway is a complete Thief-Taker set. All three books, signed and lined by me.

thieftakers apprentice coverwarlocks shadow cover - shrunkkings assassin new

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 27th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series.

This week we’re playing Thief Supermarket. So you need your comment to come up with something to do with thiefly characters in fantasy, SF or real history and the comments have to be in alphabetical order. So for example, “A is for Always keep your caltrops handy,” “B is for Buried Treasure,” “C is for Cutpurse.” etc. etc.

Anyway, to enter the competition, you have to play the game. You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll count the first two entries – the rest are just for fun and showing off.  Extra points for humour and originality, not that extra points actually translates into anything useful :-p

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.

Dragon Queen Excerpt: The Bloody Judge

Posted in Excerpts

Ten years have passed since Berren the Crowntaker came back to take what was his in The King’s Assassin. Ten bloody years.

Book Giveaway- Charm (15/7/2013)

Posted in Uncategorized

So the last week has largely been about polishing up my contribution to a novel coming out next year that I still can’t talk about. As far as I know, everyone that needs to has now signed contracts and so maybe there’s going to be an announcement by Gollancz next week. Or maybe now. Who knows.

Any other news I might have had for the week is answered by this question: What do Charlemagne, Catherine de Medici, Benjamin Franklin, Mahatma Ghandi and Rudolph Valentino have in common?

Anyway, I promised Charm by Sarah Pinborough for the giveaway this week. Since the Poison ARC was so popular, Sarah’s editor has kindly offered three signed copies. You’re going to have to earn them though: we’re going to plat smut supermarket this week and each time you get through the alphabet, I release another book until all three are in play.

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 20th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book.

In keeping with Sarah’s Twitter feed and the general thrust of this series, this week we’re playing Rude Supermarket, or Smutty Supermarket, however you want to call it. So A is for “Anal Sex: A Beginners Guide, B is for Butt plug and so on and so forth. All those things Tescos and Sainsburys sell in the curtained-off over-18s only section… Wait, y’all do know about that right…?

Anyway, to enter the competition, you have to play the game. You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll count the first two entries – the rest are just for fun and showing off.  Extra points for humour and originality, not that extra points actually translates into anything useful :-p

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.

The Crimson Shield, Cold Redemption, The Last Bastion (Summer 2013 UK)

Posted in Books

The Crimson Shield is the first of a trilogy written under the pan-name Nathan Hawke. The dragon books might owe their politics, their spread of viewpoints and their emotionally troubled and retarded characters to the New Wave of Grimdark or whatever we’re call it these days, but Nathan Hawke has no truck with any of that. The Hawke books belong to an older time when fantasy was a little more straightforward. Gemmell, Lieber, Howard, the heroic fantasy and swords and sorcery that, to be honest, has always sat a little more comfortably as a reading pleasure for me. Maybe it’s the literary equivalent of simple peasant food (I think maybe that’s what you were trying to say, SFX?). Well I wouldn’t want to eat simple peasant food all the time but I wouldn’t want a rich man’s feast every night either. So this is simple, straightforward, bloody and hard-nosed. I hope you enjoy reading this series as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The second book in the series, Cold Redemption, came out on the 8th August. The Last Bastion came out on the 12th September.

And damn, but that’s a fine piece of cover art. This really is the cover, too. No words, no title, no name, just Angry Man With Axe

cover lo-res

Cold Redemption Cover

cold redemption cover lo-res

The Last Bastion cover

Cover artwork lo-res

The Crimson Shield is a fast-paced and full of bloody battles.’ SFX

“Shades of David Gemmell… It’s about time someone good took up the torch for heroic fantasy. Inspiring characters, great plot and culture. I read this in one session, utterly absorbed” CONN IGGULDEN, bestselling author of the EMPEROR and CONQUEROR series of historical novels, and THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS

“A great mix of bloodied axes and brave warriors, an honest hero and the war that gets in his way” TOM LLOYD, author of the TWILIGHT REIGN series and the forthcoming MOON’S ARTIFICE

THE CRIMSON SHIELD is at once a huge adrenaline rush and a thoughtful examination of the destructive nature of war. The key protagonist, Gallow, is a cleverly constructed hero, full of conflict, confusion and bravery, a man who is unsure where his loyalties truly lie. A man driven by his upbringing and his love for his wife and family – factors that make very uncomfortable bedfellows. Mind you, he’s handy in a fight, very handy. Hawke has created a world with enough history, myth and folklore to make it believable. His prose is fluid, his dialogue crisp and his action very well-handled and visceral. It is not a long read and all the better for it. Entertaining, sometimes moving and always eminently readable. Highly recommended.” JAMES BARCLAY, author of the RAVEN and ELVES series of fantasy epics

“Reminds me of the tales that made me want to write novels in the first place” GILES KRISTIAN, bestselling author of the RAVEN historical books

“The simple fact the book has me guessing and speculating rather than ploughing into the next read is again testament to its quality of plot and story telling. I really do recommend this book, to fantasy or Historical Fiction fans.” ROBIN CARTER, Parmenion Books

“Bloody and interesting” Edi’s Book Lighthouse

“…a book that treads its own path to the readers imagination.” Falcatta Times

“…a strong foundation for the rest of the series.” Fantasy Book Review

“There were in fact so many battles, some readers may find this to be all consuming, but the story and character development effortlessly takes place through the structure of combat.” NudgeMeNow

“As with most heroic fantasy, the plot builds up to a climax at the end, though the entire book is paced very well and had chapters that were short enough to turn “just one more chapter” into an all-nighter. Gallow is a great character who tries to do right in a world where people like to do the opposite and I need to get my hands on the sequel, Cold Redemption, as soon as possible. If and when you end up reading The Crimson Shield, you without a doubt have to read to the final page, including the epilogue and prologue to the sequel, and if you’re like me, the final line will put an ear-to-ear grin on your face.” A Biter Draft

“at times it was a bit too action filled for me.” Books for Life. Yeah, it has a lot of fighting.

“good story and good character development.  The only thing I didn’t like was the romanticism.” Reader Reading. The reviewer doesn’t explain quite what (s)he means by that, but take that NOT to mean romance, because there isn’t any. It’s true that all three books do kind of romanticise the notion of personal values.

“I have long yearned for a book that properly portrays the Norse culture and it is kind of funny that it comes in the form of a fantasy book.” Benign Guy

“Martin says that the great theme in his fantasy work “is the existential loneliness that we all suffer.” That big idea is not evident in ‘The Crimson Shield.” What does come through is a rollicking good tale. It is a hybrid work, closer to Gemmell than Martin. Its strength lies in its battle scenes and well-wrought characters.” Red Rook Review, which was one of the more entertaining reviews to read.

“Gallow is an enigmatic and interesting protagonist, but sadly I never felt that I got to know him beyond the tough warrior exterior.” Fantasy Book Review. Oh. Bugger.

“I need to get my hands on the sequel, Cold Redemption, as soon as possible.” FantasyLiterature.com

And so far just an early Goodreads review for Cold Redemption from Robin Carter: “I dearly hope that this series not only gets nominated for a Legend award but wins, for the cover art which is exceptional, but more for the story that is a combined series in my top 5 stories this year, and if it keeps up this standard could make my all time top 10.”

Book Giveaway – The Crimson Shield (again) (8/7/2013)

Posted in Uncategorized

I thought I had a dead cert for the giveaway lined up for this week – a signed copy of Sarah Pinborough’s Charm, but apparently I have wait until next week when it actually comes out. BOO.

So if it has to be a book that comes out this week, then, as I discovered to my surprised, *I* have one of those. Yes, the King’s Assassin is now out in paperback. However, I’ve been offered a signed copy of The Crimson Shield. I was thinking of putting them both in the pot and letting people choose but then I was thinking I might not much like how that panned out… So: This week’s giveaway is a signed copy of the Crimson Shield by Nathan Hawke. Next week Charm (hopefully). Then maybe a set of the whole thief-taker trilogy.

According to the Goodreads description, Nathan Hawke doesn’t really exist and is actually me. I figured I’d best promote him then so here’s a link to the only review I can find.

I don’t really have any other news this week, at least not that I can share. Some more words. They happened.

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 13th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Given that The Crimson Shield is (apparently) largely a book about blokes hitting each other with swords and axes, we’ll play Weapon Supermarket this week (first commenter has to come up with a weapon beginning with A (axe would seem a good start), second commenter has to point out a weapon beginning with B, etc). For Charm, next week (if I get it), we can play Rude Supermarket… ;-)

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 – Throne of the Crescent Moon (1/7/2013)

Posted in Uncategorized

I have this feeling of being on a roll now. The last three choices for these giveaways seem to have gone down well and so I’m going for a banker this week: Saladin Ahmed’s Thrown of the Crescent Moon.

Here’s a link to the SFX review and the Kirkus Review. It’s had a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and I do believe it might have won an award just recently (Locus Best First Novel :-)

I don’t really have any news this week. Some words. They happened.

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 6th  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. Since I’m on time with getting this one up and since there were SEVERAL complaints last week when I didn’t make life difficult, we’re going to play Fantasy Supermarket again (first commenter has to point out something fantasy-related beginning with A, second commenter has to point out something fantasy-related beginning with B, etc). I’ll vary it, before anyone complains, just not this week.

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.