Another positive review for Servant of a Dark God: Kirk Shaw of Covenant Communications

ByJohn Brown

This review of Servant of a Dark God comes from Kirk Shaw, a fiction editor who works for Covenant Communications which is a part of Deseret Book. I think he points out something interesting about how I structured the story.

This is no simple epic. Brown has essentially written in three major plots: (1) the Dark Mother’s resurgence in the world and her cunning plots, (2) Talen’s family’s struggle against the Divines and the oppression he and his face from those who aren’t Koramite, and (3) the epic struggle of all those who are oppressed by the tyranny of the Glory and the Divines. The complexities of these three struggles overlap and complement one another in the story, with each group and entity relating to each other in different ways. For example, the Dark Mother is seeking out those who are fighting against the Divines to cull them, but she also plans to attack the Divines. In other words, groups that have mutual enemies are also fighting against themselves. These interacting conflicts I’m certain will generate quite an epic series (just as Robert Jordan’s tri-fold conflicts have held readers of The Wheel of Time series spellbound–Dark One vs. Artur Hawkwing’s returned armies vs. Rand and the gang)…

…I highly recommend this debut novel for those who enjoy a good coming-of-age epic fantasy, and I hope to see many more great things from debut author John Brown. Full review here.

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  • Release Dates for the Novels

    ByJohn Brown

    BTW, I talked to Stacy Hague-Hill today and got the release and due dates.

    Book 1
    Revisions due May 15th, 2008
    Final due July 1, 2008
    Hardcover release Sept 2009
    Paperback release Aug 2010

    She said because it’s my first novel and because it’s a trilogy they want to make sure they properly lay the groundwork, getting cover quotes, working up excitement, etc. And that’s why there’s such a space between the contract, final delivery date, and HC release. Although the schedule repeats for every book. On the one hand, I wish they were coming out on a 9 month schedule. On the other hand, I think my focus should be making these three books the very best they can be. And this gives me the time. Besides, there will be a HC release and then a paperback and so each book will get two pulses each year. Although the paperback is released usually right before the second book comes out.

    Book 2
    Draft due Feb 2009
    Final due July 1, 2009
    Hardcover release Sept 2010
    Paperback release Aug 2011

    Book 3
    Draft due Feb 2010
    Final due July 1, 2010
    Hardcover release Sep 2011
    Paperback release Aug 2012? Not sure.

    That’s a ways out there. Holy cow.

    2011?

    I haven’t planned anything out that far into the future since college and that wasn’t really planning but a lifestyle (grin).

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  • Dark God Update! Audio book narrator has been cast

    ByJohn Brown

    Alex-Wyndham-headshot-200x300I’m very pleased to announce that Podium Publishing, the folks producing the audio versions of the Dark God books, has cast Alex Wyndham as the narrator for the Dark God series. Production is scheduled to take place in March and April.

    Wyndham is an actor from the UK who has played television and film roles and narrated a number of audio books. Wyndham is the real deal. Just give the samples below a listen.

    You can listen to other samples on Audible by clicking on his name or by going to his Bee Audio profile.

    Folks, I cannot wait to see what he does with the books.

    The Dark God is rising…

     

     

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  • Life, The Universe, & Everything 2010 Schedule

    ByJohn Brown

    If you’re a writer, you’ll find Life, The Universe, & Everything (LTUE) an excellent convention. Yes, it’s focused on science fiction and fantasy, but the principles of writing discussed apply generally and there are a lot of authors who will be there that write in different genres–YA, romance, etc. In fact, there will be a LOT of published authors there, period–including two that have recently been on the NY Times best seller list and others who have just broken in.

    If I were an aspiring author, I’d be making sure I had arrangements to attend at least part of the convention. Follow the link above and look at the list of panel topics. And remember: it’s open to all and FREE of charge.

    Dates: Feb 11-13, 2010
    Wilkinson Center
    Brigham Young University
    Provo, UT 84602
    (801) 422-4636 (BYU information line)

    I’ll be doing the following. Hope to see you there!

    BTW, Stephen Nelson has graciously offered to film the workshop. If the recording and class pass muster, we’ll post it for your viewing enjoyment!

    Thursday, Feb 11

    5 – 7 PM: Writing workshop: “How to Write a Story That Rocks” (John Brown, Larry Correia)

    Friday, Feb 12

    9 AM: Panel: “Paths to publishing: When is traditional best and when should you try an alternative” (Stacy Whitman, John Brown, Dan Willis, Eric Swedin, Sandra Tayler)

    Noon: I will be attending Dan Well’s Pacing and Story Structure presentation.

    1 PM: Panel: “Killer Openings – How to write a gripping, engaging and interesting opening paragraph” (Dr. Steven C. Walker, John Brown, Mette Harrison, Heather Horrocks)

    Saturday, Feb 13

    9 AM: Panel: “A Guys Take on Writing Romance (Male Panelists)” (L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Clint Johnson, Aleta Clegg, Dan Willis, John Brown)

    Noon: Panel: “Building different cultures….” (L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Roger White, John Brown, Brandon Mull, Marty Brenneis)

    1 PM: Signing. (Wish very much I could go to Eric James Stone’s reading at the same time. I’ve gone to 2 or 3 of his and have never been disappointed)

    2 PM: Reading from CURSE OF A DARK GOD.

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  • Amazon vs. Macmillan–hey, wait, you pulled my book!

    ByJohn Brown

    I loved Amazon since the first day we met. But Amazon just sucker punched me, pulling my book from its shelves last Friday. As well as those of thousands of other authors. Why, Santa, why?

    Cash, Johnny. Power. Is it ever about anything else?

    Well, sometimes it’s about cookies, Santa. But money and capitalism are good things.

    Yes, they are, Johnny. And fights are exciting, especially the ones where the one guy cleans the other’s clock, folding his nose over, and the blood spatters everywhere, and his eye swells up like some pig’s eye, and the teeth, the TEETH! It makes you want to pop an elf’s yammering happy singing head off with your thumb and forefinger, stomp his body into oblivion. Ah! Little shooting parties, elves lined up in a row, elf guts (pant) elf blood (pant) power (pant) BBQ roasted elf heads (pant) and Rocky theme music.

    Mommy, Santa looks weird.

    ***

    So, here’s the deal. Listed below are the “big six” publishers in North America, accounting for the lion’s share of sales and titles.

    • Hachette Book Group (owned by French company Hachette Livre)
    • HarperCollins
    • Macmillan
    • Penguin Group
    • Random House (subsidiary of media conglomerate, Bertelsmann)
    • Simon & Schuster

    Tor Books is an imprint of Macmillan. This means Macmillan is my daddy right now. We luvs Macmillan. Amazon, on the other hand, is a distributor. And we luvs them as well.

    But Amazon’s not just any distributor. Amazon wants to take over a bit more of the publishing supply chain in order to make more money. Macmillan said, “um, I don’t think so,” and the fight was on. Actually, I don’t think it was really so much of a fight as Amazon immediately going all North Korean Kim Jong-il on us. Despite what I think was poor strategy, it illustrates the real battle going on in the publishing world at the moment as the ebook and edistribution start to become a reality.

    Changing your business model to make more money is a very logical thing to do, and I have no problem with Amazon trying to do it. I’m not one of those Wal-Mart haters. I like cheap goods. And I like to see children in sweat shops. However, I do have some self-interest. And ultimately there are few situations where a monopoly is a good thing for the consumer.

    No, Amazon isn’t a monopoly now, but Hitler wasn’t always “Hitler” either. For his first 39 years he was Schicklgruber. But “Heil Schicklbruber” doesn’t induce people to rise up and slaughter nations. And so his Nazi PR sensibilities demanded he change it. No really, this is true. Anyway, this just proves that Amazon could start killing bunnies at any moment–don’t ever trust someone who names their company after a river. Or after Adolf Hitler, like if someone called themselves Hitler Lipstick or Hitler Toys.

    I’m not going to rehash the story on my blog because others have already done it so well. So read these.

    1. Scott Westerfield gives the full story and explains what happened.
    2. Charles Stross looks at why Amazon did this.
    3. Tobias Buckell delves into factors involved in pricing a book.
    4. John Scalzi explains why he thinks Amazon lost this round.

    What does this mean for you, dear reader? Well, for the interim, it means you’ll find new copies of SERVANT the cheapest at the select Smiths’ grocery stores out West that carry it. Furthermore, Barnes & Noble has always been an excellent book seller Let me recommend any internet purchasers use their site until Amazon decides to stop bullying publishers and authors.

    Beyond that, I don’t know, we’re only in round one. As for me, I tend to think the publishers have a more viable option with this agency model. But I’ll need to think on it more. In the meantime, enjoy the blood and bashing and the little authors screaming as they flee the building with their clothes on fire.

    Hey, wait, MY back IS ON FIRE!!! AAaaaaaahhhh!

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  • What changed in the author’s cut of SERVANT?

    ByJohn Brown

    Because a number of folks have emailed or posted asking this question, I figured I should address it in a post.

    This edit of SERVANT was signficant, but it involved mostly line edits, copy edits, resequencing, and one important adjustment and addition.

    Line edits are things that make individual sentences or paragraphs read more clearly. I made line edits to almost every page. I think most readers won’t notice these. But then that’s the point.

    Copy edits catch small things like typos and misspellings. There were a number of maddening copy issues that were introduced into the manuscript in the publisher’s version and others that weren’t flagged. I fixed a number of these and then had two copy editors read over the manuscript to find more. No book is perfect. I’m sure there are still some gremlins lurking in the text. But we caught a lot of the little buggers. 

    Resequencing is moving chapters or sections around and does affect the experience. The biggest resequence was switching the first eight chapters back to the original order I intended. This is an important change and will have a large effect on the reader for the first quarter of the book. Then there were three other smaller sections inside the story that needed to be moved around to make the chronology clearer and improve the suspense.

    The line, copy, and resequencing edits make up the bulk of the edits. But I did adjust and add a short section to the ending immediately after the climax to clarify a few things that should have been revealed in the first version and that lead into book two.

    What does this all mean?

    It means that while this is a superior version of the tale, the base story remains the same. I care about the stories of Sugar, Talen, Argoth, Hunger, and the dilemmas they face. So I did not change their tales. However, I did significantly change the experience of those tales for the reader.

    If you have already read SERVANT, you know everything that happens. However, you will want to get a hold of a copy of the new version to review the updated ending for the new information it includes.  To avoid spoilers and confusion, I will not be releasing the ending in a separate document. But if you sign up for my release notification, I’ll let you know when I have my release sale so you can get it cheap. 

    One final note. Because I feel this is a superior version of the story, and because I do not want readers to be confused about which version to read, I’m releasing it with a different title and different cover art. It will be called “Servant” and include the series label “The Dark God Book 1.” 

    I think readers are going to be very pleased with this version. I know I am. And then we can move on to “Curse,” the next in the series, followed by “Glory.”

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  • ALA conference–wonderful!

    ByJohn Brown

    Holy cow, ALA was simply wonderful. The summary is below. You can find my speech here: http://johndbrown.com/2009/07/gateway-drugs-and-fiction/

    Got to go to dinner, ride in cabs, and chat at length with:

    1. A bunch of librarians who were complete characters. One guy named Milton Wolf who has written a lot on SFF and has been known to ski cross-country naked. Another gal named Diana Herald who had over 40 foster kids (official and non), and lives in a tire house. Then another named Edith Helbert, with whom I literally shared my meal (she had a fab pork burger, I had bbq beef brisket: I got half of her burger, she got half of my bbq). She is also in the Society of Creative Anacronism and was telling me about some war between two kingdoms she attended where the archers shot tennis ball/tube arrows at each other. Finally, Christy Donaldson introduced me in the meeting. Later she and I talked and I found out that not only is she a librarian in Happy Valley, but she loves the Sundance film festival. I’ve never gone, thinking it was probably going to be too artsy-fartsy for me, Mr. beef and bologna man. But she said I had to go and offered to go with me. So Nellie and I will probably be watching a Sundance documentary in the near future.
    2. Kathleen Doherty (One of Tom’s daughters) who runs the children’s division. Very smart. But the thing that stood out most was how warm and personable she was. She showed great affection for her librarian friends. Respects her dad immensley. Forgives new authors their fau paux. And is, among other things, a true blue capitalist. She made an argument for capitalism I hadn’t heard before, but rang true the moment she said it–there will always be corruption, but capitalism is the only structure that allows you to mitigate it because it spreads the power around. There was more, but I found it compelling.
    3. Jim Frenkel, editor who did Goodkind etc. He’s a total crack up. And seems to always get caught speeding by the cops. He threatened to tweet on me when I ordered a Shirley Temple to drink.
    4. David and Joelle Lubar, very nice folks. David tried to lead us on a goose chase, but was ultimately prevented.
    5. Ken Scholes. We love Ken.
    6. Robert Charles Wilson. Very, very nice guy. Humble. And so freaking accomplished. He’s won just about every award out there. I loved his Darwinia. Need to read his latest.
    7. Margaret Weis. Here’s someone who has written so much. It was interesting hearing about how she and Tracy go about their projects.
    8. A cabbie from Haiti who told me all sorts of nifty things about how it used to be down there. Like how cell phones are like chocolate because land lines were so bad and rare that you’d often have to call a phone station (where the phones were), have someone run down to your house and tell your family you’d call back. Then they’d have to come back on time and hopefully be there for your appointed call. Then sit in a phone box with no AC and sweat, sweat, sweat.

    Saw Alethea Kontis briefly, which is always a lovely thing.

    Then I got to be one of five speakers to a huge crowd. There were 300 seats, people were sitting and standing in the back. There was a lot of energy in that group and I just ate it up.

    Tor made up 200 bags with a book from each author and handed them out. Of course, we ran out. And, no, I had no book, but Tor printed up ARCs. And so SERVANT OF A DARK GOD was in there with all the grown up books.

    Then I got to sign. Now, I’m just a new guy. A few people had read my stuff, but most hadn’t. Nevertheless, it was simply wonderful to be inbetween Ken and Margaret putting the old John Handcock on books for a line that queued up from the table at the front of the large room to the doors in the back.

    This was my first signing. How sweet was that? Being the clueless man that I am, I didn’t bring a pen. I thought they would be provided. So one of the organizers found one. It was pink. It’s going in my book of remembrance.

    I should have brought all the nifty bookmarks I have printed up and am sending to various cons. Next time.

    What a great experience.

    Oh, and we were in this Omni hotel (on Michigan ave). I totally lucked out and got a sweet room in the 17 floor in a corner. So my bedroom had two windows out of which I could gaze at the lake, two blocks away, and all the fabulous architecture. I’ve never really spent any time in downtown Chicago. What a fantastic place.

    People everywhere. Brown people, black people, white people–so many interesting people. I’m telling you, after living with a huge population of cattle, it’s nice to see a variety of homo sapiens.

    And I found a blue Eddie Bauer shirt for 20 bucks.

    Like I said–fabulous.

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10 Comments

  3. Wow. If the phrase “no fair” ever applied, it is right now. However, to refrain from sounding childish, I’ll instead say, “Lucky!”

  4. Oh, those naughty bookstores. Of course, Hezekiah, you could just drive down to Moab.

    Readermom, I’ll be interested to see how it goes for you.

  5. Hezekiah. You want some salt, buddy? Here’s one from a gal who got an early copy and posted to my Facebook.

    “WOW! “Servant” is fabulous!!! It’s got everything! It’s complex, deep, full of symbolism and analogy. I could use it as coursework for a whole year of college English! And even a comparative current events class. And yet, it’s frenzied page turning entertainment! I have lost quite a few Z’s! I set aside at least an hour every night to read before bed, but it’s turned into 4-5 hrs! I woke up at 4:30 a.m. with my glasses askew, the bedroom light blaring in my eyes and the book resting peacefully at my side. It took me a moment to decide where I was. 🙂 But it has been worth every lost Z. And I am not even finished. I will be by tonight though! Thank you!!!!! Amy.”

    They’re not all going to be like that (dang it). But it’s nice to know we hooked up the right book with the right reader in that case.

  7. I had an amazingly emotional response to the book. Usually I read for plot but the situations of the characters nearly brought me to tears. This probably has something to do with the fact that I am 4 months pregnant.
    My husband read it and enjoyed it as well.
    I like living in a town with a bookstore that doesn’t understand the concept of release dates.

  8. Readermom, so happy to hear the experience was gripping. But you’re not alone. The woman who I quoted above finished a few days ago and, well, I won’t spoil anything for other readers, but had a similar experience. And she’s definitely not pregnant 🙂

  9. I’d say the part that got me the most emotional was the scene between father and son. If you’ve read it, and didn’t at least get a little emotional, you must not have kids. That part tugged the old heart strings all right. It helps that my son’s only 5 months old, of course, but still.

  10. Oh, and some more salt, Hezekiah. I got an advance copy over a month ago. Ouch, it burns.

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