Author’s Notes: Weaver of Shadow
Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilisation is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph. That quote, as you probably well know, comes from...
View ArticleAnatomy of an E-Book Sale
I just bought an e-book, Yesterday’s Spy, by Len Deighton. So what, Bill, I hear you cry– you buy ebooks every day. Most of us do. What’s there worth writing a blog post about in that? Well, it’s a...
View ArticleA Map Of Kormak’s World
So finally the Kingdoms of the Sun have what all serious/series fantasy worlds seem to need– a map. This beautiful one was done by Chazz Kellner using Campaign Cartographer 3. (Thanks Chazz!) It’s an...
View ArticleNew Cover For Guardian of the Dawn
As you can probably tell, I have been sprucing up the Kormak ebooks recently. Here is the lovely cover that the talented Clarissa Yeo over at bookcoversale.com did for the short story Guardian of the...
View ArticleNice Review of Stealer of Flesh
There’s a very nice review of Stealer of Flesh here by someone who clearly understood what I was attempting. It’s attached to a short essay about the structure of fantasy novels which is worth your...
View ArticleWriting Fantasy Heroes: Tyrion
It’s Writing Fantasy Heroes week here so I thought I would chip in with my two cents worth about one of fantasy heroes I have worked on recently. I’m going to use Tyrion, one of the two main characters...
View ArticleAnd The Winner Is…
I have once again been struck down by Nurgle who has visited upon me yet another of his plagues. Overwhelmed by wheezing, sniffling and feverishness I decided to let the Writing Fantasy Heroes contest...
View ArticleKindle Worlds: A Very Clever Idea
Amazon seems to be on the verge of doing something really clever with its new Kindle Worlds program. It looks as if it has found a genuinely new way of developing, creating and marketing tie-in...
View ArticleThe Inquiry Agent Free on Amazon
I thought I had better mention the fact that my Victorian detective novel The Inquiry Agent is free on Amazon today. I have cancelled the automatic renewal on Kindle Select and I won’t be renewing it...
View ArticleThe Man Who Came to Blog – Vincent W. Rospond
I first met Vince Rospond in Nottingham many, many moons ago. He was then North American Sales Manager for Black Library. This, the fact that he was a very affable chap and that he was from New Jersey...
View ArticleThe Pomodoro Technique
Over the years I’ve tried many different productivity systems—I am a sucker for them just as I’m a sucker for any piece of software that promises to increase the number of words I get done daily....
View ArticleBest Books For Writers 2013
Just to be clear this is not my list of the best books for writers released in 2013. This is my list of the best books I read this year. Looking at the list I realise that I prefer technical books...
View ArticleTaker of Skulls Author’s Notes
Taker of Skulls is about the dwarves of Kormak’s world. They have been central to the mythology of the series from the very start. Kormak’s signature weapon, his sword, the badge of his calling and his...
View ArticleThe Advantages of Markdown
I was going to review the writing app Ulysses 3.1 today but David Hewson saved me the bother. If you’re interested I suggest you take a look at David’s thorough and fair review. I’ll just add that, as...
View ArticleRead Stealer of Flesh Free Online
You can read the first book in the Kormak Saga free online here. This is a result of my project to archive all of my books in markdown format for easy future reference. To create it, I found the...
View ArticleOcean of Fear Author’s Notes
With my usual relentless lack of efficiency I have finally gotten round to writing up the author’s notes for Ocean of Fear only two months after the book was released. Here they are now. The tortured...
View ArticleImproving Writing Workflows
I changed my workflow a lot this year. The most important alteration was that I started using markdown as much as possible. I’ve talked about the advantages before so I won’t go into them again here....
View ArticleBlizzcon 2015
I am just back from Blizzcon, brainstunned with jetlag, so this will probably be pretty incoherent. I was there to help promote Illidan, my upcoming World of Warcraft novel, due in March 2016. Number...
View ArticleSweet Sixteen
So yesterday I hit 16 posts this month, precisely twice as many as I managed in all of last year. I’m going to give myself a hearty pat on the back for that. I’ll also confess I am a bit stuck for...
View ArticleWriting Illidan Part Two
So there I was back in Europe, trying to figure out how to proceed. I had a long document full of ideas from the folks at Blizzard and the somewhat confused and incoherent notes I had taken myself in...
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