However, I can announce that I’ll also be appearing in a slightly more useful and written form as part of the BFS anthology Unexpected Journeys and in the form of a short story, The Sin Eater, a brief vignette of revenge and wickedness and redemption and in which dragons are not mentioned even once. See, I can if I try…

The other stories are:

A Thief in the Night by Anne Lyle
Seeds by Benjamin Tate
Steer a Pale Course by Gail Z Martin
The Groppler’s Harvest by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Oak, Broom and Meadowsweet by Liz Williams
King Harvest Has Surely Come by Chaz Brenchley
The Queen’s Garden by Kate Elliott

The anthology is edited by Juliet McKenna and rather than have me waffle about it any more, you might fancy reading her thoughts and observing how I totally stole that list. You can also see the cover artwork there.

The anthology is only available (I think) to BFS members and WFC attendees (that may be a redundant statement). The BFS have a few months of exclusive rights to the story before it revert, after which I reckon there’s a fair chance it’ll show up here as a freebie.

a . . .

a SLOW NEWS WEEK.

Well it is of your news coverage is confined to the narrow limits of how many words I, specifically, have laid down on various works in progress. Unfortunately this is only going to get worse as, save for the occasional re-drafts of The King’s Assassin and Dragon Queen, the bulk of the next six months will be dedicated to Secret Project G about which little can be said except that it’s secret and involves the letter G. Although thast might be a code-letter. Add to that the demise (for now) of Diamond Cascade, and there could be weeks when I don’t blog at all.  To avoid this horror from beyond imagination, I have made a series of

T E S T      C A R D S

Further may occur when I can’t think of anything useful

Alt.Fiction: 25-26th June. Somewhere in Derby. Beware of deranged writers trying to surf large rocks through the sky.

Yes, yes, lazy I know – next week you can have a short story and some proper blogging.

Just to be clear, then, correct short form for the Order of the Scales is OOTS. It is not TOOTS. Do you call The Order of the Stick TOOTS? No, you do not. Do you refer to anything at all to do with dragons as “TOOTS”? Not if you don’t want to be burned and eaten. OOTS, right. Are you listening? you know who you are.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a quick note about signing appearances. Just needed to vent there for a moment. Forthcoming opportunities to acquired signed copies of OOTS-without-a-leading-T are as follows:

As part of the Chainsaw Gang I’ll be doing a signing session at Redbridge Library on 21st May, 2-3pm.

I’ll be at the Centre of the Universe Writtle Library on 4th June, 2.30pm

I’ll be at Alt.Fiction on 25th-26th June

Oh, and some little thing at Heffers in Cambridge on Wednesday 11th May, 6:30-8:30. First chance to buy copies of Order of the Scales. One or two other authors may be present, although as far as I know, neither China Mieville, Steve Erikson, Peter Hamilton, Trudi Canavan, Alex Scarrow, Ian Whates, Paul Stewart, Chris Riddell, Jasper Kent, Philip Reeve, Moira Young or Sophia McDougall have written about dragons. But I don’t know that for sure, so don’t write them off. And maybe Krakens count? Also a few of them may have won an award or two…

[1] If you don’t know what that means, you’re not a software engineer.

[1] OK, Three Letter Acronym. We have E(xtended)TLAs as well. And ETLAG(losarries) too. And probably, once you’re a name-level ninja in the business, JETLAG too.

I have never done this before.

Help!

Yes, I know that’s not much of a post. Oooh look – a spider.

About the size of my hand and living outside my front door for the last week

1. I should assess my audience carefully before mentioning roleplaying games on panels.
2. I think I’m going to keep count of the gender ratio of the dedications I’m asked to make, because ladies, so far I think you’re kicking ass. It’s Jehal, isn’t it…

Now changing genre to horror: There’s a video interview of me for a US cable TV channel that we did a couple of months back. It’s airing this week in the Michigan area, but for anyone desperately keen to see me look uncomfortable in front of a camera, you can catch it here at www.cult-pop.com. Interview 35. Look mom, I’m on TV!

There’s also a couple more reviews of TAP

“…an absorbing, satisfying read with plenty left in the locker for the future instalments … Dragons are back at the top of the food chain, in all their fire-breathing primal glory.” Speculative Horizons

“Short chapters, with alternating points of view, set a cracking pace from the outset. The language is vibrant with dialogue that moves the story briskly along, yet revealing the levels of political machinations throughout.” Temple Library Reviews

One day I’ll stop obsessively tracking these down. One day. Really. I will.

</lie>

Work continues on The Warlock’s Shadow. Not much more to be said about that. The noveletto The Thief-Taker’s Blade will be the basis for the short game I plan to run at the UK Games Expo; after that, it may appear somewhere.

Today, though, the sithlings and I stuck little plastic undead monsters together. There were bits left over (you know how it goes with the undead – spare heads and arms all over the place). The sithlings stuck them on anyway. Serriously, if you want an undead monstrosity made of assorted human body parts to give you nightmares, leave it to the unfettered imagination of a seven year old.

Since this is the first one of these for me, I thought for a while I’d try to do something special. That was too difficult, so instead I’ve designed a set of  crappy little stick figures, found some pithy little quotes to go with them and made the little collage below. Come on the 13th and I’ll deface your books with one of them. Available this one time only. Unless you buy me beer at the next one. Or you ask nicely at Eastercon. Or I just forget. There are also exactly one of each available through Doodled Books

Speaking of beer, the signing ends at 7pm. It seems highly probable on past performance that a trip to the pub will begin at 7.01.

[1] See how King of the Crags is top of the bill there? That’s the power of alphabetisation, that is.

[2] No, there won’t actually be canapes. There might be chips later.

The rewrite of Thief-Taker went back to Gollancz a couple of days back. I’m supposed to be back working on Order of the Scales, but frankly, a short break is in order. OOTS is going to be some heavy work between now and the end of June when it’s supposed to be ready, and I need to catch my breath for a moment, if only to take stock for a moment of how busy I suddenly seem to have become. It all started with this:

which very quickly turned into this:

Forgive them, for a moment, for getting the title of King of the Crags slightly wrong…

Then there’s this: The Write Fantastic’s fifth anniversary event in Oxford (St Hilda’s College no less, which is about the one college I actually recognise in Oxford) on Sunday 9th May. For anyone who doesn’t know, The Write Fantastic exists to promote fantasy fiction to non-fantasy readers, particularly younger readers.

The after that, there’s the Lincoln Book Festival, where there’s going to be a panel (1pm, Sunday 16th) on genre fiction supplied by the all-powerful John Jarrold. Fantasy, I am your representative, so you’d better all be nice to me for the next couple of months.

Finally there’s the UK Games Expo, on the 5th & 6th June. Might well be there. And of course, there’s Eastercon!

And finally finally,  I got sent these fan-pics of The Sorcerer by Michael Peinkofer! Just goes to show that certain cover-art conventions aren’t limited to the English-speaking editions…

Readings. Yes, and in a bar. Having them there caused some debate, mostly of the ‘it’s too bloody loud in here’ variety, but I’m not so sure about that. I’d draw the line at having to complete with the pub televisions showing the six nations at the same time as someone’s trying to read aloud – that was a bit harsh, even for Science Fiction authors – but the basic idea, I thought, was sound. Would I rather listen to someone read and talk with a pint in my hand and a bit of atmosphere, or would I rather listen in a sterile room tucked away in some part of the hotel that I can’t even find (yes, Fantasycon, I’m looking at you)? I’ll take the bar. As for the reading… I can understand why the background noise annoys some people, but set against that there’s the ebb and flow of people, because as panels and movies end (and we readers where certainly a mere sideshow in all of this), the bar is the natural place for people to go. So they come, and we were there to entertain them. So not all bad, and I felt we were honouring older traditions of story-telling by reading in the bar. Sure, some people weren’t interested. There was talking and noise in the background. But people came, and it was down to us and our stories to be interesting enough to keep them. It’s not the same as reading to a room where everyone has come specifically for the person who’s going to read, but I don’t see that makes it better, only different.

I, however, had none of this to contend with. What I had was Tom Baker on the main stage somewhere above me, and you can guess who got the better of that one. My thanks to those who stayed and listened anyway, particularly the two or three people who weren’t from the Gollancz or SFX crew.

I had fun, but then that’s a pretty easy thing to say when all you’ve got to do is show up at the seaside, sit in a bar all day and be offered drinks and Thai takeaway while watching the occasion sith lord order Doritos from the bar. I mean, really, what’s not to like? So apart from opinions on giving readings, go ask someone else what it was like.