Posted Reflections to my web site. This was the first Giliead and Ilias story to appear in Black Gate, issue #10, March 2007. All these stories were prequels to the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy.

Other free fiction on my site:

Short stories: Thorns (Realms of Fantasy June 1995), Bad Medicine (Realms of Fantasy June 1997), Wolf Night (Lone Star Stories August 2006), The Forest Boy July 2009, The Potter's Daughter (Elemental May 2006), Holy Places (Black Gate #11 August 2007)

Novel: The Element of Fire The complete revised edition of the novel.

First chapters of novels:

Wheel of the Infinite
City of Bones
The Death of the Necromancer

Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary
Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement


Each book of the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy has the first five chapters posted:

Book One: The Wizard Hunters
Book Two: The Ships of Air
Book Three: The Gate of Gods

My day just got a whole hell of a lot better: There's a review of The Element of Fire on DearAuthor.com by Laura Florand. An awesome review, that makes me cry a little and feel good about my decision to keep going during that period when I was going to quit writing and become a personal trainer.

I read DearAuthor.com, so it was very surreal when I checked it this morning and there was my name. So I'll be over here, freaking out, but in a good way.

It looks like the The Year's Best Fantasy #7 (Tachyon Publications) is starting to show up in various places. The story I have in it is "The Potter's Daughter," which was published in 2006 in the Tsunami relief anthology Elemental. It's a prequel to The Element of Fire, about Kade.

It's at Barnes and Noble, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, or you can find it at a local independent book store through Booksense.


Also, The Element of Fire is out again in the French mass market edition Amazon.fr here. I was not born in 1954, that's a typo.

Just noticed this: Bibliopolis has the cover up for the Spanish edition of The Element of Fire, and it's really gorgeous. Click on the smaller version to see the full size.

Passing this along from Sue Burke:

irst, Concatenation, which is a British 'zine covering European news
and science. My report on the Spanish science fiction convention just
went up at:

http://www.concatenation.org/conrev/hispacon2006.html

Second, this Yahoogroups list:

> On november 26, 2006, we created PLANETA SF, a space dedicated to the
> meeting of all writers, editors, translators, artists, and readers who
> think that linguistic barriers are not impassable if there is a
> willingness to understand each other. From the first, PLANETA SF
> established as the basic premise that every and each member could
> express themselves in their own languages,

It's already helped writers, editors, and translators connect, and while
the mix of languages may be intimidating, no one expects you to write
well in languages that are foreign to you, though the Babblefish
translations make us all chuckle.

http://ar.groups.yahoo.com/group/planetasf/


and syntaxhorror asked I've been meaning to ask this for quite some time now.. I believe you stated somewhere that you had gone through the whole of The Element of Fire before the publication of the POD edition. What sort of changes are we talking about? Just spelling corrections, or actual rewrites?

I did do some actual rewrites and editing for the new version. It was mostly rewording sentences I wasn't happy with, adding sentences here and there, trimming some bits, etc. The Element of Fire was not only my first published novel, it was the first novel I ever wrote, and I think there was a big learning curve between it and City of Bones and The Death of the Necromancer, so while I had the chance I wanted to revise it a little.

handworn asked Kade Carrion has a touch of amorality to her, too. Was she also difficult
to write?

Not really. I found Kade a fairly easy character to write. She's not anywhere as ruthless as Tremaine Valiarde, for example. It's not so much Nicholas Valiarde's amorality that is hard to write; it was his emotional reactions to different situations that didn't come easily to me.

It's Joe Flanigan's birthday today (see icon) and also the day that marks my realization that after a lifetime of admiring actors who were older than me (Harrison Ford, etc) I'm now admiring one who is younger than me. That's, uh, yeah.


Locus listed the reprint of The Element of Fire under their classic reprints section, which I find really flattering, especially considering the other books listed there. The Amazon link they posted doesn't work, though, and I can't figure out why. I suspect it's something on Amazon's end. (And Lulu (with media mail postage) and Barnes and Noble (with a membership) are cheaper.) It can also be ordered through an independent bookstore with Booksense.


themis asked: One of the things that I really loved about the Ile-Rien books was that they're set in a different time period than most fantasy. Usually, writers fall back upon the middle ages, the pre-Roman Celtic era etc. Was the decision to start Ile-Rien at a later date, so to speak, a conscious one (did you think "I'm really tired of stupid Celtic fantasies, let's try something with corsets and steam engines") or did it just...happen?

Because, as I said, that was one of the things I really loved about your books. Especially Death of the Necromancer, I really felt that the time period figured in prominently. I know "Victorian" fantasy has become a bit more popular (partly, I suppose, to steampunk expansion) but it's still a minority. Personally, I find it a more interesting time period for reading about and creating characters in, if only because the vices are so much more interesting. You can't put cigarettes in a story about Renaissance Italy, after all.

It was very much a conscious decision. When I started The Element of Fire back around 1991 or so, I wasn't finding very much fantasy set in time periods that weren't the middle ages, and I was cherishing every one I did find. (And also books using settings and mythologies from other parts of the world, like the Barry Hughart books set in China, Charles Saunders' book Imaro and his other stories set in Africa, etc, and that's more where City of Bones and Wheel of the Infinite came from.) At the time, I was researching the 17th century in France, reading The Three Musketeers, watching Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers, and so that was my first choice for a time period. I wrote a short story first which was set in Vienne, with Thomas as the main character, decided I really did like this setting, and started the novel.

The Death of the Necromancer was written for much the same reasons. I wanted to read Victorian/La Belle Epoque fantasy, and couldn't find any.


And birdhousefrog had a quick question Seems to me you wrote a tie-in novel recently, but I've lost track of that posting. Was it Stargate or something else?

I have one out now, Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, and another that should be coming out in the next few months, also SGA, called Entanglement. You can always check the Bibliography page on my web site, which lists everything I have out and what's coming out in the future, including short stories, non-fiction, etc. (And if you hit the main page to this journal, there are links to all my books and other stuff in the sidebar.)


I've got at least one more question to answer, which I'll hit later, and I'm still taking them in this post here. And it doesn't have to be about my books, it can be about writing or publishing in general, though my level of coherency may drop at random.

Putting this here so I can keep track of it for the next update: Barnes and Noble.com now has the revised version of The Element of Fire up here. And unlike Amazon, they did put on a member discount.


Link to the big version of the cover, just for the hell of it.


Not much else is going on, except for the usual work. I made another apple pie for Christmas eve, which turned out really well. I also did the duck with blueberries which I've done before, and that turned out okay. Though the sugar for the sauce did something that I'm pretty certain Alton Brown said it shouldn't do.

Just got a letter and a contract from David Hartwell, asking for "The Potter's Daughter" to be included in the anthology "The Year's Best Fantasy" #7, from Tachyon Publications. Needless to say, that's going to be a big yes. I've never had anything in the "Year's Best" of anything before, so this is really cool for me.

"The Potter's Daughter" is the story that appeared in Elemental, the prequel story about Kade, one of the main characters from The Element of Fire.

Yay, Rory Harper posted a bit about The Element of Fire on the blog Eat Our Brains, and even cooler, he posted an MP3 of the song Scott McCullar wrote for the book, lo these many moons ago. Scott was the lead singer and song writer for Los Blues Guys, and it's a fantastic song. (Scott's also a cartoonist, and has a great collection of library-related cartoons still available here.)

Still doing questions here, and about to run out to the post office.

Yay, the new print edition of The Element of Fire is now available here. It's POD, a trade paperback, for $12.55. I've got my copy here and it looks fantastic. This is a proofed copy of the revised edition I posted online.

If everything goes okay, it should be available on BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon in about six weeks or so. I have absolutely no idea what price it will be there.

And thanks very much to katyas for the proofing and typesetting. If anyone is looking for a typesetter you should totally hire her, because her work is meticulously professional, and she made this process so much faster and easier for me.



I forgot to mention, if you know anyone who has been wanting the book or might be interested, please pass this along.

This is the last chapter. The entire book will be up on my web site in HTML probably today, and sometime later I'll be putting a trade paperback version up for sale on lulu.com, for anyone who wants a printed copy.

The donations to the Donors Choose Literacy Challenge have been fantastic. I know some of these grants for low-income schools probably wouldn't have gotten much attention if not for you guys. I'm keeping the challenge link on the front page of my web site and I'll add it to the side bar of my LJ, so hopefully new people will be able to find it.


Tag for all Twenty Chapters


( Chapter Twenty )

alfreda89 has a post here and a link to a petition for the Lyme Disease Association.


Yay for the people donating to the Donors Choose Literacy Challenge!




( Chapter Eighteen )

Well, it's nearly done. I'll be posting chapter eighteen tomorrow, and the last two chapters on Tuesday.

Please consider donating to the Donors Choose Literacy Challenge, for grants for school supplies for reading and literature classes. The grants are only posted on the site for donations for a limited time. (I think it's three months in most cases, but it may vary.) Of the two I've had up the longest -- "Drop Read and Write" and "Classroom Library from Scholastic" -- one only needs $331 to complete and the other needs $201. If they run out their time limit without reaching their goals, they'll drop off the site and that money will be transferred to other active grants. So if you'd like to donate, please take a look at those two.

Thanks to everyone who's donated! There are five completed grants on the list right now, and that's excellent.


( Chapter Seventeen )

If you're enjoying the book, please consider donating to the Donors Choose Literacy Challenge, for grants for school supplies for reading and literature classes.



( Chapter Sixteen )


The first sixteen chapters are also posted in two HTML files on The Element of Fire page of my web site.

From viggorlijah, check out River Kids, a project to help stop child trafficking in Cambodia. There's going to be a big holiday fundraiser coming up.

And don't forget the Donors Choose Literacy Challenge, for grants for school supplies for reading and literature classes. Because you guys have contributed so much, we're actually on their leaderboard.



( Chapter Fifteen )

Since I'm not that far from the end, I'll post a chapter every other day, with the last two chapters posted together. So the book should be completely posted by next Wednesday.

The Donors Choose Literacy Challenge, for grants for school supplies for reading and literature classes. All the grants for the challenge are for schools with a high percentage of low-income students and/or kids displaced by Hurricane Katrina.


( Chapter Fourteen )


ETA: There's twenty chapters total, so we're not too far from the end.

The Donors Choose Literacy Challenge, for grants for school supplies for reading and literature classes. All the grants for the challenge are for schools with a high percentage of low-income students and/or kids displaced by Hurricane Katrina.


( Chapter Thirteen )

The donations for the Donors Choose Literacy Challenge, have been excellent, way more than I could have hoped. There are still a few more grants for school supplies for reading and literature classes that need filling, so if you can, please consider donating. All the grants for the challenge are for schools with a high percentage of low-income students and/or kids displaced by Hurricane Katrina.


( Chapter Twelve )

Donors Choose Literacy Challenge, fulfilling grants for school supplies for reading and literature classes. Thanks to everyone who's donated!


( Chapter Eleven )