Kindle version of Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale is available!

Here's the link for the Amazon / Kindle version of the fourth book in the Wealdland series.

click here for Kindle link to Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale

Book Four of the Wealdland Stories

It has been a long time coming.

Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale has been published.

You'll understand, when you read the book, that it wasn't the size of the book (it's average in length) but the complexity. Many, many things had to fit together just so.

And, it took me a lot longer than I anticipated.

So, I apologize for the delay, but not for the book as a whole, which I am very, very proud of.

So what's in this book? Several short stories you might have seen before, but completely rewritten. And, you'll see now how those short stories fit into the overall world of Wealdland.

There are the two novellas: Legends of Haergill, which I am personally quite fond of; and Conniker's Tale, which is a little mind bending. But, the few who have read it have understood what I am trying to do, and actually got quite excited. So, that's good.

There are two poems, one in Miranei, with its translation, that tell the story of Iounelle's parent's fate. The other poem is the Ballad of Sehen, which Yulenth mentions a couple of times in The Lord of Lightning.

And lastly there are a couple of short stories that set up Iounelle's continuing story in Mathematics and Magic, the next series, of which Ancient Science will be the first book, probably ready about this time next year.

In the mean time, early next year (I am very excited about this) you will get Berand Fool, the first book in the Chronicles of the Elf Human Wars. Trust  me when I tell you that the Berand stories are going to be great. These stories take place three thousand years before Iounelle, and are going to be very unusual, to say the least.

In the middle of the year, if all goes as planned, you'll get the first of the Ostigris series: The Tiger's Mouth. This series fits in with the other series, but I can't explain how. You'll understand once you've read Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale.

enjoy

cheers,

Kurt

A comment from a reader...

This is a comment I felt the need to share:

I'm in the United States Navy and while I love being a sailor, going underway is always hard. When your work day is done and you go down to your rack alot of the time its hard to sleep just for how much you miss home and your family. I talked to my dad about this and he told me that when he was in he would read and it would give him for just a couple of hours a place where you weren't sad or lonely. Reading gives you a chance to take a vacation any time you want inside yourself. Saying all of this i found the last elf about two weeks ago and could not put it down, now im on to the archer and i just wanted to say thank you and tell you how much i appreciate your work. its a quiet place to lose my self and thats worth way more than the price for the books.

V/r,
CTMSN Spence USN

(The original post and my response can be found here. click here )

A confession

Wow. I am really bad at this blog every day stuff. Sorry.

So, the confession? I put myself in the trilogy. I admit it. 

In The Lord of Lightning, the Archer discovers an Old Man fishing by himself on the wasted shores of Lake Ettonne. That's me. 

I'm probably younger than you pictured the Old Man. I mean, I pictured him in his late sixties. I'm in my earlier fifties, and I look nothing like the literary physical description of the Old Man.

But, that voice, those words, that's me speaking directly to you.

Every writer uses pieces of himself, and those he knows, to create characters. Plus, a writer who's been at it a while develops a 'voice'. However, that 'voice' is not always the writer's actual, unvarnished way of speaking, thoughts, idioms, or philosophy.

The Old Man is unadulterated me. That is what I had to say without the trappings and filigree of fiction. It is also the central theme of the trilogy. Read the Old Man's words again, you'll see what I mean.

cheers,

Kurt

musings on life

Very sick today. It seems I'm very allergic to the neighbor's cat. Almost like a mild flu, or a nasty hangover, today was all about getting well. Tea, as it turns out, makes me sick to my stomach when in  the throes of an attack like this. But, coffee makes me feel much better.

Strange how the body works.

The planet is covered in life. All life needs to generate some kind of caloric conversion to stay alive. The furnace of life needs fuel. Plants convert sunshine, air, water, and minerals into sugars via photosynthesis. Nearly, completely alien to the needs of the animal kingdom.

What if...

I LOVE those words. "What if..." is the jumping off point for all art. What if I could represent this person's visage with these oil paints? What if I could convey, by written words, the struggles of life in my home town, decades ago. What if I arrange these musical notes in this order?

What if we find life on other planets that satisfy their 'caloric' needs in a completely unthought of way? Well, the universe offers light, solids, liquids, gases, and combinations of those basics as converted by some other form of life. But...

What if... we find a form of life that meets its caloric needs through the transition of methane from liquid to gaseous states? It would probably be a very small, cow-like grazer, living on a place like Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. I can imagine such an animal being on a bacterial scale. And, it might not use  DNA at all! That would be a discovery that would set the world on its end.

Somebody get the Cassini people on the phone.

Kurt

self portrait

Hello. This is me.

Kurt

new world order

Although my primary job is to write and rewrite, and generate stories for you, I am going to try to post a little something, anything, here on this blog on a more daily basis.

So, today, I am about a third of the way through the second draft of the fourth book of the Wealdland Stories: Legends of Haergil and Conniker's Tale. 

The next book I'll be working on, Berand the Fool, keeps tugging at my imagination. I am taking lots of notes, but will hold off on the first draft until I get Legends of Haergill squared away. I have tried writing two books at once, and it doesn't work for me.  One always gets neglected, and sometimes ideas get duplicated.

I have a feeling, however, that the first draft of Berand the Fool will surge out of my head like a tsunami. I have thought about making it a NaNoWriMo project, but that never works, either, because the holidays inevitably intrude and must be attended. 

National Novel Writing Month must have been started by a modern day Scrooge who hated his family, otherwise, why set the project in November? 

I can just see some bent over crone cackling, "Let's ruin the holidays by making as many writers as we can write a novel! Hahahah. But, December will be too obvious! No! Let's set it up in November! And that way, when they fail, as they all do, it will ruin not only Thanksgiving, but Christmas and New Year's as well! aHAhahAhAHA!!!"

cheers,

Kurt

LoHaCt 2nd pass

I'm thirty pages into the second draft of Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale. It is going quite well. I'll try to up my page count in the coming days. I could conceivably be through the second draft by the end of next week. Which, of course means the release draws near. Huzzah!

I'm pretty happy with this volume. It will fill in a LOT of back story, set up the coming stories and generally entertain in a full and vivid way. I'm very happy with the two novellas mentioned in the title. I really think you'll enjoy them, too.

I had this idea to write a trilogy with an extended fourth volume that filled in all the historical and future events back in 2007. And, darn it, if I didn't actually accomplish what I set out to do. I'm very chuffed with myself. I planned something rather complex, and requiring a lot of effort, and I did it.

Which is kind of a relief  to me in a strange kind of way, because the whole over-arching network of books will total eighteen novels.

yeah.

Eighteen.

heh, heh. Of course, it's a gigantic endeavor. But who thought I could pull off the four novels I originally envisioned? I'll admit I had my doubts. 

But, here we are. The books continue to gain in popularity. I'll probably have to hire a pro editor at some point to really spit-polish the whole works. I know, I know there are some mistakes here and there. It's astounding how the mind fills in, or skips over what is actually on the page. But, I find I'm definitely getting better, the more I write. makes sense.

I have no idea if an actual print run is in the near or extended future. That really isn't up to me. It's much too time consuming and expensive to set up a printed edition of the books on my own. Some publisher will have to ultimately realize that they will make a truckload of money when they decide to print these novels. so, I wait.

In the meantime, my job is to write my heart out. 

I had hoped to have another novel, Berand the Fool, out by christmas, but that seems unrealistic now. Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale took a little longer to write than I originally planned.  To have a novel ready by christmas, I would have to write first, second, and third drafts in about two months. I can't see producing a work of quality in that short of a time. But I do hope to have that novel out early next year in the late winter. And if all goes well, you'll have The Tiger's Mouth in early summer, and then Ancient Science in late autumn, or early winter of 2013. 

I should, all things being equal, be able to produce three novels a year. Which means that in about five years time I should be done with the whole set, ending with The Sun in All Its Glory, the last Iounelle book.

It can happen. I've already proved I can do big things. Here's to even bigger things.


cheers,

Kurt

Question for readers of the Wealdland stories

Should I include my dictionary of Miranei, the elven language I constructed, as an appendix to the fourth book: Legends of Hergill and Conniker's Tale?

PG-13

Yes. The blog statistics here show search words and search engines, so I know how some have come here.


The search words today were "Is the Last Elf of Lanis suitable for children?"


yes. and no. it depends really... 


...on the age, or maturity of the child.


The story is one of courage, honesty, honor and, most importantly, community and what it means to stand with your fellow human.


But there is some violence. I wouldn't call it gratuitous, but it is there. The story is about a family thrust into a time of war.


There is nothing I would call overtly sexual, definitely not lurid, not even suggestive. A boy realizes he loves a girl after she is kidnapped. An elf comes to have deep emotional feelings for a mysterious Archer, who is human. But nothing that would make this work rated R.


There is no profanity. Not even the made up kind. That kind of thing doesn't interest me as a writer or a reader. I find most real people who use a lot of profanity usually use it to cover how unintelligent they are. I am interested in intelligent people. Characters, in my story, appeal to the gods of their age, some may say something like "Oh, Eann!" but is a plea of desperation and not an oath, blasphemy, or curse.


The bad guys are scary. They are called 'garonds'. They're pretty much equivalent to what we know as the Neanderthal subspecies of humanity. Ape-like, but organized into efficient armies, their natural gentle nature has been twisted into a violent military by a Dark Wizard.


I don't think there isn't anything in my book that wouldn't pass on television. If you let your child watch regular TV, then my book is about that speed.


Now there are many adult themes in this book, and by 'adult' I mean 'mature', the idea of what it means to be in a nation, a family, a village. What is honor, cowardice, courage, and betrayal? These things might go right over a young child's head, but eventually, these are things that every person of quality must think about. So, I think 'that is a good thing' as Martha Stewart would say.


There is a little magic, if that offends anyone. This is, after all, a book in the genre of 'fantasy', so expect wizards, elves, magic swords, and magic beasts.


Characters die. This isn't the kind of story where everybody wins and gets to live happily ever after. That kind of story is called a fairy tale. My works are more akin to mainstream literature in that the characters are in real jeopardy in their fictional world. For this reason... you may shed a tear or two. But again, that is a good thing. People leave this world, and it's good to talk about it and think about it. It can make you cherish each other, and forgive each other, realizing how precious is this time we have.


Finally, and most importantly, this is a work of adventure, like The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, The Martian Chronicles, Asimov's Foundation works, the book will take you away to a place that is imaginary but fully thought out. Like imagining a foreign land, this book will ignite the mind and fire the imagination. 


I hope this helps.




Kurt




also I would add that I have tried to create several, very strong, female characters: two mothers, a grandmother, a young girl, and a female elf all who stand for themselves, fight as best they can, and grow and face difficulty.


Many of the fans of these books are women, and I think that is no coincidence.