Category Archives: epic fantasy

2015 Writing/Publishing Retrospective

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Yes, 2015 was an exceptionally busy year for me. It’s not that I write quite that fast but that I had no fiction released in 2014 with the exception of The Courtship, a Spiritwalker-related short story posted on my blog. Due to scheduling, two novels, a short fiction collection, a novella, a short story, and several long non-fiction pieces appeared this past year. I also attended four conventions.

Here is the 2015 rundown of professional (money-making) pieces [and a quick comment about when the piece was actually produced]. I don’t list blog posts on my blog or as guest posts elsewhere although I wrote several I thought were pretty ace.

January:

A review of The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein appears in Cascadia Subduction Zone.

[I wrote this in 2014.]

February:

The Very Best of Kate Elliott, a short fiction collection by Tachyon Publications, is released to quite good reviews and with an exceptionally excellent Julie Dillon-illustrated cover.

[All the stories in this collection were written prior to 2014. The introduction was written in 2014.]

March:

An essay titled Writing Women Characters as Human Beings published at Tor.com.

[An ongoing project that went through multiple revisions, I finished this in 2015. I hope to finish a companion piece in 2016.]

April:

A reprint of my novelette “On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the New” appears in Lightspeed Magazine (the story appeared for the first time in the short fiction collection). It is set in the Crossroads universe.

[This piece has been around some years but the final revisions were done in 2014.]

May:

I wrote the foreword for Speculative Fiction 2014: The Year’s Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary, edited by Renee Williams and Shaun Duke and published by The Book Smugglers Publishing.

[Written in 2014? I think? Or early 2015?]

Guest of Honor at SFeraKon in Croatia. I tell you this: The Croatians are THE BEST.

I’m already exhausted and we aren’t even halfway through the year.

July:

San Diego Comicon, panel and signings. BIG. REALLY BIG.

August:

My Young Adult debut novel, Court of Fives, is published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. The audiobook (narrated by the wonderful George Dolenz) is published by Hachette Audio. Among other things, CoF was listed as one of NPR’s Best Books 2015.

[First draft written Winter 2012/13, revisions 2013 into early 2014]

Sasquan/Worldcon, in Spokane, Washington. Fun for me. Bad forest fires for the people in Eastern Washington.

October:

Guest of Honor at Sirens Conference together with Rae Carson and Yoon Ha Lee. Wow, this was grand. You should come in 2016.

This month I also turned in final revisions for Poisoned Blade, Court of Fives 2, scheduled for publication in August 2016. I wrote the first draft and completed three revision passes, all in 2015.

November:

And then, yes, volume one of a long-awaited (by me if by no one else!) new adult epic fantasy, Black Wolves, published by Orbit Books.

[First draft written 2013-2014, revisions 2014/early 2015]

Black Wolves has an audiobook narrated by the fabulous Richard Ferrone, and published by Recorded Books.

December:

The year rounds off with two final pieces of short fiction.

Night Flower is an ebook only novella, a prequel set in the Court of Fives world.

[Written and revised in 2015.]

The Beatriceid is a short fiction feminist retelling of the Aeneid, in verse, set in the Spiritwalker universe and published by The Book Smugglers.

[Written and revised in 2014.]

Whew. What was I thinking?

Tomorrow: 2016 Prospective & maybe a resolution or three.

Listmaking: Epic Fantasy with Protagonists &/or Settings of Color/Non-White

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On Twitter @afrolicious asked: Any suggestions for epic fantasy books with Brown folx driving the action?

People threw out a few suggestions but I thought it would be worthwhile to ask if anyone knows of a list that has already been compiled. I am SURE there is one but I am evidently not googling well enough to find it this morning, pre-caffeine.

Regardless, I thought, why not mention some suggestions here.

There is a very extensive YA Protagonists of Color/Non-White compiled by Rachel Brown here but it is specifically for YA (Young Adult) novels, not adult epic fantasy. She also references a similar list for MG (middle grade) on Stacy Whitman’s blog. Marie Brennan has a Multicultural Fantasy list on her blog. And OF COURSE (ETA) Medeivalpoc on tumblr.

What epic fantasy novels/series can you name that are

1) reasonably epic (how to define epic I leave up to you)

2) include one or more (if in an ensemble cast) protagonists of color/non-white “driving the action”

3) the setting can be anything, of course, although I’m personally interested in how the protagonist interacts with the setting: Is the protagonist an insider, an outsider, or somewhere in between? And, of course, how the setting interacts with the protagonist.

Titles welcome. If you also want to add a brief (brief!) description of why protagonist and/or setting fit the question that would be cool but definitely not necessary.

 

ETA: Have had to close comments on WordPress site due to issues with spam

My 2013 In Writing

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For 2014: GoH at Fantasycon 2014 (York, U.K.) I’m super stoked! If you can make it, do! (September 5 – 7)

I also plan to attend Loncon 3 (London Worldcon), which is shaping up to be quite an event.

It’s unlikely I’ll be attending any conventions in the USA in 2014.

 

As it happens, 2013 was a remarkably packed year for me, publication-wise:

February 2013:

Apex Magazine‘s Shakespeare-themed Issue 45 included a reprint short story “My Voice Is In My Sword” and an interview.

 

May 2013:

Fearsome Journeys edited by Jonathan Strahan (Solaris/S&S) with an original novelette for this sword & sorcery/epic fantasy anthology, “Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine.”

 

June 2013: (the Big Event of my publishing year)

Cold Steel: Spiritwalker Book Three (the final volume of the trilogy)

Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and said “Elliott pulls out all the stops in this final chapter to a swashbuckling series marked by fascinating world-building, lively characters, and a gripping, thoroughly satisfying story.” Yes, that makes me happy. There are a number of reviews of the novel I really adore but I will spare you quoting them all because I am humble and polite that way.

 

July 2014:

Open Road Media published 8 of my backlist novels in ebook form. Whoo!

(The 4 Novels of the Jaran, the Highroad Trilogy, and The Labyrinth Gate)

 

August 2013:

The Secret Journal of Beatrice Hassi Barahal.

[The link is to the PDF version. The print version is currently out of stock BUT more copies are in and it should be available in the print version again by January 10.]

An illustrated short story, text by Kate Elliott and AWESOME black & white illustrations by the spectacular (and Hugo-nominated!) artist Julie Dillon. This was a blast to write and I love the illustrations SO MUCH. Let’s call it “Bee’s version of the events, with a coda.”

 

Fall 2013:

The audiobook for Cold Magic came out from Recorded Books.

 

October 2013:

Unexpected Journeys, edited by Juliet E. McKenna, an anthology of fantasy stories for the British Fantasy Society. An original novelette, “The Queen’s Garden.” This anthology is only available to members of the BFS, but I hope to reprint the story elsewhere in the upcoming year.

 

Also: ALL of the Crown of Stars novels (DAW in the USA and Orbit UK in the UK) are now availlable in ebook versions as well as print. Because The Crossroads Trilogy is also in e-format, all my published novels can now be easily obtained. E-books are changing the field in massive ways whose fall-out we cannot yet predict, but in terms of a backlist it has been a great thing.

 

That covers publication of fiction. My favorite posts of the year (ones I wrote):

The Creole of Expedition: Part One and Part Two

Strength

Charles A Tan kindly did a Storify of my tweets about “SF Civility”

Love and Infatuation in the Spiritwalker Trilogy

Spiritwalker Inspirations and Influences.

The Status Quo Does Not Need World Building

On Fan Art (and how it inspired The Secret Journal).

I’ve missed something I should have listed but if I’d remembered what it was I wouldn’t have missed it.

Liz Bourke did an interview with me on Tor.Com that I quite like.

And Aidan Moher (A Dribble of Ink) and I did a re-read of Katharine Kerr’s excellent DAGGERSPELL that I thought went really well.

 

What’s ahead for 2014?

The two convention appearances in the UK. And a lot of writing.

Forthcoming projects:

A short story collection with Tachyon Publications. (2015)

A YA fantasy (Little Women meet epic fantasy with a dash of Count of Monte Cristo) from Little Brown Young Readers. (2015)

An epic fantasy with Orbit Books.

I’ll keep you posted.

I have two more Julie Dillon illustrations, these in color, that I will be releasing into the wild ASAP.

Most importantly, thank you to all of my readers. This can happen because you are all reading/listening/etc, and I treasure each and every one of you.

 

FantasyCon 2014 Guest! An Anthology. & LonCon 3

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FantasyCon 2014 has invited me to be one of their Guests of Honor, together with Toby Whithouse and Larry Rostant. The inimitable Graham Joyce is Master of Ceremonies.

I am both honored and, to be honest, thrilled.

FantasyCon is the annual convention run by the British Fantasy Society.

Next’s year convention will be held in York, England, from September 5 – 7 (2014). The convention website can be found here. I have to say that the convention hotel looks wonderful, and York is a lovely city that I look forward to visiting again.

Anyone can attend FantasyCon (not just members of BFS). If you can come, please do! I have a secret hankering to hold a seminar on world building.

Meanwhile, the excellent author Juliet McKenna last year took on the task of editing an epic fantasy anthology for the BFS, an anthology to be distributed to members. She wrote extensively about her experience editing and about the anthology here. (It’s a great post well worth reading.)

Here is the fabulous Table of Contents:

A Thief in the Night by Anne Lyle
Seeds by Benjamin Tate
Steer a Pale Course by Gail Z Martin
The Groppler’s Harvest by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Oak, Broom and Meadowsweet by Liz Williams
The Sin Eater by Stephen Deas
King Harvest Has Surely Come by Chaz Brenchley
The Queen’s Garden by Kate Elliott

Again, the BFS printing will be for distribution to members of the BFS only. However, in early 2014 I will be able to sell e-rights elsewhere. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Finally, I can now confirm that (God willing and the creek don’t rise as my hanai great-aunt Sally Fetzer used to say), I will also be at LonCon 3 (Worldcon 2014) in London next August 14 – 18 (2014).

 

But wait! There’s more! Epic fantasy on the way

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Hard on the heels of announcing my new YA deal, I want to announce that:

I am also working on a new epic fantasy trilogy for Orbit Books.

Details and publication dates to come.

All I can say right now is that of last night I had 83,000 words written on book one. I’m hoping that’s about halfway but we’ll see. Don’t laugh. 150,000 words is a crisp, efficient length for an epic fantasy. RIGHT?

More later this week as I want to ask everyone a question about sex.