October 1-6

 

The Grasping Goblin is out this month but I have no promotional activities whatsoever, so I can simply admire the books whenever I pass them and get on with my work.

The series has been getting good reviews:

"The funniest horror story you'll read in a long while – Ian Irvine is a master of fantasy and this is the best yet." Good Reading.

"The Headless Highwayman is the first book in the Grim and Grimmer series from fantasy genius Ian Irvine, who manages to create a world which is believable, thrilling and funny all rolled into one." Aussiereviews.com.

"Entertainingly written in an energetic, descriptive style. An extraordinary fantasy world. Fast and furious and very funny." Reading Time.

"Irvine has great fun creating his world … Funny and fast-paced, Ike's story reads briskly, leaved with a little horror and a dash of scatological humour. A fun adventure for upper-primary readers. Recommended." Bookseller and Publisher.

"The Grasping Goblin takes the two reluctant heroes on a very wild ride … very funny too, as well as dangerous, gory and grotty. A grand adventure." Aussiereviews.com

Fantasy genius? I blush.

I'm still working furiously on Vengeance, Book 1 of The Tainted Realm, which seems to have gone on forever – and has. A while back I came to the view that the worldbuilding of the underground realm of Cython wasn't sufficiently original or different, so I've spent a good month redoing this (and gaining new insights into the world) and now I'm very happy with how it goes. Here's a revised series blurb:

The remote island nation of Cythe was brutally colonised two thousand years ago by the Hightspallers, but their realm is forever tainted by the means they used to seize the land. Cythe's history, art and culture were erased and its clever native people were reduced to despicable degradoes, on the verge of extinction when, inexplicably, they vanished.

For fifteen hundred years they have lived underground in Cython, served by their Pale slaves, the descendants of noble Hightspaller children once given as hostages to Cython but never ransomed. For all this time, life in Cython have been shaped by the alchymical books called the Solaces, sorcerously bestowed upon them by an unknown benefactor.

Now Hightspall is struggling under the weight of one natural disaster after another; its people feel that the very land is rising up against them. And when the last of the Solaces appears – the cast iron book called The Consolation of Vengeance – the Cythonians know it is time to take back their land.

Tali, a Pale slave who has just come of age, is the one person who can prevent Hightspall from running with blood. But Tali's four female ancestors were killed in the same brutal way and she knows she's next to die. The creator of the Solaces is now hunting her and what she bears within her is vital to his plan for vengeance.

To survive and gain the justice she craves, Tali must escape Cython, though no slave ever has. To beat her family's enemy, she has to learn how to use the unique, unruly magery hidden inside her – yet the only person who can teach her is the killer himself.

As she unravels the aeons-long conspiracy behind the killings, Tali's quest for justice turns to a lust for vengeance. But how can she avenge herself on a killer who died two thousand years ago?

Just received the final cover for The Desperate Dwarf, and I love it. Martin McKenna has captured Con Glomryt's smirking con-dwarf manner perfectly.

 

 

I'm now providing suggestions for the cover brief for Book 4 – The Calamitous Queen – though it's going to be hard to top this one.

Saw Legend of the Guardians, the fantasy movie about owls that our oldest son Simon worked on for 20 months at Animal Logic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8RKCmkOyB4

The critics were right about it – lovely animation, some truly beautiful scenes, let down by a story straight from The Hero's Journey. Still, the animators can't be blamed for that.

 

October 7 - 22 – Revisions to The Desperate Dwarf

 

These are due now and, though I like the book a lot, there's also a lot more I can do with it. I do another very hard draft, a week and a half's worth, followed by a quick tidying-up draft and send it off. It's now over 47,000 words and we're working to 40-44k for each book in the series, but I'll attack that issue at the final correx stage next month.

This year has been a nightmare, far too many deadlines, and I'm now desperate to get back to Vengeance, but my editor has been pressing me for the final book of Grim and Grimmer, The Calamitous Queen. It's coming out next May but they want to have the initial edit done before everything closes down for the Xmas holidays, which means they need it by late October (clearly, impossible!) or a tad after that. And I haven't even put the first word on paper. Extreme measures are called for.

 

October 28 – November 10, The Calamitous Queen

 

Fortunately I don't have any consulting deadlines in the next few weeks so I psych myself up for an heroic effort – the kind that begins at 5 am and goes till late every day. First I do a very detailed plot outline, complete with snatches of conversation etc. This really helps because I can see where the work isn't up to scratch or not original enough, and change it before I begin. I do four or five drafts of the outline before I start writing, really pushing as hard as I can. I don't normally reveal my work in such detail, but since it's such a crisis …

 

Detailed Plot outline (11,500 words)		23-28 Oct	6 days
Draft 1	Day 1	29 Oct	6,014 words
	Day 2	30 Oct	8,000 words
	Day 3	31 Oct	8,500 words
	Day 4 (also had some office work)	1 Nov	4,000 words
	Day 5	2 Nov	8,000 words
	Day 6	3 Nov	9,100 words
	Day 7	4 Nov	3,100 words
Total Draft 1			46,696 words
Draft 2	5 Nov to 8 Nov		47,996 words
Draft 3	8 Nov to 10 Nov		49,700 words
Read-through then delivered on November 10

 

Don't get the wrong impression – I'm not incredibly productive, year on year. This is something I can only do when it's an emergency and it would never work for the first book in a series, but sometimes it can for the last, when I know the characters, the story and the world really well. But also, it has to be said, when I do have a great outline and can write the book really fast, it's usually a better book than the ones I agonise over for months or years, stopping and starting. Perhaps because I'm fully in the zone of the story the whole time.

It's gone to my editor now so, fingers crossed …

Shock! Horror! My astonished editor says she wasn't expecting to see it till the New Year.

But still, it's done, and my relief is palpable. Now, apart from a couple of weeks' editing and the proofing, my work on Grim and Grimmer is done and for the next year I'll be working solely on The Tainted Realm. It'll be the first time I've only been working on one series for one publisher since the year 2000.

And yet, it's not without a tear that I say goodbye to Grim and Grimmer, the most fun I've ever had. And How much I learned about writing, and writing humour, and creating great and wacky characters – and maintaining suspense. Sigh!

 

The Rest of November

 

I'm back to Vengeance at last, but still with interruptions. A quick trip to Melbourne to do some pollution sampling, and then the final edited mss of The Desperate Dwarf appears on the 17^th and I have to drop everything and get it done in a few days (because I delivered the edits late!).

But this comes with some very nice news. My editor loved The Calamitous Queen.

Spend 5 hard days on the final edits of Dwarf (I always make about 10 changes at this stage for every one my editor wants (must be very frustrating for them)). Once done, I go through the mss twice, cutting every surplus word, phrase, sentence and paragraph I can, and at the end have cut 4,350 words or 10%, which brings it within the word limit and also tightens and clarifies the book tremendously.

The proofs turn up a few days later and suddenly the Dwarf is out of my hands forever. I'll miss it.

Now my daughter Fiona delivers the social media book promotional plan she's been working on for quite some time, and it's fantastic. I've been thinking for ages that I needed to be doing more with Facebook and other social sites on the net, but am too overworked to do it myself. Fortunately Fiona does this kind of thing in her job.

There's one problem, of course – I have to provide the content …

Nice review of the Audiobook edition of A Shadow on the Glass (beautifully read by Grant Cartwright) on SoundCommentary.com.

 

 

December

 

Not a huge lot to say about this month. I had a reprieve of sorts – a week of consulting work I was to do in Brisbane has been put back to next year so I can just write, write, write on Vengeance.

In my spare time, I'm also working steadily through the huge amount of content I need to write or update for my Facebook page, and also for my website which is undergoing a major redesign and updating, with many pages of new content.

And finally, on December 17^th, it goes up.

http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author

On December 23 I deliver close to half of Vengeance to my publisher in Sydney, for book design purposes. This section of the book, I feel, is in good shape now, though there's still a deal of work to do on the rest.

It's almost time to put a close on one of the busiest years of my life. I'm having a nice wind down with family over the Xmas – New Year break, though I'm also working with Fiona on the Facebook site, putting in blurbs and cover images and my enormous FAQ file, and recording book readings. You can hear the first of these by clicking on the links from the FB book pages.

 

 

To end the year, nice reviews of the Tower on the Rift and Dark is the Moon audiobooks, and A Shadow on the Glass scores a listing in SoundCommentary.com's BEST OF THE BEST Audiobooks for 2010.

I was going to record some video interviews as well but will have to leave that till next year.

Gave myself the first Phryne Fisher omnibus for Xmas (haven't read Kerry Greenwood for ages) and I'm enjoying relaxing with some terrific reads quite unrelated to fantasy.

http://www.phrynefisher.com/

 

 

Ian's Contact details

 

Email: ianirvine@ozemail.com.au

My Facebook author page: http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author

Website (major redesign & revision will be up in late January): www.ian-irvine.com