Shawn Speakman, good friend of this blog, has been carving out a pretty nice niche for himself in the wild west of self-published fantasy. Writing in the vein of classic ’90s fantasy, Speakman’s Annwn cycle mixes the best of Terry Brooks’ adventurous epic fantasy and the otherworldliness urban fantasy of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. The Twilight Dragon is a collection of short stories that bridge the gap between Speakman’s debut novel, The Dark Thorn, and its sequel, The Everwinter Wraith.
It’s no secret that I’m a Todd Lockwood fanboy and his work on the cover for The Twilight Dragon is gorgeous. Lockwood’s art alone is keeping dragons interesting and relevant to fantasy fiction these days. (Okay, maybe not, but he’s the species’ best ambassador.) Lockwood also provided the cover art for The Dark Thorn and the Unfettered anthology, edited by Speakman.
The Twilight Dragon will be released in October, 2014 by Grim Oak Press.
Ever hear the expression, ‘herding cats?’
I’ll tell you something: All anthologists know it!
I know it now too. I am the editor for Unfettered, a fantasy short story anthology that features some of the best writers working in the field. It is newly released as an eBook and a hardcover, the proceeds from sales going to alleviate medical debt I accrued after treating Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011.
In that regard, it is a special book. At least it is to me. I lacked health insurance due to a pre-existing condition and racked up one helluva medical bill. I could have easily taken the medical bankruptcy route and become another statistic. No one would have begrudged me that course. I decided to take a different path though. And in so doing, be free of the crushing debt that increased day by day by day…
To start, I had lunch with Terry Brooks, author of the bestselling Shannara series. I have been Terry’s webmaster for thirteen years and we are close friends. I asked him to donate a short story to my cause, the proceeds to go against that debt. He agreed. But he added more advice, advice that led to Unfettered:
‘Shawn, you should ask your other writer friends for the same thing,’ Terry said. Read More »
Art by Todd Lockwood
One of the most exciting things about the upcoming release of Wards of Faerie, a new Shannara trilogy by stalwart Fantasy writer Terry Brooks, is that, for the first time since The Wishsong of Shannara, in the ’80s, the novel will feature artwork to go alongside Brooks’ story. It’s doubly exciting because they chose one of my favourite artists, Todd Lockwood, to do the art. I’ve always felt that Lockwood and Shannara would be a good mix. Having read Wards of Faerie, I think he nailed the feel and look of Brooks’ characters and world.
The above image is kinda small, but Lockwood also made some detail shots available, to give us a closer look at some of the characters.
Great work. I can’t wait to see the rest when Wards of Faerie comes out this summer. I know Brooks gets a hard time nowadays, and he’s been writing some hit-or-miss novels for the past several years, but Wards of Faerie is one of his better novels and I hope other fans are as excited as I am to see where he takes the trilogy.
