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

First question from kierjuno I have always wondered if there would be a sequel to Wheel of the Infinite?

Unfortunately, no. That book sold the least of any I've done, and probably hurt sales of later books because of the way chain bookstore ordering works. So I don't think any publisher would ever be interested in a sequel. Also, this was the book I was writing when my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, so it has some unpleasant associations for me.


And from boymonster I'm wondering about any observations you may have made about the YA market, especially as it concerns fantasy. It seems as if YA is the "new hotness" and "adult" fantasy is on some kind of decline. Are they more accessible for older readers? They sure seem to be incredibly popular, and not just with their teenage audience.

I don't think adult fantasy is on a decline, but yes, YA is definitely popular now, and there's a lot of good books coming out under that designation. And I think they are very accessible for older readers. There just isn't that much difference between a fantasy written for adults and a fantasy written for high school-age young adults, especially nowadays. Books like The Tales of the Otori series and rachelcaine's Morganville series are good examples. And there are books that originally came out as adult F/SF years ago that have been reprinted as YA, like Sorcery and Cecilia. It's probably mostly a marketing thing, still taking advantage of Harry Potter's success, (And probably the success of the Lord of the Rings and Narnia movies) but you can find a lot of original and interesting fantasy under YA now, and that's what's drawing in the readers.

In the interest of getting some breathing room in my desperately overcrowded storage closet:


I'll send a free autographed hardcover copy of Wheel of the Infinite to the first five people who comment on this post.


You have to be willing to email me your mailing address so I can ship the book to you.

I may be doing more giveaways of other books later, as I continue to inventory and sort the closet that looked a lot bigger before I filled it up with junk.

ETA: Whoa, that was quick! Giveaway is over! The winners are ileliberte, spudgirl, sageness, princejvstin, and yud.

It's International Blog Against Racism Week and the del.icio.us list of links is here.

I've talked about this before here, but it bears repeating: Lavender-Green Magic by Andre Norton was published in 1974. The copyeditor changed the race of the three protagonists from black to white. Norton was able to correct this, and the version published is her original. Copyeditors are supposed to correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, keep an eye on continuity, and point out things they think are mistakes. It's interesting to speculate exactly where in that list that the copyeditor thought changing the race of the characters would fall under.

My book Wheel of the Infinite was published in hardcover in July of 2000, with this cover:




Maskelle, who is unquestionably the main viewpoint character and protagonist, is on the front, and the artist (the fantastically talented Donato Giancola) placed her on the righthand side so that's where she'd be. Though she's a little gray. I found out later (was it on here? if it was one of you, please drop me a comment) that the publisher, HarperCollins, asked him to make her less brown. (ETA: redplasticglass said I was at a convention at one of his panels a number of years back -- and when he posted the original painting, and then the printed cover on the screen, he mentioned that "--Look! They greyed her out!"

I'm not entirely sure if they asked him to do it, or they just "misprinted" or what exactly, he didn't elaborate. (I really doubt he would have been willing to make the change if they'd just asked him to, he was so angry about it. And their attempts to 'fix' things pretty much showed that they had done it deliberately.) Needless to say, he wasn't happy about the situation. After that first image, he showed us an image of that second cover -- He then went on to say that he had complained about it. Later, he finds out they made her black again, but they'd stuck her on the BACK of the book. And that was really the last time he was willing to work for them.

I saw the 'greyed' cover on the book my library had, and they really DID make her grey. Literally grey, though I couldn't remember if the tone had been adjusted as well or not. I think they were about comparative darkness. Just... grey, not brown.)

I envisioned Maskelle as looking something like Gina Torres (see icon), who played Nebula in Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and Zoe in Firefly and Serenity. (Yeah, I do have actors in mind for a lot of my characters. Also theme songs, but that's another post.)

I think this image below may have a color tone closer to Giancola's original and more faithful to the book, but my eyesight isn't great today:



For the paperback, the publisher flipped the cover, and it looks like this, with Rian, the secondary character and love interest, on the front:



And there it is. Not much has changed since 1974. It's still terribly rare to see a not-white main character on the front of a book. I saw a link to a blog post someone did on not-white main characters who inexplicably became white when pictured on the cover, but damn, again I have no idea where. If someone has that link, please comment with it. (ETA: Found by forodwaith: Judging Books & Their Covers. And another example in comments)


***


I'll be leaving Friday for ArmadilloCon and then Chicago to visit friends, so I'll be gone for a bit, and
probably not quick to answer email.

Not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but it looks like Wheel of the Infinite is out of print, now. It's a stand-alone fantasy, with a female main character, and my first and favorite Donato Giancola cover. The link is to the hardcover version; for the paperback, the publisher flipped it so the dark-skinned main character was on the back.


I know some people had suggested this, and I think I am going to do a POD version of the revision of The Element of Fire on lulu.com for readers who want a printed copy. I still haven't finished the revision yet, so it'll take awhile before that actually happens; I'll announce on here when it's ready to go.