Tag: books

Bones at the Black Gate

Since so many people here were involved, I asked the cover artist, Kirk DouPonce, to share his perspective on the occasionally contentious process of creating the cover for A THRONE OF BONES.  It turned out to be so interesting that I suggested posting it at Black Gate to John O’Neill, who readily concurred:

Over the past 17 years, I’ve gotten to design a pile of book covers, well over a thousand if my math is correct. And if I learned anything at art school, it was math. So when I say A Throne of Bones is my favorite cover so far, it does mean something….

Scientifically speaking, women read approximately a lot more books than men do. This is especially true when it comes to fiction. So when I design fiction covers for publishers, no matter what the genre, I know how important the female demographic is. Covers need to appeal to women. Simple enough.

Or not. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning of the process. 

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

Introducing Arts of Dark and Light

the novella featuring LodiIt hasn’t exactly been any great mystery, but I am happy to finally be able to share exactly what I’ve been up to for the last year.  Last summer, after finishing A Dance with Dragons, I found myself deeply disappointed with what Mr. Martin, whose earlier work in the series I so enjoyed, had produced after making us all wait six years.  “Good Lord, even I could do better than that”, I thought, which may not, strictly speaking, actually be true, but regardless, that was the thought that struck me after slogging through 1,100 pages of tedious river journeys, Tyrion “humorously” falling off pigs, and being subjected to Important New Characters for approximately the 4,853rd time.  Being somewhat despondent about George Martin’s descent into Robert Jordan territory, I turned to other so-called epic writers, including Joe Abercrombie, R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, Daniel Abraham, and Brandon Sanderson.  Some of their books were quite good, others somewhat less so, but in no case did any of them provide me with that same sense of EPIC and wanting to experience the depths of the world that Martin presented so effectively in the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire.

So, I decided that I would write an epic novel and I would do it in one year.  It would be the same length as A Game of Thrones, it would be loosely based upon an interesting period in military history, (in case you didn’t realize it, the Wars of the Roses are the starting point for Martin’s series, Stark = York and Lannister = Lancaster), and its focus would be on story, world, and character.  Nothing else.  No cleverness, no preaching, no subtexts, no reinventing wheels, no larger lessons, no deep philosophical insights.  In reading all the various would-be epics, I realized that most of them suffered from trying to do more than simply tell a fascinating story, which was also a problem with most of my previously published fiction.  I assumed I would self-publish it, since obviously no one would want to publish such a monster, and I would set it in the world of Summa Elvetica since I rather liked that world, as did most of those who read that flawed, but interesting failure of an esoteric literary exercise.  However, to do so, I needed to get the permission of Marcher Lord Press, the publisher of Summa, and much to my surprise, Jeff not only loved the idea of an epic series set in Selenoth, he insisted that he would publish it, even if it turned out to be more than 1,000 pages.

Umberto Eco once said that he wrote The Name of the Rose because he wanted to murder a monk.  I decided to do him one better and begin by killing the Holy Father.  That sets the stage for a story that is large and sprawling and is inspired by the Roman Social War, which is a little known quasi-civil war that was arguably the most perilous situation the Roman Republic faced in between the Gauls laying siege to the Capitoline Hill in 390 BC and Caesar crossing the Rubicon.  Amorr isn’t Rome, of course, but the historical scenario provides the novel with a certain amount of structural verisimilitude that I have often found to be lacking in other books.

So, I’m very pleased to announce A THRONE OF BONES, the first novel in the series entitled Arts of Dark and Light, which will be published by Marcher Lord Press on December 1, 2012.  We’re not sure of the final page count yet, but at 295,000 words, I expect it to be well over 750 pages.  It will be available for $4.99 in ebook format and $34.99 in hardcover.  There will be no paperbacks, trade or mass-market.  Marcher Lord is accepting preorders for the hardcovers starting today; those who preorder will pay only $29.99 for the hardcover and they will also receive the ebook on December 1st.  (We can’t say precisely when the hardcovers will ship, except that it is expected to arrive with time to spare for Christmas.)  This preorder offer will be run from October 15th until November 30th.  Also, since I wanted to provide those who are potentially interested in the book a less esoteric introduction to the world of Selenoth than the one provided by Summa Elvetica, I am pleased to announce the publication today of A MAGIC BROKEN, which is a 50-page novella featuring two of the perspective characters from the novel.

A MAGIC BROKEN is available from Amazon for 99 cents and the reviews to date are mostly positive.  If you think you might be interested in A Throne of Bones, I would encourage giving the novella a whirl in the meantime.  Here are a few of the comments from the first reviewers:

  • “a sword and sorcery tale with a cerebral bent”
  • “the two main characters are likable in their non-perfection”
  • “an entertaining, fast paced read”
  • “I found the story line to be unpredictable”
  • “The environment and characters are on par with the best of George R.R. Martin”
  • “Despite the number of twists it remains coherent and believable as they unfold”
  • “a masterful act of guile and misdirection reminiscent of the style of Umberto Eco” 
  • “The world has a depth not found in much writing today.” 
  • “the promise of it all leading somewhere grand and exciting is what interests me more than anything else”

Also, and I would argue this is a strong point in its favor, there are no river journeys, no “amusing” porcine-related pratfalls, and no whining.  Actually, come to think of it, there is a little whining, but rest assured that the whiner speedily meets with a literary device that I devoutly wish Robert Jordan had utilized with regards to his character Rand al’Thor at an early stage in The Wheel of Time.  In my opinion, Chapter One would have been about right.

Thanks are in order to JartStar, who created the cover for A Magic Broken and may even do the map for A Throne of Bones if I ever get my act together and get him the information he needs, as well as Jamsco, whose determined interest in Lodi not only inspired the novella, but his inclusion in the larger work as well.  Thanks to Markku and the Original Cyberpunk, who between them made my foray into ebooks viable and without whom these books would never have been conceived.  I also appreciate the reviewers, 15 20 of whom managed to read the novella and post their reviews over the weekend.  I’m very appreciative of Kirk DouPounce, who somehow managed to surpass the very high standard he’d set with Summa – about which more later – of Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord, who was enthusiastic about taking on yet another ludicrous literary risk, and most of all, of Spacebunny and her encouragement of my efforts.

Requesting reviewers

I will be announcing two new works of fiction on Monday, both set in the world of Summa Elvetica.  I’d like to get some reviews of the first one up on Amazon over the weekend, so I’m giving away 30 electronic review copies of the forthcoming 50-page(1) novella to those who are a) interested in my fiction, b) willing and able to post reviews on Amazon, and, c) not the Anklebiter of Many Names.

I’m not asking for mindless puffery or anything like that, just your honest perspective on the novella.  So, if you’re interested, please fire off an email to me and I’ll send you the same epub that will be available Monday from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.  If you don’t have an eReader, that’s not a problem, you can use Calibre to read it on your computer.

UPDATE: Okay, the thirty review copies are all spoken for.  Thanks very much to everyone who responded so readily.

(1)  Page count isn’t really meaningful for an ebook, but the novella is 20,000 words.  At the standard 400-word page of a trade paperback, that’s about 50 pages.

Stupefying Stories September 12

The Original Cyberpunk is on a serious roll of late. He is releasing new anthologies faster than I can write short stories to celebrate them. Here is a description of the new September 2012 edition, now available on Amazon.

The STUPEFYING STORIES “Pirates and Dragons” edition is chock-full of all-new tales of dastardly pirates, lonely dragons, quarrelsome petty gods, meddlesome slimy aliens, and profoundly philosophical chickens. Featuring “Riddle Me” by Richard Zwicker, “Corsairs of the Concrete Sea” by Thoraiya Dyer, “The Thundering Dragon of Heaven” by Michael Matheson, “God Mic” by B. Sanford, “The Thirty-Ninth President and the Fourteenth Tentacle” by Theodore Carter, “Thief of Hearts” by Auston Habershaw, “In the Castle of the Assassins” by Melissa Embry, “The Lord of Flocks” by Alison Pentecost, and “The Little Thief” by Phil Temples. From a road in the middle of nowhere to the day after tomorrow, from a shattering tale of First Contact to the long-suppressed story that finally makes it possible to make sense of the events of the past thirty-five years, you’ll find it this time out in STUPEFYING STORIES!

If you like good old school SF/F, check it out. Stupefying Stories is rapidly becoming what Asimov and Analog were back when I was a kid.

Better Ayn Rand than Asimov

I find this criticism of Paul Ryan by Paul Krugman to be richly ironic, coming as it does from a man whose economic philosophy is based on an imaginary science called “psychohistory”:

So far, most of the discussion of Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican nominee for vice president, has focused on his budget proposals. But Mr. Ryan is a man of many ideas, which would ordinarily be a good thing. In his case, however, most of those ideas appear to come from works of fiction, specifically Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

For those who somehow missed it when growing up, “Atlas Shrugged” is a fantasy in which the world’s productive people — the “job creators,” if you like — withdraw their services from an ungrateful society. The novel’s centerpiece is a 64-page speech by John Galt, the angry elite’s ringleader; even Friedrich Hayek admitted that he never made it through that part. Yet the book is a perennial favorite among adolescent boys. Most boys eventually outgrow it. Some, however, remain devotees for life.

If Ryan wants to silence Krugman’s attempts to attack him in this vein, he need merely point out that Atlas Shrugged is considerably more mature fiction than Foundation, the adolescent science fiction novel that Paul Krugman never outgrew.

50 Shades of Paedo?

There is fantasy and then there is fantasy that goes too far. While all of us would draw the line of what is acceptable fantasy and what is not in distinctly different places, I think most fans of the SF/F genre would agree that pedophile fantasies definitely cross that line. I’d also throw in elderly vampires that spend their days in high school and sparkle in the sun myself, but clearly millions of readers disagree. So does 50 Shades of Grey go too far? Not on the surface, as according to its description it is little more than John Norman’s Gor brought back to Earth, minus the sword battles and the awesome tarn birds. And it’s not a question I can legitimately even try to answer, since I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey nor do I have any intention of doing so.

Read the rest at The Black Gate

Not that it matters

First, let me point out that I reserve the right to give away or sell my books at any price, reasonable or unreasonable, and to change my policy at any time.

Second, because one or two people have been whining about how I only provide a few millions of words for free here but no longer give away the eight PDF and PDB files I previously made available for free download, I will point out that due to Amazon’s policy, it is not possible to give away a free ebook and also sell it through Amazon. Nor can one give away free ebooks on Amazon, except for a five-day free program that they run for paid books. As I pointed out when I first took down the free links, because Amazon is now the center of the book world, one will find more readers if one sells books on Amazon than if one gives them away on one’s own site, even a site as well-trafficked as this one.

Third, as it happens, because those books were available on Amazon first, I should never have made them available for free download here, with the sole exception of the collection of short stories called The Altar of Hate. Fortunately, Amazon did not hold that against me, as they understood it was done in ignorance due to the fact that the Amazon contracts were originally with the publishers and I had no reason to ever review them.

Amazon is doing a great job of bringing down ebook prices and most people recognize this. However, fewer realize that in doing so, they have also essentially eliminated the free ebook, Project Gutenberg notwithstanding.

Mailvox: improving RGD

PR has a suggestion or two:

I just got done with Return of the Great Depression. Great read. Thanks for the Nook version. I thought you did a pretty good job of dumbing things down enough that I could make sense of what you were saying, but you managed to do it in a way that it didn’t seem like you were talking down to me at all. I really appreciated that dictionary since I was reading it in a location where I didn’t have web access and therefore couldn’t use any outside references to help me out.

If you care for any criticism on it, here’s my effort:

1. You made me laugh about the apocalypse scenario. But I would’ve also appreciated a little more of an explanation as to why you think it’s not likely at all. Something a little more than telling me that no serious economists take that scenario seriously. So what! I want(ed) to know why YOU think it’s unlikely.

2. I would suggest maybe even a little bit more of a dictionary at the end. I’ll show a little bit of my ignorance here and confess that I wasn’t really sure what a “sub-prime” loan was and why it was a crisis. I did figure it out. But I started off thinking that “sub-prime” meant something like “below the ‘prime’ interest rate”. That sounds like some loan that would be given to only the best risks. I am certainly more knowledgeable now that I realize it’s quite the opposite. But a quick dictionary note would’ve helped me.

Anyway, I’m not even sure you care about feedback like this. But I thought it only right that since you gave me such a bargain, that I would give you my best critique. I’m looking forward to your next economics book.

In answer to (1), my reasoning is that despite the expectations of those anticipating the Eschaton, it never arrives. Societies seldom perish in blood and fire except at the hands of an implacable and merciless enemy; the fact that it is hard to think of many such societies besides some of the Slavic ones overrun by the Mongol hordes and the Carthaginian society wiped out by Rome is an indicator that when the global economy collapses, it will reduce living standards without ending civilization.

I’ve been reading Vanished Kingdoms, by Norman Davies, and one of the things that becomes eminently clear is that for the most part, societies are absorbed and replaced by larger societies that overwhelm them, either by invasion, immigration, or political amalgamation. So, America is much more likely to either devolve into a Brazilian-style second world country or break apart into a Europe of sovereign American states than to shatter into some sort of post-apocalyptic chaos out of Robert Adams or Walter Miller. Even a hypothetical Round 2 isn’t likely to be particularly apocalyptic, although it would certainly be interesting to see the South rise again once Aztlan separatism draws the primary focus of the American Unionists.

The big thing that is missing from the scenarios drawn up by those prophesying apocalypse is the Aztlan factor. Most people are thinking in Red/Blue, urban/rural, black/white terms, but possibly the most important question is whether the Hispanics simply return to Mexico once the flow of benefits end or if they stay to carve out their own state. I would tend to assume the latter, but no one actually knows.

I digress. In response to number two, if I do an updated RGD, I will certainly consider expanding the appendix to include the various non-economic terms that may be unfamiliar to some readers. It’s a good idea that simply had never occurred to me.

I should point out that although I’m not currently planning to write the economics book that melds Keensian Post-Keynesian economics with modified Austrian theory that some suggested yesterday, I do plan to begin working on an economics-related project after I finish the current novel in October.

Book Review: Debunking Economics

Staking the Undead Economist

After nearly three decades of reading across a broad spectrum of economic thought, the two books on the subject I would most recommend are Joseph Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis and Murray Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. But now there is a third. After finishing Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor Dethroned? I have to assert that Keen’s book is not only an absolute masterpiece, but may, in fact, represent the most important intellectual development in economics since The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was published in 1936. And if some of Keen’s more controversial assertions hold up over time, it will be the most important contribution to the literature since The Wealth of Nations.