Last Argument of Kings by Joe AbercrombieJoe Abercrombie’s upcoming novel, Best Served Cold has been delayed.

Now that your dismay has had some time to run its course, you’ll be happy to know that it’s by only about two months or so, which ( still having about a year to wait) doesn’t make a huge difference, all things told. What is interesting, however, is Abercrombie’s post on the delay and his ideas on book delays in general. Abercrombie’s known for being candid, with a no bullshit style of telling it like it is, so his take on it is worth reading:

“I’d got used to the pace I was working at with Last Argument of Kings, and foolishly extrapolated my likely writing pace from there. That was pretty damn fast, took about 14 months including all the editing. But that was writing the third in a trilogy, the characters, plots, endings long established in my mind and ready to be vomited out onto the page. This new project has proved more difficult. In a sense, since the trilogy was one long story, this book has felt much more like my “difficult second album” than the second book did, which was only really a continuation of the first. I am beginning to understand why people end up writing endless series…

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Over at the Westeros Forums there was a bit forumwide vote to determine who, in their minds, were the ten best writer’s of speculative fiction. It’s an interesting list, with a lot of terrific authors, but obviously lists are subjective. One much also consider that not only are the Westeros Forums a fantasy based forum, they’re also a George R.R. Martin dedicated forum, so we shouldn’t be too surprised who made the top of the list.

That all being said, Westeros is a great forum with a lot of well read posters and, as expected, they’ve put together a solid list that any newcomer to the speculative fiction field would be smart to take a look at. You can find the thread and discussion dedicated to the list HERE.

Werthead, poster on Westeros and also the scribe of the wonderful Wertzone, tallied the votes and even wrote a bit about each of the finalists:


The List

10. Frank Herbert (26 votes)
The author of the Great Dune Saga (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune) as well as many, many individual novels such as The Jesus Incident, The Priests of Psi and The Dosadi Experiment. Dune is widely considered the greatest SF novel of all time and I’m guessing Herbert’s position here is based on just that novel by itself.

9. Joe Abercrombie (29 votes)
The newest author on the list, with just three books to his name, namely The First Law trilogy (The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings). During counting the callow youth Abercrombie was neck-and-neck with Lynch but a late burst of speed saw him pull ahead of the long-haired one. Good to see the British end being held up smiley2.gif

8. Stephen R. Donaldson (30 votes)
The author of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (Lord Foul’s Bane, The Illearth War, The Power That Preserves, The Wounded Land, The One Tree and White Gold Wielder), Mordant’s Need (The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through) and the monumental SF Gap Saga (The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story, The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge, The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises, The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order and The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die). Has lately returned to fantasy with The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (The Runes of the Earth and Fatal Revenant with two more books to come). Donaldson arguably kicked off the post-Tolkien epic fantasy boom of the late 1970s, with Lord Foul’s Bane appearing at the same time as Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara.

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I’m constantly on the prowl for new blogs to add to my RSS reader and I like to spread some of the wealth around by pointing you guys, my readers, in the direction of some of the newest and coolest Speculative Fiction blogs popping up around the web.

So once you’re finished checking out all the sweet swag here at A Dribble of Ink, why not take a look at some of these newer blogs:

I’m sure they’d appreciate new visitors (if you don’t visit already!) and their content is certainly worth looking at. Who knows, maybe you’ll even find your new favourite blog!

Over at Shawn Speakman’s blog, though unrelated to the original post, he and I started to discuss titles for novels, mostly concerning the two we are working on, and it got me thinking in general about some of my favourite titles out there.

I’ve always been a fan of poetic titles – The Blade Itself, The Darkness That Comes Before, The Wooden Sea, Blood Follows, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, The Lies of Locke Lamora – but they obviously don’t always fit every sort of novel. There are plenty of more traditional titles that I really like as well – The Book of Joby, Faith of the Fallen, The Naked God, Wizard and Glass, The Name of the Wind, To Green Angel Tower.

So I thought to myself, ‘why not ask my readers!’ It was a pretty brilliant idea, so I ask:

What are some of your favourite titles?

and

What, in your opinion, makes for a good title?

The Steel Remains by Richard MorganPatrick St. Denis made an interesting post over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist regarding the US release of Richard Morgan’s upcoming Fantasy novel, The Steel Remains. Here’s what he had to say:

In light of all the grumbling generated by the fact that there was no US pub date regarding Morgan’s fantasy debut, The Steel Remains (Canada, USA, Europe), I decided to inquire to lay the matter to rest.

I heard back from Betsy Mitchell, editor in chief at Del Rey Books, this morning. With the fall season already crowded, they felt that the book would benefit from a spring release date. Hence, the US edition of The Steel Remains will be published on February 24th 2009.

You see, sometimes I am the bringer of good news!;-)

I worry about Del Rey. I understand how release schedules work, but I find it hard to believe that they have many authors (Terry Brooks being probably the sole exception) that are more popular at the moment that Morgan. With web site’s like The Book Depository making is easy (and cheap) to import novels from the UK, I imagine that they’ll lose a lot of sales in the six months between the UK and the US release.

I suppose, however, that they know their business better than I do. I’ll be picking up the UK release, though (unless someone at Gollancz wants to send me a review copy *winkwinknudgenudge*). At the very least it’s nice to have the release date confirmed.