The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel is here!

Cover_blog_imagenew

Well, technically it was here yesterday, but Amazon were a little faster out of the block than I expected, and my book was all suddenly available and I had no time to write a blog post! Goodness me. So, you can buy it here. I hope you do, and I hope you like it. J

But yes! Very exciting. It was a strange feeling, seeing my cover up there on that big proper website, next to other books with proper covers, and now anyone can read it. Excitement! Terror! Snoopy dancing! I went through the whole range of writerly emotions (snoopy dancing is an emotion, shhhh).

So, what do I think you should know about The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel? 

It's a novella, and it's the first of a series of four. I wanted to write a sword and sorcery serial, one that would be a quick and fun read, full of adventure, peril and occasional scary bits. 

You can download it straight on to your kindle if you have one, or you can download various bits of kindle software from Amazon that will let you read it on your computer like a kindle. It's also possible, I am told, to get an "app" on your "super-intelligent awesome-phone", although that level of technology is a bit beyond me, to be honest.

I have been lucky enough to get a few good reviews already. There is this rather spectacular one over at Colin F. Barnes' website, which I am well chuffed about, Adam Christopher has done a marvellous blog post about it,  and there are a few great write-ups on Amazon now too. The reviews that are up are especially lovely for me as they all (so far) seem to really get what I was trying to do with this series; the novellas are, in their own small way, a love letter to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, as well as the reams of adventurous fantasy they inspired, and it seems there is a great deal of love out there for this kind of “pulp” fiction.

And so, I must say a huge thank you to everyone who has bought a copy so far, and all those fabulous people leaving reviews and spreading the word; you are aces, and I owe you all some sort of fancy drink with an umbrella in. 

Tagged Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Fritz Leiber Ghosts of the Citadel The Copper Promise ebooks kindle novella writing

Of Swords and Deviltry

I’m reading The First Book of Lankhmar at the moment, and I have to say it’s bloody good fun.

Fritz Leiber’s tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, barbarian warrior and thief/dark magician, are vibrant, adventurous and ever so slightly rude, taking you off to distant exotic lands full of evil dukes and treacherous beauties, shoving you right into the middle of fist fights and duels, while at the same time tipping a sly wink to the pettiness of human nature; even in the wild worlds of Nehwon, people are ultimately badly behaved and out for what they can get.

I stumbled across this (huge) collection of stories thanks to a number of articles I read concerning “sword and sorcery”. I had come to the conclusion, to my own vague surprise, that The Steel Walk falls firmly within this genre, when I had never really thought about what “sword and sorcery” actually entails. And you will find that any blog on the subject will mention Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and with good reason; there are swords aplenty, and dark magic, betrayal and lust and greed, and all the really good stuff that epic fantasy sometimes forgets about when its off on quests to defeat The Big Bad Thing in the East/West/Alternate Dimension.

Working my way through it whilst trying to ignore the cover (jeez, the cover is ugly. I have no shame at all about being a fantasy reader, and will gladly wave about on the bus a book with any number of dragons or scantily clad ladies on the front, but this is almost too embarrassing even for me. The huge tattooed man in the foreground looks more like he belongs in Eastenders, whereas the tiny bloke in the background looks a wee bit like Richard O’Brien about to whip his harmonica out. Neither remotely resembles the two main characters, so it is all a bit mystifying. Why, Fantasy Masterworks, why?)- I found myself vaguely reminded of Terry Pratchett. It’s the barbarian heroes, of course, and the Thieves Guild, and the dangerous magic. What it is, of course, is the source. Pratchett without the satire (but certainly not without any humour; Fafhrd’s dealings with young ladies had me chuckling out loud more than once), and it’s a joy to realise that the Discworld had a bigger, juicier older brother… Silly me.

These are the pitfalls and joys of accidentally working your way backwards through a genre, I suppose; I can only say that I wish I’d met up with our young warrior and thief much, much sooner…

Tagged Fritz Leiber Terry Pratchett The Steel Walk the Gray Mouser
Tags
Contributors
Sites I Like
​