Anne Groell (senior editor) told us we will–hopefully–be seeing Scott Lynch’s REPUBLIC OF THIEVES #spring2011

One

After Stenwold picked up the telescope for the ninth time, Marius said, “You will know first from the sound.”

The burly man stopped and peered down at him, telescope still half-poised. From their third-storey retreat the city walls were a mass of black and red, the defenders hurrying into place atop the ramparts and about the gates.

“How do you mean, the sound?”

Marius, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, looked up at him. “What you hear now is men braving themselves for a fight. When it starts, they will be quiet, just for a moment. They will brace themselves. Then it will be a different kind of noise.” It was a long speech for him.

Even from here Stenwold could hear a constant murmur from the gates. He lowered the telescope reluctantly. “There’ll be a great almighty noise when they come in, if all goes according to plan.”

Marius shrugged. “Then listen for that.”

Below there was a quick patter of feet as someone ascended the stairs. Stenwold twitched but Marius remarked simply, “Tisamon,” and went back to staring at nothing. In the room beneath them there were nine men and women dressed in the same chain hauberk and helm that Marius wore, and looking enough like him to be family. Stenwold knew their minds were meshed together, touching each other’s and touching Marius too, thoughts passing freely back and forth between them. He could not imagine how it must be, for them.

I’ve left the Isle of Cedars behind, at least. 1261 pages and counting.

The timeline of this monster is going to drive me mad. I know perfectly well that as soon as DANCE is published, some of you out there are going to attempt to correlate its chronology with that of A FEAST FOR CROWS, fit all the parts together to suggest an appropriate chapter order for a (hypothetical, and largely impossible) combined book, something like what the “Big Feast” might have been, before the split.

Well, good luck with that. I’m glad you’re doing it, not me. With all these characters scattered over my entire world, some chapters that span hours and others many months, various journeys and voyages to account for, not to mention the demands of the dramatic chronology, an entirely different matter than the literal chronology… well, it may well make your head explode. It did mine. The DANCE timeline alone is a bitch and a half.

Just musing aloud here, so don’t anyone get all hysterical… but depending on how long the book comes out, moving some of these finished chapters into WINDS OF WINTER may make sense. Structurally you could make a good case for making DANCE a perfect parallel to FEAST; different cast of characters, but exactly the same time frame, so both books end on the same approximate date. Then WINDS could pick up the action for both sets of characters the following day.

That’s not the way I have been doing it, however. As written, I’ve covered the FEAST time frame in the first 800 pages (manuscript pages, the printed book pages will be different) of DANCE. Everything that follows is post-FEAST, so that’s where some of the cast from the last book start popping up again. Not the most elegant structure, I admit… but given how late this one is, I wanted to resolve at least a few of the cliffhangers from FEAST… (if only to set up the new cliffhangers). So…

These are the kinds of things I grapple with. No comments necessary, really. I am not looking for advice, and in fact I seldom talk about such issues precisely to AVOID unsolicited advice. These sorts of things are best resolved by me and my muse, sometimes assisted by my editors. Just felt like rambling a little.

Anyway, there we are. Back to the grindstone tomorrow.

1. Purchase a dedicated website address.

In my own history, I have had two web addresses. The first was hosted by a friend’s hosting agency and it was at otter.covblogs.com. When I first got the site, I was new to blogging, had no idea what I was doing or where I planned to take my blog so it served me just fine. But once my readership began to increase, it became clear that having a dedicated web address would be a good idea, though I still waffled about for some time, something I still regret.

2. Decide what you plan to review.

If you are planning on writing reviews – which should be your bread and butter –then you need to decide if you are going to focus on a specific genre or subgenre. I chose to be rather broad and I cover just about anything in the science fiction and fantasy category, though I avoid horror and read only select stories of the paranormal subgenre. Some bloggers, like Jeff at Fantasy Book News and Reviews, focus on epic fantasy and the eBook market, or you could be like Tia at Debuts and Reviews – who covers new authors breaking into the market, and whose reviews are primarily coverage of paranormal, romance, and some general fantasy. Aidan at A Dribble of Ink rarely even write reviews, but has found readership by always being on top of the latest goings on in the SF/F field and writing responsive essays to other’s ideas that are cogent and entertaining.

3. Stats matter, but only to a certain extent.

Be sure to install a tracking plug-in onto your website like WordPress Stats or Google Analytics. There are lots of options out there, choose the one that tells you want you want to know. Pay attention to your stats; realize where the traffic is coming from. In the early days, be sure to go thank those who link to your posts. (This is good practice always, but as you get bigger, you will find you have less and less time to devote to this, even though you wish you could comment everywhere.)

…

Go look at what others are doing. Look at the big dogs and see what they are doing right. A word of caution – be sure that you are comparing apples to apples. Comparing a blog with a single author to a group blog like SF Signal (with its thousands of readers) or Fantasy Book Critic (with its thousands) is a waste of time and effort. You might be able to come away with some neat ideas on what you could do at your site, but there is now way a single author blog can compare to the sheer number of posts that those folks produce. Look at the single author or one or two author blogs that are more in your range. Obviously, I myself would be a comparable, and perhaps am some evidence of what four years of consistent blogging can bring you.

4. Publicize, publicize, publicize!

You are new to the book blogging game. The hard truth of that is that no one, absolutely no one, is going to find your blog by accident. It is only through using publicity that you are going to find readers. Make sure you add yourself to various blog aggregators. Sign up for services like Goodreads, Librarything, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. and integrate your blog posts into those feeds. Comment on other blogs in your field of interest regularly, and go join forums like SFFWorld or Westeros. Make sure your signature has your web address in it – if allowed by the forum. Join just about anything you can that will help automate your promotion, but at the same time be sure to participate in discussion and not just be a fly by night I-am-only-here-for-promotion-member. Read favorite author blogs regularly and add your commentary. Use Search Engine Optimization services on your self-hosted blog to increase your reach in Google and Bing. Whatever it takes, do it, but enjoy the community that such publicity efforts can bring as well. Some of my best internet friends have been made through joining in discussions on blogs and as a result, we link to one another fairly regularly and so only increase our reach.

5. Want to get books to review? Start with the authors.

First, build a small library of reviews. You don’t need a lot, but start with books you have read recently, bought and plan to read, are favorites, or that exist in your home library. Get some reviews out there, spend some time arriving at your style (this is fluid and will always change – but it is a good idea to think about layout etc. so that readers have a sense of consistency) and developing a voice that may be similar to others but is also uniquely your own. If you look at my Year of Reading 2007, every review on there up until September is books that I purchased and reviewed. I had, at this point, been consistently writing reviews for a year and a half. There are some quite successful bloggers who still refuse to take publisher copies, preferring to buy and read books of their choice so as not to bear the burden of obligation toward the publisher. This may be something worth thinking about, especially if you are doing this solely as a hobby and occasional creative outlet.

Fallout: New Vegas and Neverwinter Nights 2 developer Obsidian Entertainment will join Red Eagle Games in working on its video game adaptations of Robert Jordan’s acclaimed fantasy novel series ‘The Wheel of Time,’ the pair announced today.

“The Wheel of Time is one of the greatest and well-received fantasy series of all time,” said Obsidian chief creative officer Chris Avellone. “Games set in Robert Jordan’s universe have the chance to deliver on the epic storylines and the complex characters that the series is known for – and this is one of Obsidian’s strengths. It’s a natural fit.” Obsidian was founded by veterans of Fallout and Planescape: Torment dev Black Isle.

Red Eagle Games has been planning to make a Wheel of Time MMORPG as well as tie-in games for the movies its parent company Red Eagle Entertainment is making.

It’s not entirely clear what Obsidian’s involvement in the projects will be, as a press release merely states that the two have signed a “services agreement which provides a comprehensive framework for Obsidian Entertainment to work closely with Red Eagle Games’ in-house development team to create new video games for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 based on Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy series.”

‘Wanted’ screenwriter Chris Morgan has signed on as story director for the games, serving on an “advisory council” with others including Tom Frisina of EA Partners–who are distributing the series. There’s still no word on when the first game will arrive.