WOW! Can it really be 3 years today since the self published version of A DEAD ELF came out? Then Harper Voyager come along just weeks later, pick it up for publication and it becomes a #1 Epic Fantasy Bestseller!
Yes it’s true!
Here’s the original cover – designed by a wonderfully talented friend – which is as fantastic as the totally different cover designed by Alexandra Allden! How lucky I am to have two great covers!
Eek! Black Friday #1 Epic Fantasy Bestseller special:
‘Chandler meets Tolkien’ ‘Dashiell Hammett meets Terry Pratchett’*
118 Amazon Review >50% 5*. Price now:
Just $2.99 – no change at all!
Continue reading Black Friday Non-Special!
I happen to be very lucky. I earn my living by writing.
I haven’t always earned my living by writing. I use to take very small pieces of things (like small bits of people) and put them into different mixtures of chemicals. Then I’d infuse them with resin, bake the resin overnight, cut the resin very thin with a diamond knife and look at the very thin sections resulting under (which means in) an electron microscope.
That’s very different from writing. Mind you, I use to write about it after looking at the ultrathin sections of resin- embedded tissue. If it got interesting.
Now, I just write, no cutting bits off anything. And I get to write lots of fabulous things, including films and musicals and plays and animation and books too. I have clients all around the world.
Of course, not everything is based on my own ideas – they are not all my babies. But to be honest these days so many things are collaborative in nature that it doesn’t seem to matter. And this week I started writing the first of a series of children’s books for a client. Lots of fun, I was really buoyed up. Until I watched a show on TV last night that featured several fantasy writers talking about their books and what inspired their writing. Oh dear.
Then the need to get on with my own stories became almost palpable; so many stories, so little time. So many stories…
Today I didn’t enjoy writing the children’s book so much. I mean, I think it’s going to be great – don’t get me wrong; but I can hear my own children calling! Continue reading The Fantasy of Writing
So…
We went to a brewery the other Sunday. Shepherd Neame’s brewery in Faversham, Kent, as it happens. And fabulous it was too. Britain’s oldest brewer, they believe and I’m not getting into a pointless argument about that one! I recommend the trip wholeheartedly, even if – unlike me – you are not a great beer fan.
I love beer.
Continue reading Of beer and fantasy.
Thanks for taking us so much to heart. This feels like a real milestone:
It really is a great feeling to read all those lovely comments. Here’s to lots more Detective Strongoak – thanks again!
Continue reading I love the USA!
Help
Any time now will do! Continue reading Message in a bottle
Yes, it goes round in circles! Is there any reason for it?
Well, it does give me a feeling of great satisfaction. And you can see the back of the front cover – as it were! But apart from that, sorry no reason at all!
Pretty though, but after a while … Continue reading I’ve got a .gif and I’m going to use it!
I was absolutely delighted to have reached something of a personal landmark recently – 100 reviews of A DEAD ELF on Amazon! I was so pleased I tweeted about it and made a little picture:
A very happy writer – who was then gripped by a terrible anxiety. I can’t explain it, but I was filled with the thought that review 101 was going to be awful. I didn’t quite wake up in the middle of the night sweating, but it was close. In the end I just ‘knew’ it was going to be awful – I’d got use to the idea in fact.
And then last night this popped up on Amazon.com:
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing: Good fantasy/mystery story line, well written and edited, well developed and engaging characters, and no graphic sex or excessive violence. A bit more cerebral than a lot of fantasy out there, and I loved it.
So thank you Sheila Retherford, wherever you may be in the USA – so glad you liked it – and now I can relax! Continue reading We love 101!
A rather nice posting recently reminded me of how much I love the illustrations in children’s books (putting aside the debate about whether such a thing really exists). The post reminded me of how much I loved the Tolkien-drawn cover of my own childhood copy of ‘The Hobbit’. I had always had something similar in mind for my own book: ‘A DEAD ELF’ (not a children’s book!) but updated, to reflect the differences in the two book’s content.
I was a little shy of mentioning this to my new publishers though, as it seemed a little ‘precious’ of me (ha). So, it was with excitement, and some trepidation, that I open the image file from my publisher – and was completely bowled over! It was like the talented artist and illustrator Alexandra Allden had been reading my mind! Just the right sort of ‘nod’, while being distinctive in itself. I could not have imagined a cover that more closely matched my expectations, or for that matter the book! Still in love with it – especially the soft touch paperback cover. Continue reading Telling a Book by its Cover
Here be a blog for Terry Newman and Master Detective Nicely Strongoak 