A Dribble of Ink

‘I can now say that Disney optioned On Stranger Tides and will use elements of the book in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I can also say that I did not ever specify that Serena and I get parts in the movie or have dinner with Johnny Depp! (Not that we’d mind.)’

The book follows the exploits of John “Jack Shandy” Chandagnac, who travels to the new world after the death of his puppeteer father to confront his uncle, who apparently has made off with the family inheritance. During the voyage, he gets to know a woman named Beth Hurwood and her father, an Oxford professor. Before they arrive, their ship is waylaid by pirates and, with the help of the professor and his assistant, the captain is killed and Chandagnac is forced to join the pirate crew. The reader discovers a sinister plot being concocted by the professor involving his dead wife, his living daughter and Blackbeard. Chandagnac, now known as “Jack Shandy”, must put a stop to these plans and save Beth Hurwood.

Best Novel (The August Derleth Fantasy Award)
Memoirs of a Master Forger, by Graham Joyce, writing as William Heaney (Gollancz)

Best Novella
The Reach of Children, by Tim Lebbon (Humdrumming)

Best Short Fiction
Do You See, by Sarah Pinborough, from Myth-Understandings, ed. by Ian Whates (Newcon Press)

Best Collection
Bull Running for Girls, by Allyson Bird (Screaming Dreams)

Best Anthology
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19, ed. Stephen Jones (Constable & Robinson)

The PS Publishing Best Small Press Award
Elastic Press, run by Andrew Hook

Best Non-Fiction
Basil Copper: A Life in Books, by Basil Copper, ed. Stephen Jones (PS Publishing)

Best Magazine/Periodical
Postscripts, ed. Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers (PS Publishing)

Best Artist
Vincent Chong

Best Comic/Graphic Novel
Locke and Key, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW Publishing)

Best Televison
Doctor Who, head writer Russell T. Davies (BBC Wales)

Best Film
The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan (Warner Brothers)

The Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer
Joseph D’Lacey, for Meat (Bloody Books)

The Karl Edward Wagner Award (the Special Award)
Hayao Miyazaki

“I’m having a good week,” said Joyce

[…]

“It’s extraordinary really: everything’s quiet for a couple of years and then this,” said Joyce. “I’ve been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs … This is a crescent.”

[…]

“Fantasy gets a mixed reception – a lot of fantasy is formulaic but most of the award-winning fantasy on the contrary tends to be the stuff at the edges of the genre, rather than swimming in the middle,”

We’ve been calling it Shifting Winds up until this point, but that was never intended to be the final title. After a long round of conversations with Tor and Harriet, we settled on TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT as the title. There are various reasons for this, which I’ll go into more once the book is out next year. I’m pleased, however, as this was the title I suggested. It’s actually appropriate in an interesting way. Harriet was the one who came up with the name for the first of the three, and the second one gets the title I proposed. And so, we will (as I’ve been saying for a while) use Mr. Jordan’s title for the final of the three, A MEMORY OF LIGHT.

I thought for a while on that last choice. If you’ve been following along these last couple of years, you know that my original intention was for this to be one book. When it was split, I still wanted it to be one book in name, in an attempt to honor Mr. Jordan’s wishes that it be one book. (I still plan to suggest an omnibus edition at a later point, but the three books together will probably be too long for that to be an option.) Anyway, I was going to have A MEMORY OF LIGHT be the title (along with a subtitle) for each of the three books. When that fell through, I was left thinking on my next step.

Mr. Jordan named the final book A MEMORY OF LIGHT. It’s one of the things we have from him, and I wanted very badly to use it. But at the same time, he named the three books AMOL, and I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to let fans think of them as AMOL together, never using the title itself in case we managed to get that omnibus done. In the end, however, I decided that the title was simply too good not to use. I can’t count on that omnibus, and I feel that using the title on the last third of the book is the best way to honor Mr. Jordan’s wishes. It wasn’t an easy decision, and some will disagree with it.

This is a reference to the Towers of Midnight located outside the city of Imfaral in Seanchan. The significance is that the Towers is a fortress complex with thirteen spires, and was the place where the a’dam was created (or at least handed over to the first Seanchan Emperor). This to me suggestions that the book will resolve the Seanchan plot thread ahead of the Last Battle in the finale book which is, as it should be, A MEMORY OF LIGHT.