Legend(s)
Limited posting round these parts as I’ve got my head proper buried in editing Half a King at the moment, as well as planning the next book and wrangling some cover concepts. However, I bring you news…
I’ve got a story in a forthcoming anthology, ‘Legends: Stories in Honour of David Gemmell’. The clue is in the title – it’s a collection of stories in honour of David Gemmell, so I expect you can expect some hard-edged fantasy stories with an undertone of dark humour and some tough and grizzled morally questionable antiheroes. Announcement over here, and from the Editor Ian Whates, and here’s the table of contents:
1. Introduction – Stan Nicholls
2. Or So Legend Has It – James Barclay
3. A Blade to the Heart – Gaie Sebold
4. Return to Arden Falls – Ian Whates
5. The Drake Lords of Kyla – Storm Constantine
6. A Tower of Arkrondurl – Tanith Lee
7. Who Walks With Death – Jonathan Green
8. Skipping Town – Joe Abercrombie
9. Land of the Eagle – Juliet E McKenna
10. All Hail to the Oak – Anne Nicholls
11. Swords and Circle – Adrian Tchaikovsky
12. Fairyland – Jan Siegel
13. Mountain Tea – Sandra Unerman
14. The League of Resolve – Stan Nicholls
My own story is a to-the-point slice of sword and sorcery featuring Shevedieh and Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp, a sort of female Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The collection’s being published by Newcon Press in paperback, e-book, and limited edition Hardback, to coincide with the giving of this year’s David Gemmell Legend Award. Which segues oh-so-smoothly into a hugely subtle mention in passing that Red Country just so happens to be on the shortlist for that award, and you guys could vote for it, if you so desired…
Of course, you could vote for one of the other wonderful shortlisted books. If you’re INSANE. I should say the cover art for Red Country by the (already Gemmell Award winning and World Fantasy Award shortlisted) team of Didier Graffet and Dave Senior is up for the Ravenheart Award. You could vote for them here, should you so desire.
Finally, Justin Landon’s re-read of The First Law Trilogy continues at tor.com, where he’s discussing a couple of chapters of The Blade Itself each Wednesday. Jump in and join the discussion…
Friday Night Lights
If you’d told me a couple of years back that a series about a High School Football team in a Texas small town would have become one of my favourite TV series of all time, right up there alongside stuff like The Wire, Deadwood, the Shield, Breaking Bad and the first two seasons of Battlestar […]
Editing, and More
The dream with this new trilogy was to gloriously complete a draft of the second book and a detailed plan for the third by the end of the year, therefore 6 or 7 months before publication of the first book, leaving time enough to edit the first book in the light of all I had […]
The Blade Itself Issue 4
The fourth issue of The Blade Itself Graphic Novel is now available on Comixology, featuring Mercers, Magi, Murders, and much, much more, and complete with guided view and a package of assorted pencils and inks. A paper collection of the first four issues should be available very shortly. More news as I have it…
Half a King US
There were a couple of minor contractual wrinkles to iron out, but I can now reveal that Half a King and its two sequels will be published in the US and Canada by none other than Del Rey. Their announcement is over here. Jonathan Lyons and Ginger Clarke at Curtis Brown negotiated the deal with […]
The First Law Reread
One of my favourite sf&f bloggers, Justin Landon, is doing a reread of the entire First Law over at Tor.com. This week there’s a little introduction, some discussion of the series’ place in the gritty fantasy pantheon (or Grimdark, if you prefer that term), the controversial assertion that I’m older than Brent Weeks and less […]
Celsius Festival 2013
I was invited to Celsius 232 once again this year and enjoyed a wonderful few days in the temperate Asturian climate, writing, eating, signing books, and kicking back with some writers I knew a little, like Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Paul McAuley, Chris Priest, Ian Watson and David Moody, and some that I didn’t like Nina […]
Recent TV
Seems like a while since I reviewed my recent TV watching. Recent in my having watched it, mark you, not necessarily it having been made recently. What have we had…? The Returned – A french-import supernatural thriller in which people known to have died suddenly reappear, remembering nothing, in a small french town, with shattering […]
