The Enchanted Quest: Publication Day!

By Allan | Monday, 25 January 2010 at 11:55
Category: Writing | Tags: ,

Well, it’s finally happened - book 5 of the Faerie Path trilogy (???) should now be in the stores in its hardback form. (I also think book 4: The Immortal Realm is due out in paperback at the same time).

I received a couple of copies of the book last week, and for the first time, I was able to sit down and read it through without needing to - or being able to - change anything.

One of the things that drives an author a little bit crazy on the first read-through of a newly published book, is when they spot things that could have been better - and it’s too late to change them!!!

These are usually only small things - descriptions that I think I could have written better - dialogue that could have been tweaked a bit to improve it, etc - but after a whole year of tweaking and polishing, it’s too late now. It’s now up to you guys to let me know whether you like the book - whether I’ve done a good job with it or not.

I hope you’ll get back to me about The Enchanted Quest - but can I ask one favour, please? If you want to say something specific about the plot -could you write to me via the contact page? I’d really like to avoid posting any plot spoilers online right now - at least for a few months.

On other subjects, I’ve just heard back from the American publishers about my storylines for Warrior Princess book 4 - and the good news for me is that they like the way the book is going! They had a few thoughts and suggestions, but on the whole, I’ve been given the green light to get writing. So, that’s my work sorted for the next two and a half months - writing Warrior Princess 4. It doesn’t have a title yet, but I’m sure one will pop up at some point!

Teenreads Nomination

By Allan | Wednesday, 13 January 2010 at 13:45
Category: Writing | Tags:

Hello there - on a cold and snowy London morning.

I’m posting this to let you know about something that Arya told me about. Warrior Princess has been nominated for the Teenreads Children’s Choice Book Awards for 2009. The link is: www.teenreads.com:80/features/ccba_nominees_2010.asp. So if any of you guys would like to nominate Warrior Princess, that would be really great! Nominations need to be made by February 1st.

I’m also really pleased by the amount of mail I’m now getting about Warrior Princess from you guys! Thanks so much for all the kind words - I’m really thrilled that so many of you are enjoying the series. I’ve even had some people telling me they like it better than Faerie Path.

Happy New Year and other things

By Allan | Monday, 4 January 2010 at 14:33
Category: Writing | Tags:

Well, Claudia and I had a really good time on New Year’s Eve. We went to visit some pals who live in a place in London called Crystal Palace. They don’t actually live in a crystal palace - the palace the area was named after was destroyed in a huge fire in the 1930s. But the foundations of the Crystal Palace are still there - in a large park on a high hill - and you can walk down sets of stone steps with pillars and stone bannisters and statues on plinths all around, and you can stroll on grassy terraces that stretched out under the original palace. It wasn’t actually made of crystal - it was of glass, like a vast greenhouse! It was on a tall hill, and when it burned down, the flames could be seen all over London, apparently.

Anyway, I digress. We went to visit our friends in Crystal Palace, and drank some champagne at midnight, then we went out into the garden and we set off Chinese balloons. Do you know what they are? Just in case not, they are huge paper balloons, about three and a half foot high and a couple of feet across. They have a hoop of wire at the bottom that has a flammable square attached. You light the square and the paper balloon fills with hot air. Then, when it is fully inflated, you let it go and it soars up into the sky. We had them in yellow and green and blue. Mine had a kind of rocky start, and it almost turned over and I had to chase it across the grass to get it to fly right. But then it whooshed up into the air and flew way over the trees and the rooftops until it was like a star hanging in the sky. And right at that moment it started snowing, so that was pretty magical. The idea is to make a wish as you set your balloon off…but I can’t tell you my wish because that would spoil it. What might you have wished if you were me? Another ten Faerie Path books, perhaps?

Well, speaking of The Faerie Path, I took a look on the Amazon.com site a couple of days ago, and it seems that Faerie Path 5: The Enchanted Quest, will be in the stores on the 26th January! Hooray - at last!

I got a comment from Liz a few days back, really annoyed that Tania turned Edric’s marriage proposal down in The Immortal Realm, and asking why she would do such a thing. This set me to wondering what the rest of you guys think about this.

The thing is, it just seemed really obvious to me that Tania would say no - not just because she’s only sixteen, but also because it hit her as a real shock and kind of took her legs out from under her. Much as she loved Edric at that moment, she had never given any thought to marriage - to him or anyone else. Is she weird to react like she did, do you think? I’ve spoken to some famale pals about the same thing, and none of them think they would have agreed to get married at 16, no matter how much they loved the boy who asked - they all said they had way too many other things they wanted to do first, before settling down like that.

So, it’s over to you - was Tania out of her mind to turn him down like that, or do you think she was sensible to want to wait? After all, she really wanted to be with him, but just not married to him right then. (Oh, and when she turned him down, bear in mind she didn’t know about the whole “love is forever” thing.)