Yearly Archives: 2010

News

An Aside | Half-a-Million

By Aidan Moher March 22nd, 2010
Luxembourg, population 500,000

Never one to miss an opportunity to pat myself on the back, I noticed yesterday that A Dribble of Ink passed the half-million pageviews mark.

500,000

That’s a lot of people. In fact, it’s about the same as the population of Luxembourg, or the number of (non-scientific) words in the English language.

So, thanks, to everyone who’s ever visited the blog. If you’ve dropped by once (and aren’t reading this) or your visit every day, I owe you one. Without you, my corner of the web would be even dustier.

Onwards and Upwards!

Cover Art

Cover Art | Bearers of the Black Staff by Terry Brooks (B&W)

By Aidan Moher March 19th, 2010
Bearers of the Black Staff by Terry Brooks

I’m a self-admitted Terry Brooks whore. I recognize at this point that it’s likely nostalgia that colours my impressions of his novels, but I usually enjoy what ever he puts out. That said, I’m genuinely excited about Bearers of the Black Staff and the ways it promises to expand the mythos of the Shannara universe.

I wish I could bring you a colour version, but alas, the first peek at Brooks’ next novel, found in the Random House Fall Catalogue (PDF, right/option click + ‘Save As’), is black and white only. Rather standard for a Brooks cover, but Steve Stone’s strengths lie in his use of colour.

Once I get my hands on a colour version, I’ll be sure to post it.

Cover Art

Cover Art | The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (UK Edition)

By Aidan Moher March 17th, 2010
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

In SF Signal‘s most recent Mind Meld, we were asked about recent covers that, on an artistic level, blew us. One of my choices was the beautiful cover for Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House. As he usually does, Lou Anders and Jacqueline Cooke at Pyr Books took some wonderful Stephan Martiniere artwork and crafted a sublime cover around it.

Above, you have the UK edition of The Dervish House. It’s nice, and I like that it wears the influences of its setting on its sleeve; but, if you ask me, it’s one of those rare occasions when the UK cover has to work a bit harder against its US counterpart… and comes up a bit short.

Which do you prefer?

News

An Aside | News on ‘The Way of Kings’ by Brandon Sanderson

By Aidan Moher March 16th, 2010
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

With Sanderson’s focus on promoting (and writing) the Wheel of Time novels, news on The Way of Kings has been few and far between. Now that The Gathering Storm is on store shelves, and the upcoming August, 2010 release of The Way of Kings, focus will begin to shift back to Sanderson’s original work.

On his blog, Sanderson spills some beans about the novel:

POINT ONE: This book is the start of a longer epic.

KINGS stands at 425,000 words right now. I’ll be trimming that down to (hopefully) 380–390k when I do the next draft. (Which will be the final draft.) That will put it at roughly double the length of MISTBORN or ELANTRIS. The series is called the Stormlight Archive, and Tor purchased four books from me. I’m not planning that to be the end, though I’m cautious at locking myself into a certain number of books. (Though I do have the entire series plotted, and am fairly certain I know exactly how many books it will be.) For now, let me just say that it won’t be as long as the Wheel of Time, but will be longer than anything I’ve attempted so far.

Consider this: a novel is defined as a piece of fiction containing 40,000+ words. The average Fantasy novel is likely between 90,000 and 120,000 words. Sanderson hopes to cut up to 45,000 words. That’s a whole novel worth of material. Nuts.

Won’t be as long as The Wheel of Time? Haven’t we heard that before? Just kidding. Sanderson’s shown himself as being more than capable of crafting stories and keeping them within the bounds he’s set. Mistborn was confined to a trilogy, Warbreaker and Elantris were stand alone novels.
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