Monthly Archives: February 2009

Interview

Interview | Peter V Brett

By Aidan Moher February 10th, 2009

Peter V. Brett, author of The Painted ManSince his debut novel, The Painted Man (called The Warded Man in North America) was released late last year, Peter V. Brett has been making quite a name for himself. Considered by many to be the best Fantasy debut since Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind and right up alongside other debut’s such as Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora and Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, Brett’s first novel has a lot to live up to.

Peter and I cover a lot of things in the interview, including the fact that a large part of The Painted Man was written on his PDA, why it’s okay for an unpublished author to tackle a trilogy, how life has changed since becoming a full time writer and why he’s not writing 900,000 words a year.

But you don’t want to hear that from me, right? Hear it from the man himself, instead.

The Interview

Peter, welcome to A Dribble of Ink! To start things off, why don’t you tell us something that we don’t know about Peter V. Brett.

   I had really long hair and wore heavy metal t-shirts in high school.

Now how about something we don’t know about The Painted/Warded Man

   The first draft had a totally different (and in my opinion, shit) ending about building warded roads, and didn’t introduce Rojer and Leesha until they were adults. In retrospect, it’s no wonder why no one wanted to buy or represent that draft.
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News

An Aside | Hater by David Moody

By Aidan Moher February 10th, 2009

I’m a sucker for interesting marketing, especially when it embraces the viral nature of the Internet. Cue David Moody’s upcoming novel, Hater:

DAVID MOODY self – published Hater online in 2006. Without an agent, he succeeded in selling the film rights to Guillermo del Toro (director, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy 1 & 2, and the upcoming Hobbit series) and Mark Johnson (producer, The Chronicles of Narnia). With the official publication of Hater (2/17/2009), David is poised to make a significant mark as a writer of “farther out” fiction of all varieties.

Oh yeah, and the cover art is fantastic, also:

Hater by David Moody

It’s always interesting to see an a self-published author make it to the big game. I’ll be keeping an eye on Hater.

News

An Aside | Paul Kearney’s Upcoming Projects

By Aidan Moher February 8th, 2009

Adam, over at The Wertzone, has some news on what Paul Kearney’s up to after having finished The Ten Thousand:

Paul Kearney, author of The Sea-Beggars series and last year’s excellent The Ten Thousand (my 2008 book of the year), has signed a deal with Solaris for two more books set in the world of the Macht. Early working titles are Corvus and Kings of Morning. Congratulations to Paul, and I’m already looking forward to the new books.

This is in addition to the reprints of Kearney’s excellent Monarchies of God saga, a five-volume epic fantasy which is to be reissued as two omnibuses entitled Hawkwood and the Kings and Century of the Soldier. Release dates have to be finalised for those, but will hopefully be for later this year.

The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney

As one of the few critics of The Ten Thousand, I’m curious to see how Kearney tackles these next novels. I’d love to have a more in depth look at the world of the Macht, but I was also hoping to see another standalone from Kearney (he mentioned a project called Fury on his message board several months ago). I suppose it’s a good sign that The Ten Thousand succeeded if Solaris is interested in publishing two more novels in the universe.

In regards to Fury, he says:

I’ve decided to try and write ‘fatter’ as it were, and really pad out the characters, the milieu and all the stuff fat fantasy thrives on.

It will be interesting to see if this philosophy holds true to the new Macht novels. Kearney has hinted at times that The Ten Thousand (and the world of the Macht, more specifically), if you want to get technical, is actually a work of Science Fiction, not Fantasy, and I’d love to see Kearney expand on this and the origin of the races in the follow-ups to The Ten Thousand.

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Cover Art

Cover Art & Synopsis | The Rats and the Ruling Sea by Robert VS Redick

By Aidan Moher February 6th, 2009

Fantasy Book Critic managed to get his hands on a working copy of the next novel in Robert V.S. Redick‘s first trilogy, The Chathrand Voyage. And it’s pretty bloody… well, pretty!

The stunning artwork is provided by Les Edwards, better known as the 2008 World Fantasy Award-winning artist Edward Miller (Scott Lynch, Ian Cameron Esslemont, Steven Erikson, etc).

The Rats and the Ruling Sea by Robert V.S. Redick

He also has a synopsis for The Rats and the Ruling Sea, which picks up where the first volume, The Red Wolf Conspiracy left off:

Thasha’s wedding is hours away. It is a wedding that will both fulfill the promise of a mad god’s return and see her murdered. Pazel has thwarted the sorcerer who would bring back the god but both sides now face deadlock. Can Thasha be saved? Can the war between two Empires be stopped?

The Rats and the Ruling Sea is, once again, focused on the giant ancient ship The Chathrand, but now she must brave the terrors of the uncharted seas including massive storms, ship-swallowing whirlpools and lands forgotten by the Northern world, all the time involved in a vicious running battle with a ship nearly her match…

Robert Redick’s new novel takes the reader further into the labyrinthine plots and betrayals that have underscored the trilogy from the beginning. Along the way, we will learn more about the Ixchel as they fight for survival against the Chathrand’s rats, discover more about the true motives of the conspirators, live with Thasha and Pazel as they face death & deceit, and journey with The Chathrand as it sails into the infamous Ruling Sea…

This is yet another reminder that I still need to give Redick’s first novel a chance, the trilogy seems right up my alley.

Feature Article

Article | Peter V. Brett Responds to GRRM Articles

By Aidan Moher February 4th, 2009

Peter V. Brett, author of The Painted Man has dropped in to the recent conversations regarding George R.R. Martin. Rather than wading directly into the conversation, Brett instead has some interesting things to say about his experiences as a new author and how some of the behind the scenes things change once you’re writing under a deadline.

From Brett’s blog:

What I would like to discuss instead is my personal experience with writing, and how I feel it relates to the situation, and perhaps gives me a different perspective than many people.

…

I started writing The Painted Man (AKA The Warded Man) sometime in 1999. I wasn’t fully dedicated to it, as I was also working full time and writing other books, but it was a project that I began plugging away at when I had time, and a couple of years later I put aside my other projects and started focusing hard on it. After several drafts (wherein I threw out a good 60% of the original story), I finished the sale manuscript at the end of 2006, approximately seven years after starting it.

…

When I sold the book in 2007, the publisher bought two sequels as well, and asked me how long I expected it to take for me to write them. I had just given notice at my job to shift to writing full time, and told them that I was already well into writing The Desert Spear (true), and that it would take about 9 months to finish it, meaning I would have it done in May/June of 2008. The third book, I said, should be ready about a year after that.

That was a very naïve thing to say, but I had been a professional writer for all of 5 minutes, and was very naïve. Now here we are in January 2009, and I still have two chapters left to write, not to mention several rounds of expected rewrites, all of which I believe are absolutely necessary to get the book up to my own standards, much less anyone else’s.

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