What’s A-Happenin’ …
Besides, that is, grrgh-aarrghing over Earthquake Commission and related insurance claimery as per my Thursday post …
Well, firstly, I have just updated my website. No big new look or stunning new art, but just keeping all the news and events etc up to date. I know it’s important, but sometimes it is hard to keep up with, especially when I’m “on deadline.”
But now ’tis done—and one important piece of news (having fielded several recent queries via blog & webmail!) that you should find on the “Home”, “Books”, “The Wall of Night Series”, and “News” pages is that there is now an official publication date for The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Series Book Two) in both the USA and UK/AU/NZ. It’s 27 March in the US; 7 April for UK/AU/NZ. So there you are, something specific/definite to look forward to! 😉
Although still early days, one of the things that I’ve been doing over the past week is providing feedback on, and input into, the cover for the UK mass market edition of Heir and the UK trade cover for The Gathering of the Lost. I “always” have feedback to give (both my agent and editors would be rolling their eyes about now if they were reading this 😉 ), but I have to say that overall I am very pleased with the cover concepts I’ve currently seen—and the last time I saw the mock-ups for the USA cover, that was looking absolutely fabulous as well.
Just as with the blue and red covers though, they’re very different in style so I’ll look forward to getting your feedback once they’re finalised. I’ll be very interested to hear what “speaks” to you as readers.
I indicated last week that I’d begun work on The Wall of Night Book Three—working title, Daughter of Blood. Although I had to press ‘pause’ to do the earthquake stuff I am now getting back to it and have set myself an ambitious writing schedule for the months to come. So we’ll see how that goes …
I also indicated last week that I hoped to be able to bring you an interview with Daniel Abraham, author of the new epic Fantasy series, The Path of Dragons. That interview has now been confirmed so I hope to bring it to you either late next week or the following. I’m quite excited about it and hope that you will be, too, once you get to read it.
I’m also thinking about new things to post about on the blog, maybe even as regular features—but before I launch into anything, what do you (yes, you!) think? Is there anything you would like to hear more of? Or simply hear about full stop? (ie That I’m not posting about right now.) I’d love to hear your ideas!
Is there a reason for having different covers for different countries? I’ve noticed, for international authors, the covers will change dramatically for each release. I don’t see any cultural changes or any artwork that would be specific to any one country.
(I came over from Supernatural Underground)
Welcome, “That Brunette.” 🙂
Good question, re the covers. The cover is primarily the publisher’s bailiwick, but I believe there is a perception that even countries as “close” as the USA and UK have enough cultural difference to warrant different cover treatment. (I must admit, I would love to see a study done on that one day, but it would probably have to be a pretty big study to be “reliable.”) In the case of “Heir” though, I know that my US publisher, HarperVoyager, have focused on the world I’ve created in the book, while my UK publisher, Orbit, want to highlight the central character of Malian (the actual heir of Night.) From what I have seen in the early drafts of the cover treatments for the next book-in-series, “The Gathering of the Lost”, they are continuing that theme in both covers–both awesome looks but very different as well. I’ll look forward to when they’re at a stage I can show them to readers here and on the Supernatural Underground and see what readers think!