archive

March 2006

More new site content - an extract from Last of the Wilds

It's now a month until the release of Last of the Wilds in Australasia. This means I can finally give you an extract from the book! Go  here  to read the prologue. 

Only a month to go! I'm spinning on my desk chair in excitement! Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Tuesday morning fanmail session

32 fanmail answered; 4 bounced; 15 new arrived; 368 to go.

These were from last July. I had to go through quite a lot of extra work to extract from my old email program and put into new emails. But now that they're done, I can say I'm up to early last October. Only five months behind now!

New site content!

It took me two days of writing and html-ing, a lot of pesky questions to my web goddess and minion (hehe), quite a bit of scanning and image manipulation, an hour's drive to fetch two items not at hand, and a big learning curve to surmount, in order to bring you the contents of my pinboard while writing Age of the Five. (Also accessible from the About my Books side menu - just put your curser over the Age of the Five key.)

It contains sketches, maps, plans, and lots of lists. It contains waffle from me. It's all in glamorous black and white. And it's all spoiler free. I think.

Check it out!

Filling the 'gaps'

Every now and then I get emails asking why there has and will be an interval of time between the Black Magician Trilogy and its sequel. This question has mades me alternately want to wail in frustration, or laugh fondly at the naivety of readers. Here are the reasons:

1) When The High Lord was released it had been nearly ten years since I started writing it. Believe it or not, I was heartily sick of the whole world. I didn't want to hear the name 'Sonea' again for quite a long time. I was as surprised and disappointed as I imagine some fans are at hearing this - but I'd rewritten the books three times, polished them countless times, gone through years of frustration trying to get them published, worked through the editing process, written blurbs and set up a website. That's a lot of work dedicated to one thing. And I mean a LOT of work. But I knew all I needed was a break, and to tackle something different, and my enthusiasm would return. (And I was right.)

2) I wrote another trilogy. A bigger trilogy with a bigger setting and a larger set of main characters. A trilogy that also took a LOT of work. A trilogy that took three and a half years to write, rewrite, polish and edit (and we're still editing). A trilogy that I dedicated a lot of effort and imagination and creativity into, all the while trying to make it as much fun for the reader as possible.

All through writing this trilogy, I received fanmail which made me think nobody was ever going to be interested in this new trilogy. It seemed all anyone could enthuse about was more BMT. I told myself that people would naturally be most enthusiastic about the thing they just discovered, not the thing they didn't know much about yet. That when they begrudgingly read Priestess of the White to fill in the time before the next BMT book, they might actually find they liked it too. (And many of them have.)

(I should stop here and send an extra thanks to all those readers who expressed interest and anticipation for the Age of the Five story in their emails. It was much appreciated - and needed!)

So I hope that assures readers that I have not been sitting back, doing nothing during this 'gap' between BMT books. And that the 'gap' was quite necessary. And if you're still feeling a bit hard done by, go check out the publication dates for the Australasian editions of the BMT. The books were published here a few years before the rest of the world, so my fellow Aussies have been waiting a LOT longer than everyone else to find out what happens next.

I wish I could bring these books to you sooner. I'm very excited about the prequel and sequel, and as always I can't wait for the day when I get the first fanmail and know that others are enjoying the story as much as I did. But good books take time and hard work to write. And I'd rather take that time than write a bad, hurried book.

Questions, questions

Kim said:

also when is the uk cover going to be shown on this website? i want to see it (however i suppose it'll be behind other countries! *sigh*!)  

It would help to know which cover you're talking about!

I put covers up on the site as soon as possible after I receive them from publishers. If there isn't a cover here, assume the publisher hasn't made one yet. If you're referring to the UK Last of the Wilds cover, then you're right that it will appear later than the other editions, Kim, since it will be published later.

As for the other questions in the guest book this last week, either they're answered in the site, or I can't answer them at all!

That week sure went fast!

26 fanmail answered; 1 bounced; 9 new arrived; 385 to go.

It's been a quiet week for me. I've been doing some research into a newsletter feature for the site, and podcasts. I've also been getting some reading done. Ah! It's nice to have time to read again! Unfortunately that means there's been nothing to report here.

Today was fanmail Tuesday. I've answered all the fanmail up to October, bar July's. July's fanmail sort of got lost in the transfer from one email program to another. Finding, extracting and answering them be next Tuesday's task.

More fanmail

26 fanmail answered; 1 bounced; 15 new arrived; 402 to go.

Recent changes to my website mean that a lot of the links I put in responses to fanmails will now be wrong. Apologies to anyone who get's lost here because of that!

Weekend wackiness

Igraine said:

Hehe, though I have to say, “Ingraine” is not the most original misspelling I’ve ever seen of my name! ;D

Short stories

Igraine asked:

I was wondering, you’ve mentioned on your website that you’ve written a short story or two. Are they in print and available in the UK? What’re they called and where would I find them?

Two of my short stories have been published:

"Whispers of the Mist Children" was published in issue #23 of Aurealis magazine. Even if Aurealis was available outside Australia, you'd probably only find the current issue. You can order back issues from the site. 

"Room for Improvement" was published in the anthology, Forever Shores, published by Wakefield Press. There's a chance specialty bookstores stock it, or are willing to order a copy for you. Otherwise, try the booksellers on my FAQ page.

A question...

Caitlin asked:

sorry, just wondering...why no appearances in the u.s.?

Because my US publisher decided my books weren't popular enough yet to justify a tour there, even though I offered to make my flight to the UK a round-the-world one, and so pay for the airfare myself.

But that was understandable and fair, because it had been a while since the BMT books had come out, and Priestess wasn't due out for several months. It wasn't great timing for the US, but it was excellent timing for the UK because the Atom edition of TMG had just come out.

If you're wondering why I don't just take myself over to the US, go check out airfares. There's a whole lot of ocean between Australia and the US, and it takes a lot of fuel (and makes a lot of greenhouse gasses) to cross it. Then add hotel rates. And take into account the Australian-US exchange rate. The US is a VERY expensive country to visit. Even food costs two - three times as much there as here.

So a tour of the US will have to wait until a publisher is willing to at least help foot the bill. Which hopefully will be in about two years : )

Fanmail tally

Updates and fixes

Yesterday I put the whole prologue of Priestess of the White up and blurbs for Last of the Wilds and Voice of the Gods.

The other day I received an email from a visitor to the site who had noticed a mistake in the publication dates for the trilogy. I checked the site and it was okay. Today this guestbook entry alerted me to the problem.

Just as an aside on your publication dates page, it mentions that Last of The Wild will be published in Aug 07, and the final book, Voice of the Gods in Feb 07. Is this a misprint?

Yes, it is! I have publication dates on both the Age of the Five and Publication Dates pages, and there was a mistake on both - but a different mistake. Each time I went to check one I selected the wrong page and couldn't find anything wrong. It was very puzzling. But all sorted now. Thankyou to everyone who tried to point these out to me.

I should add that the approximate dates for the prequel and sequel might move around a bit soon. Contracts are currently being negotiated for those books, so anything could happen. Well, not anything, but there are sure to be changes of some kind.

Signings and promotion

Wandering around the blogiverse lately, I've been reading about self-promotion. One particular series of very useful posts called "Maggie's Pocket Guide to Promotion" at http://shadowhelm.livejournal.com/ got me thinking.

Maggie points out that book signings and tours don't generate much in the way of sales. If what I've been told is true - that the average attendance at a signing in the US is 2 people - then she's definitely right. For the A$2 or I earn per book, if I sign only 2 books over an hour (assuming the person bought it, and didn't bring it in) I only make A$4 an hour. That doesn't take into account the cost of accommodation and travel involved in a signing tour.

Of course, it's possible that the two readers who bothered to come in are going to be so chuffed that they got a signature, that their enthusiasm rubs off on someone else, who buys the books, etc. It's same sort of the word-of-mouth effect a writer hopes to get from cons, though cons are more efficient at bringing your books to the attention of readers because they bring readers together in one place - cutting down the travel and accommodation costs.

There are two advantages to book signings and/or tours that Maggie doesn't mention, however. Firstly, the bookseller hopefully will buy in some extra stock for the occasion. Extra stock means potentially more books sold. And you sign what isn't sold at the signing. According to the booksellers I met in the UK, signing a book does help to sell it. In fact, they predicted that the books I signed would be sold within days.

The second advantage is the chance to talk to the booksellers. Nobody knows better how well your books sell, and they can impart good advice on what you could do to help them sell more. I'm always amazed and grateful when I find a bookseller has gone to the effort to read my book before a signing, to put up "we recommend" notes for my books, to display them prominantly and creatively, and to enthuse about them to customers.

I'm thinking of trying a few of Maggie's other suggestions for self-promotion. I'd love to produce a pretty bookmark to give away at signings (you've got to reward those 2 people for turning up!), an e-newsletter that readers can sign up to via my site, and even podcasts of readings and interviews.

Fantasy author Alma A. Hromic also wrote about promoting books at cons recently. I like her idea of printing info sheets listing the panels and events she will appear at. It's probably overkill at Australian cons, as most are small and cosy, but it would be very useful at Worldcons.

Fanmail and impending updates

I answered 30 fanmails today. 3 bounced. Only 425 to go : )

I also gathered together the blurbs for Priestess of the White and blurbs-in-progress for Last of the Wilds. I wrote a blurb for Voice of the Gods that I'll put up on my site, so visitors can read it and my editors can copy it down and play with it when they're ready. I got hold of Priestess' prologue to replace the tiny extract on the site, and I'm chasing the prologue for Wilds. Uploading these will have to wait until a small technical matter is dealt with however.

Perhaps by then I'll have the AotF pinboard created, with links to sketches and the map. But it will all have to wait until the hot weather passes. The Dungeon is a tad tropical for my poor melting brain.