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.

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.

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?

And so Empires was born, the monstrous hybrid that will be a Stephen Deas / Gavin Smith creation, a pair of interconnected SF novels to be released simultaneously in the summer of next year. In Gavin’s Empires: Infiltration, the Pleasure, the ultimate in galactic drug peddlers, have found a perfect drug in the neuro-chemistry of a retarded but sentient species on a small and insignificant world. Do they come in peace as they say? Maybe they do but they certainly want something. In the counterpart, Empires: Extraction, the coldly mathematical Weft have become aware of a compound that causes them a crippling and ultimately lethal addiction and they’d like to know where it’s coming from. They’d like to make it stop in a very permanent way.

Caught between being battery-farmed and annihilation, can mankind find a way out in the face of Gavin’s personal guarantee that at no point will any vastly technologically superior alien races be defeated by a single big shouty man with a large gun or by some sort of computer hack? Find out next year . . .

So to enter this time you have to help me resolve an argument – what’s the best SF spaceship ever. Is it really the Millennium Falcon? I’m looking for more than the coolest design – I’ll looking for spaceships with personality. So yes, the Falcon counts as it does have a prone-to-break-down-at-inconvenient-moment personality, just about. To enter the competition you have to comment on this post with a suggested spaceship before the end of Friday 26th. Please be prepared to be patient with the delivery and if it’s to an address to outside the UK then I’ll have to ask for a phone number as well as an address. But they do all get there eventually (I think).

[1] Exciting bonus goodies occasionally available but not guaranteed to be exciting. But I have T-shirts if you really make me laugh.

This week I’m giving away a signed ARC of Robert Reddick’s Rats and the Ruling Sea. This is the second volume in the Chathrand Voyage quartet, the last of which (Night of the Swarm) came out last year, so no irritating waiting for the series to finish if you get hooked. And don’t complain – I already did give away a copy of the first book. This is a truly magical series (as far as I’ve read) full of hope and wonder and magic, and I heartily recommend it for adults and almost-adults alike. Robert has a lovely website for the series here.

Usual deal – comment on this post and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. In order to enter, comment on this post before 6th April. Your challenge this week is to recommend a book to anyone else who comes to visit the giveaway page. If you make me laugh I might send an exciting bonus goody your way[1]. 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.

[1] Exciting bonus goody not guaranteed to be exciting. Actually it’s often a postcard. Which is pretty lame. But I did give away an Angry Dragons T-Shirt last week.

As usual, the competition is open worldwide although international deliveries may take a little time and will require a phone number (not my rule).

I’ll post the name of the songs on Twitter once they’re guessed and maybe even a little about them. I’ll be running this from the 19th March until the weekend or until I run out of books to give away.