Progress Report April ’14
It’s been a slightly bitty and pernickety couple of months since the last progress report at the end of February. A big part of April got taken up with a hugely exciting secret project the details of which I cannot reveal and probably never will be able to reveal and hence I should never have mentioned in the first place. Half a King plunges toward publication, now firmly slated for July 3rd in the UK and July 15th in the US, and the load of publicity and promotional work, blogs and interviews begins to wind up. It feels like a long old time since I last put a book out – Red Country was all the way back in November 2012 – so I’m rather looking forward to the excitement (and panic) of putting something new in front of readers.
The sequel, Half the World, got a pretty darn good reception from my various editors and agents in the UK and US, I’m delighted to say, but there are still a fair few comments to attend to, not to mention a few things I’d like to look at again and a general smoothing of the language, which I’ll be tackling in May, but nothing that should interfere with its slated publication date of Feb ’15.
Meanwhile I now have a pretty solid plan for the third book, Half a War, a detailed chapter breakdown for the first part, and have drafted the first three chapters, one from each of its point of view characters. I’ll be taking a further look at those over coming weeks, mulling them over, trying to get into the characters’ heads and develop a bit more of an individual style for each of them. Then I’ll be cracking on with the drafting end of May/June in the hope of making a firm start on the second part before the events for Half a King get seriously underway in July.
I’ve also finished up three short stories that are intended to fit into some new editions of the First Law later on this year. The Blade Itself one, A Beautiful Bastard, is an episode from Glokta’s past, the Last Argument of Kings one, Made a Monster, is an episode from Logen’s, the Before They are Hanged one, Hell, gives a little insight into what happened when Dagoska fell to the Gurkish from the point of view of a young acolyte called Temple. More details on when and how these will be available later, but they’ll definitely be in a comprehensive collection of all my First Law short stories which should be appearing some time in 2016.
Also in that collection will be Tough Times all Over, a 12,000 word novelette which is appearing first in George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois’ latest cross-genre heavyweight anthology, Rogues, which is coming out June 17th in the US (I’m not sure there’s currently a UK publisher for it) and will also feature stories from Gillian Flynn, Neil Gaiman, Pat Rothfuss, Connie Willis and Scott Lynch among many others, not to mention GRRM himself.
That is your progress report for April.
Dark Souls 2
It is without a shadow of a doubt dark, it undeniably involves souls, but the 2 is something of a lie, as this is actually the THIRD in From Software’s super dark, totally soul-related, and super duper unforgivingly hard connoisseur’s choice RPG series. The first was Demon’s Souls, which I very nearly completed some years […]
My Thoughts on the Hugo Awards
I think that covers it.
Slight Delay
Sorry to report there’s going to be a very slight delay in the US publication of Half a King. Don’t panic! It’s only a week. Promotional, book selling thing, the book itself has been finished for some time now. So US publication moves back from 8th to 15th July. The UK publication date remains on […]
Hot Young Fantasists
Delighted to say that I got a quote for Half a King from some George RR Martin guy. Not familiar with his work myself but apparently he wrote some Game of Thrones thing which is quite popular at the moment… “Joe Abercrombie does it again. Half a King is another page-turner from Britain’s hottest young […]
