Fantasies, not all, but a lot, are designed to be big, sweeping adventures. The bigger and, er, sweepier, the better. But just how big have some of these epics grown? The answer – really, really, really big. Gabe Habash over at Publishers Weekly took a stroll through Robert Jordan’s never-ever ending The Wheel of Time and found out it currently clocks in at 11,308 total pages which equates to 4,012,859 total words! (I wonder how many of those words are “the”?) As Gabe also notes for comparison, GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (you might have heard of it, but maybe not, I don’t think it has vampires or zombies 🙂 is a mere 4,304 pages. A piffle. You can read the whole article here: http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=6069&utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Daily&utm_campaign=f6a3175e8f-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

My contribution to the genre of big sweepiness thus far, even when you include Ashes of a Black Frost not yet out, will probably be around 350,000 words all in, including the fine print on the back cover that lets you know a book about Iron Elves is, in fact, fiction.

If you want to see some folks who have done way more damage to trees than Konowa and the boys, check out this list compiled by Victor Stanciu at walkintomordor.com:

http://walkintomordor.com/the-longest-fantasy-series-and-why-we-read-them

So, the contest. Out of that massive list of huge fantasies (the sweeping is implied at this point) I’ve read exactly three of the series in their totality. If you can guess the three series I’ve read completely you will receive the complete Iron Elves series, in hardcover, signed by yours truly. In fact, I’ll pick three winners (randomly chosen) if more than one gets it right. Ashes isn’t out until October, but I’ll end the contest August 15 and announce the winners then (and you’ll get your signed copy of Ashes when it publishes). And to be sporting about it, you can submit three guesses. I’ll even give you a hint. It’s not Conan, Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, or surprisingly, Discworld.

UPDATE! It was pointed out to me this is insanely hard, and um, yeah, you’re right. So, even if you guess and are wrong, you are still automatically entered to win a complete set of signed copies. If anyone does actually guess right I’ll come up with an even bigger prize.

So which three series could it be…

For the longest time, I never ran or worked out with an iPod. A few months ago I found a little Nano that my parents had given me. I was about to drop it off at the Goodwill store, but decided to see if it worked. It did. Hmmm, says I. I went to the iTunes store and bought a couple of 69 cent songs just to try it out.

I’m hooked.

I checked the store this morning and downloaded 16 songs. I still enjoy running au natural, er, au audial (as in my ears are naked and wide open) but in the gym and on the subway the little Nano has become part of my attire.

I focused mostly on workout tunes today, and in no particular order here are a few of the gems I downloaded:

Stranglehold by Ted Nugent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c3d7QgZr7g

So What by Pink http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaz5tGl5Yho

Bang Your Head by Quiet Riot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEj6b5ZS0tA

Insane in the Brain by Cypress Hill http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5oWzB4Xgzw

The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5h-LAvQDCQ

When I was out on Friday with Myke Cole and Peter Brett we were talking about writing and listening to music. Both of them can do it. I can’t. Even music without lyrics mucks up my thought process. On the other hand, when I workout music acts a force multiplier and I go Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger).

I want to see the movie NOW!

Very interesting looking dwarves, but different in style from Gimli:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_an_unexpected_journey/pictures/#5

For those of you interested in the publishing process I’ll describe the latest with Ashes of a Black Frost. For those of you not interested…you probably stopped reading several words ago, so as you are no longer reading this I feel safe in saying your mother dresses you funny and you have a booger hanging out of your nose 🙂

After I handed in the manuscript for Ashes, my editor went through it asking me big picture questions like does this scene resolve this issue from way back in book 1 etc. After a short pout (authors believe everything they write is brilliant so it’s always a shock when someone disagrees) I stopped holding my breath and revised the manuscript. FYI, it’s bigger and better as a result of my editor’s input, so thanks Ed (yes, his name is Ed, Ed the editor). At this point, I sent it back to my editor (Ed) who in turn sent it on to a copy editor to add commas where appropriate and remove others where not, and otherwise make me sound like English is my first language. I then received the fully marked up manuscript to go over again and essentially sign off on the corrections, answer any queries (how can the sun be in his eyes when it’s two in the morning?) and resolve any discrepancies (in book one she smokes a pipe and wears a red dress, in this book she’s a goat).

With that done it goes back to Ed who then gets it to production. They’re the folks that take the manuscript and all the revisions and format it as actually pages in a book. The first set of pages so formatted are called, wait for it…first page proofs. This is the first time we see the manuscript as it will appear between the covers. It’s also the last chance (almost) to make any revisions. Significantly changing the book at this point requires a lot of reformatting by production which is both expensive and can change the page count of the book which in turn can alter the number of signatures (groups of pages bound together to make the book) which ultimately impacts the final thickness of the book and therefore the size of the spine. But wait, there’s more. If the spine changes then the parameters of the jacket need to change too otherwise it won’t fit quite right. And if the changes were big enough it could even change the final price of the book, but that would be an extreme example that rarely happens because it causes massive headaches for everyone from the sales force to the accounts.

Anyway, my revisions to the first page proofs were fairly minor with only a few tweaks toward the end of the book dealing with the resolution of some loose ends. There’s a tendency when re-reading to start to think of other ways you could have handled a scene, but unless it’s so stunningly amazing that angels will weep and birds will sing your name, you really have to fight that urge. If you don’t, you could end up re-writing the same book forever.

So I am happy to say Ashes of a Black Frost, the third and final book in the Iron Elves adventure, is done. I’ll see second pages to verify the revisions to the first ones, but in another month the files will be off to the printer. Everything remains on track for the October pub date in North America and the UK. The translations will show up later as naturally they take more time to create.