When I got my agent, I didn’t quite believe it. When my agent told me I got a three-book deal, I doubted. Could it be so?
Folks, I’ve got a galley. A galley is basically a copy of what the book will look like. IT’S REAL!!! Check this out: Servant of a Dark God, galley, front page.
All you Utah and mountain area writers & teachers, or those close enough to travel, I will be presenting and conducting workshops from 9:00 am until 4:30 pm this Saturday, Oct 9th as part of the Autumn Writers Conference sponsored by the American Fork Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The sessions I’ll conduct include:
There are four other tracks. Find all the details, including cost and contact info, on the organizer’s site: CalebWarnock.blogspot.com. I’m totally stoked for this. I’ll be sharing what I think are the Pareto factors in each of these areas — things I wish I would have known when I started and would have shaved years off my journey to publication.
A number of other authors will be there including:
I received the proof of SERVANT from CreateSpace today. Folks, it is georgeous. Inside and out. The cover, title page, Isaac Stewart’s map, headers, front and back matter, chapter titles, the poems. I’m so pleased.
Most readers will look at it and say, hey, looks like another book. But that’s the point. The interior is designed to give a great reading experience and fade into the background, letting the story come to the fore. The cover is meant to grab and give the feel. I think both do their job splendidly.
Of course, you know what this means, don’t you?
It means that next week we will have a new release day with the new release discount pricing. You may wonder why I don’t just do it now. The answer is that there are some copy edits that need to be made. Things you never catch until you see the story in book form. That’s why you always get a proof. As soon as we’ve made those updates, I’ll announce the sale.
I was informed today that Servant of a Dark God is on the Longlist for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy and the Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut. I believe this means the Rapture is close at hand, folks. Or maybe it just means Cthulhu has taken over the North Pole. In either event, Hunger, Sugar, Talen, Hogan, Nettle, Legs, River, the Mother (and the kick butt Hag’s Teeth) can win an award for general awesomeness. They can because voting is open to the public.
You may ask: Is this like getting the Nobel peace prize? No. You have to have actually done something like take out a group of speedy Somali pirates or write a fantasy novel. These awards are not given out as scratch away prizes at McDonalds (you can get them at Wendy’s). This is an award given to:
The nominees were submitted by editors working within a commercial genre fiction publisher (kind of like Hollywood week at American Idol). All the nominations are then put on the award’s Longlist. The public then votes for their favorite on the list. The poll opened December 26, 2009. Voting on the Longlist will close March 31, 2010. You’ll notice it is indeed a looong list. But you don’t have to have read all the novels. You just vote.
The top 5 novels with the most votes will be put on the award “Shortlist.” Then in April the public voting for the winner out of those five will begin, open to all. See, American Idol, except you can’t vote two gajillion times for the same girl/guy just because of the her/his drool inducing factor.
David Gemmell was a British writer of heroic fantasy. I’ve pasted two of his covers below. You can read more about him here.
Now that you’ve done your part to restore world order in the fantasy genre, if you’re interested in LDS authors/fiction, you can also nominate the Sugar, Talen, Hunger and the gang for The Whitney Award.
This is an award for novels by LDS authors. It works in the opposite way of the Legend award. In this one, the public nominates novels by LDS authors they like. Then a “panel of industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others” vote on the nominations. Of course, because I’m one of those Carrier Monkeys of Evil Mormons (a future post, folks), Servant of a Dark God is eligible.
To nominate Servant of a Dark God go here: http://www.whitneyawards.com/nominations.php
Whew. Be happy. I’ll keep you updated to let you know if SERVANT makes the short list for either of these.
Behold.
The proof has been shipped. When that arrives, we’ll review it to make sure everything looks good, and then it’s release time.
The artwork is proceeding along for RAVELER as well. The target for that is mid August. As soon as it’s finished, we’ll be ready to release that book as well.
Just for kicks, here’s the SERVANT spread.
The three amigos (David Farland, Larry Correia, and I) have locked down venues for Phoenix and Denver.
| Thursday, November 19 7 pm – 9 pm |
Meet public, discuss book, signing | Scottsdale, AZ | The Poisoned Pen 4014 N Goldwater Blvd. Suite 101 Scottsdale, AZ 85251 (480) 947-2974 |
| Saturday, December 5 5 pm – 7 pm |
Meet public, discuss book, signing | Denver (Lone Tree), CO | Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers 8374 South Willow Street Lone Tree, CO 80124 (303) 706-9660 |
I’ve recently received a number of emails from people asking if there is an audio version of Servant of a Dark God in the works and how can they get it. At this point, the audio rights have not yet sold. But that doesn’t mean those of you who would like audio have no recourse. The best thing to do is to make a request to Audible. It’s quite easy. Here’s what they say on their Contact Us page:
Content Requests: If you’re interested in a particular author or title, please let us know about it by sending an email to:content-requests@audible.com.
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Awesome! Congrats. One of these days, when I manage to make the time to really sit down and write like I want to, maybe I’ll get to that point.
That looks fantastic! Very cool. I can’t wait to read it.