The one (and only) big advantage of being sent to far-away places in service of the day-job is suddenly finding myself with lots of free time at very strange hours of the day. Even in sub-urban Los Angeles, there really isn’t a huge amount of touristy stuff that I want to do when I’ve just woken up a three o’clock in the morning. Actually, mostly what I want to do is have breakfast. However, it’s also turning out to be a fine time to get some writing done, and so King of the Crags has raced ahead. Word count is sitting at 113k and the book is very nearly finished (the very first draft, at least). With a bit of luck it’ll be done in time for the proofs of the Adamantine Palace to arrive next week. It’s not going to be any longer than The Adamantine Palace, but the chapter count is a little lower which might please a few people. There’s more dragon, too, but you’ll still all have to wait until book three for certain mysteries to be resolved.

And the other America news is that a deal has been struck and The Adamantine Palace and all its little friends will be being published in the US as well. More when I know it.

Oh man, what a long couple of days it’s been, and for more reasons than I’m going to go into here. The restructuring of King of the Crags is largely finished. Acts 1-3 (that’s about 88k words) are good to go. Wordcount stands at 96k, although the last few thousand may still get dumped and reworked. Finished by the end of this week? Not a chance but it won’t be much later than that.

Now I need ice-cream, coffee, sleep and to watch reality TV folk eaten by zombies.

It seems I can’t resist the urge to rant at the foolishness of others or (frequently) myself. This sort of nonsense has no place in the News archives, which are are purely intended for book-related updates. Therefore the new thread ‘Critical Failures’ has been created, which can be accessed via a link on the body of the homepage. If you go and have a look at what’s there, remember: no one forced you.

King of the Crags is, has metaphorically, been disassembled into component parts which are all spread across the garage floor. A certain restructuring of the first three acts is now underway, after which the trajectory of the final act may be sufficiently different that it needs to be scrapped and done again. We shall see over the next few days…

(wordcount currently 95k, but this doesn’t mean much right now).

The first reviews of the Adamantine Palace have begun to appear, on The Wertzone and SFFworld

“…traditional-style fantasy, but written in a contemporary manner…”

“…characters and storylines are not so much flying past but feel like they’ve been blasted out from a minigun like the one Blaine had in Predator…”

On the 11th October 2007, this appeared in my in-box:

“I had a phone call yesterday… Very occasionally a publisher will have a general idea and ask if I feel there is anyone they might discuss it with on my books. Simon [Spanton] is keen to discuss intelligent dragon fantasy - not busty girl with sword on dragon, but something that would appeal broadly, including the intelligent fantasy-reading audience… Is this something you would be interested in?”

The Adamantine Palace and the dragons within were first conceived the following day, exactly a year ago. It seems a long, long time ago.

Anyway, back from work-related travels yesterday with no idea what timezone I’m in. Everything is a blur. The cover proofs arrived while I was away. They’re subtly different from the draft I put up a while back, but you have to really look to spot the differences. They’re also shiny and glittery and gleamy

I still managed to get some real work done while I was away. King of the Crags is up to 85k word and I’m still hoping (without a great deal of optimism, I must admit) to have the first draft finished by the end of the month.

Rumours of impending reviews are starting to arrive. It’s kind of scary knowing that the bound proofs are out there, being read by people who have absolutely no reason to be anything other than honest about what they say.

Seems like I’m being bundled off to California after all (sadly for nothing remotely related to books and writing). This week hasn’t been particularly productive so far, so I’m hoping for better in the small hours of the morning in a quiet hotel in the middle of nowhere LA outskirts.

First ever royalty cheque metaphorically arrived this morning. Much celebrating (family trip to Costas for toasted cheese and ham sandwiches and coffee. Truly I am the king of partying).

First there was fantasycon, and then there was the copy-editing of The Adamantine Palace and then there was editing lots of family trees and then the Gollancz annual party and a whole gang of new faces that I have to remember and then more King of the Crags (75k words and buzzing along nicely now). The day-job is getting crazy (maybe having to go to California for a few days, maybe not, who knows, job’s on the brink of being finished and stuff keeps breaking…), everyone’s been ill but now we’re all better and I’m still almost a non-smoker (4 weeks now).

Eesh. I want a holiday. A proper, quiet, do-nothing-all-day-between-a-lake-and-a-mountain-holiday…

The first bound proofs arrived in the post this morning. As did the following from one of the Gollancz publicity team. Now, they might not be exactly impartial, but this is the first time anyone who didn’t have anything to do with creating The Adamantine Palace has written to me about it, so I’m just going to pretend that they’re impartial and revel in it.

“…I’m not usually someone to heap praise on a book I’ve not finished yet, but I just had to write and let you know that I took Adamantine Palace home last night and promptly missed my tube stop, I was so gripped. I’m around 150 pages into it (I was even late for a friend’s birthday as I lost track of time)  and I already know that I’m reading my favourite fantasy novel in quite a long time… I’m absolutely gripped - the characters are fantastic, the backstage political machinations utterly gripping and not too complex or heavy to follow and the dragons! With the most sparse of descriptions, you’ve brought these things to life… Their size, their power, their majesty - I can see these things living and breathing (fire) and they’re awesome.

As I said, I’m only 150 or so pages in but you’ve got me. You’ve got me really good.”

Apologies to anyone who has/had to have some sort of social interaction with me with me for the next few days - I’ll try to keep the big happy grin under control…

I was kind of hoping that rewriting King of the Crags from the start, given the revised ending to The Adamantine Palace, would cause the circumstances of two rather important characters ending up in a room together with a crossbow and a heady portion of murderous intent to go away. Sadly, the character who contrived for this to happen has still managed to do so.

Bloody pesky meddling characters.

Crags has reached about 65000 words.

The first cut of a cover for The Adamantine Palace has arrived. I would post it up, but apparently it’s corrupted in such a way that only Windows Photo Gallery can open it. Go figure. Eventually, when I work it out, I’ll put it up here. OK, OK, now I know the difference between cmyk and rgb. Or rather, I know there is a difference. So here it is. I hope…

King of the Crags is about half done. Give or take. OK, will definitely be half done by the end of FantasyCon.