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There were pints of Guinness here Saturday night

Red Sky at Night

Howell Hywell watched the sun sink into the clouds, setting the sky ablaze. Building clouds on the western horizon turned from black to purple, violet, angry red and intense orange, as the sun’s fiery disc sank behind their ominous bulk. Howell watched from atop Sparrowdown Tower, gazing into the distance. One paw absently touched the wire-wrapped hilt of the rapier suspended from an ornate black and green baldric at his side, which marked him as the Daywarden for Clan Hywell.

Howell’s whiskers twitched and he raised his nose to scent the air. Dust and pollen rode the growing breeze out of the westlands, but there was something else. His sensitive nose found the scent of rain, sodden and damp, rife with the promise of life. Beneath that lurked another scent, something acrid and tangy – danger! As the sky turned from blazing fire to gloom, he raised a carved black beetle horn to his lips and blew a resounding blast summoning all the clan home.

– Danger! Enemies! Fire! Foes! Danger! –

The call went out, summoning all of Clan Hywell to return to Sparrowdown Tower. More correctly, the horn blast summoned the mouse clan home to the warrens carved out of the living earth beneath the ancient stone tower over generations. A storm is coming, he thought to himself. Something wicked rides the wind this night. The Daywarden glanced over the parapet to the turf below.

The grounds surrounding Sparrowdown Tower had been transformed down the long years, generations of Hywell mice leaving their mark, changing the land. Orderly fields stretched away from the base of the tower, bearing row upon row of healthy crops – corn, squash, beans. Fruit trees grew in abundance down tidy lanes bordered by neat stone walls. At the base of the tower was a large clear area, left aside for drilling troops, though it had been generations since Clan Hywell had fielded more than a handful of warriors other than the Daywarden and Nightwarden.

Movement near the base of the tower caught the Daywarden’s eye. A figure emerged from the shadows and moved into the last of the dying sunlight, moving toward the east. Howell frowned as he recognized Aed’s red fur as the boy ran down the road, a sack slung over one shoulder. Aed had always been trouble, Howell thought, son of the Laird or no.

Howell had known the pup since he was a mewling pinky, burrowing blindly in the burrow’s soft lining. The pup had an inquisitive nature and a streak of daring a mile wide – he wasn’t a bad boy, but trouble seemed to have a way of finding him. Like tonight, Howell thought. He raised the horn again and blew.

– Danger! Enemies! Fire! Foes! Danger! –

He thought he saw Aed’s head turn, looking back at the tower, and then he was gone, off and running madly down the road. Howell sighed. There was nothing for it; the boy was bound and determined to do whatever it was he was about and as Daywarden, Howell had no time to deal with the recalcitrant son of the clan’s lord. With one final blast of the warning horn, the Daywarden descended from the top of the tower through a trap door. There was much to do. The pups and pinkies had to be secured in the deepest warrens and the Doorwardens needed to be organized. And he had to warn the Laird that his oldest son was out in the dark of night alone. There was a storm coming and Howell Hywell set about his duty.

• Into a Dark Land – Book II of The God Wars trilogy is well underway, and should be out in a couple of months. (Yay! Woot! Huzzah!)

• Book III of the trilogy has been outlined, and should be out early in 2013.

• I’ll be at Dragon*Con this year over Labor Day weekend – if you’ll be in attendance, say hi! (No, I’m not going to have a table or anything – going for fun).

• A new trilogy is in the works starting in 2013 – the first book will be The Breaking of Northwarden, and will pick up after The Clockwork Men, which was featured in Blood and Brass (if you haven’t gotten Blood and Brass yet, what the hell are you waiting for? Hit the Books link – it’s up top).

• I’ve got an exciting side-project going with Brad Joyce – it’s all hush-hush right now, but I can give you the title – “Hawksfall”. It’ll be something different. Something awesome. Be prepared!

• Oh, and all of my books to date are available on Amazon and enrolled in KDPS. That means if you have Amazon Prime, you can get ‘em free. Yup. Free. Imagine. Almost better than bacon (I do realize that’s close to blasphemy).

Anyway, in the meantime, make sure you’ve read Gods of Sand and Stone so you know what the hell’s going on in Into a Dark Land

Here’s the thing – to help fund his education, Brad’s doing commission work! $20 buys you an awesome, one-of-a-kind creation that is YOURS alone. What kind of commissions? Well, pretty much whatever you can throw at him. He’s pretty flexible (get your minds out of the gutter; seriously).

Every purchase goes toward paying for him to get his degree in broadcasting (he’s a talker, that one). So, what are you waiting for? Hit the link, dammit! LINK (yep, that one right there). That takes you to his site, specifically to his art page where you can check out some of his awesome work. Do it. Now. Oh, and you can read his original post about this whole thing right here. Seriously. Help an indie out.

Anyway, if you haven’t yet grabbed your virtual copy of Gods of Sand and Stone, Blood and Brass or At the Edge of the World, now’s your chance to do it on the cheap.

Hit the link for my Amazon US author page,

or hit this link for my Amazon UK author page.

W.

The main point was that publishers were just too afraid to go with anything “fantasy” that fell too far outside the mold of what those publishers knew they could sell. I have to agree with that thought, though there are some unconventional fantasy stories that spring to mind (Tad Williams, for example, or Patrick Rothfuss himself).

How afraid are those publishers to go with anything that falls outside their self-imposed lines of acceptability? It certainly makes sense from a business perspective, but is it fear keeping the Big 6 from going that route more often (some unconventional fantasies do slip through), or is it a sound marketing decision based on research? Are they crippling growth and expansion in the genre or are they giving fans “what they want” ? Are they telling readers what they SHOULD want?

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts here – I’d love to hear from other fantasy authors, as well as readers (perhaps especially readers!).

If you’re interested in breaking out of the mold, here are some of my favorite authors who don’t fall into the tried and true fantasy mold of elves, dwarves, humans and dragons battling to defeat the evil mage/king. Some are current, some are older and some are  indie:

• Tad Williams
• Fritz Leiber
• Roger Zelanzy
• Michael Moorecock
• Shawn Wickersheim (Indie author of The Penitent Assassin, which can be found here)
• Thea Atkinson (Indie author; her first ever YA fantasy Water Witch can be found here)
• Patrick Rothfuss (of course, lol)
• Lawrence Watt-Evans
• Robert E. Howard
• Karl Edward Wagner