A Dribble of Ink

From Abercrombie’s blog (via The Mad Hatter’s Book Bookshelf & Book Review):

Therefore stand amazed as I announce that I last year signed a contract with my doughty UK publisher, Gollancz, for four more books set in the world of The First Law. That’s right. FOUR MORE BOOKS. Twice two. Or more accurately, one plus three, since at the moment, those books are looking like they’ll be another semi-standalone in the style of Best Served Cold and The Heroes, followed by another trilogy, though obviously I reserve the right to be coy and change my mind, possibly while flouncing out of a meeting. It’s a lady’s privilege, don’t you know.

In terms of timescale things are still a little hazy. I’ve been writing at the rate of about a book every 18 months or so, so one might reasonably expect the first of these books to appear on shelves sometime around the summer 2012 sort of a mark, but obviously I reserve the right to be coy and completely miss a date even that vague.

Good news to start off the year. It’s interesting (and a testament to Abercrombie’s popularity) that Gollancz has signed him to a deal without any actual plans laid out for the novels. It’s easy to suppose that the first of these will be the Fantasy/Western mash-up that Abercrombie’s spoken of before; more interesting, however, is whether the planned trilogy will return to Abercrombie’s many-times-visited world or strike off in a new direction. Despite my reservations for Best Served Cold, I’ve always felt that Abercrombie’s abilities lend themselves very well to stand-alone novels, so, in a way, I wouldn’t mind hearing that he changes his mind and continues his current trend of one-off novels.