This isn’t really a blog…this is just a blog to apologize for not blogging new blogs for a while - and to explain that I’ll be blogging again in a few weeks.
Thing is I’m up to my ears in Warrior Princess book 4 (No title as yet!) - I’m about 50,000 words in and it’s taking up most of my attention and energy right now. I should be finished with the first draft in about 3 weeks, though, after which, as most of you will know by now, it will go to the English editors for thoughts, suggestions and and comments.
It’s been a bit tricky to concentrate, as my friend and collaborator, the illustrator Gary Chalk came to visit a couple of weeks ago to discuss new ideas and to go to some meetings up town. I’ll let you know about the new ideas if and when they turn into something that will get published - meanwhile we’re just showing them around to publishers and keeping our fingers crossed. Oh, and we had some publicity photos taken - I’ll post one or two of them here when I get a moment. It’s about time you knew what I look like these days, rather than how I looked five or so years ago! (Grayer, mostly!)
There’s been a bit of bad news for German fans of The Faerie Path series - it’s called Elfennacht in Germany. The publishers have decided only to publish the first four books - the last two won’t be translated into German and published over there. As you can imagine, this will leave German fans rather up in the air - the series for them will end with the last scene of The Immortal Realm. A lot of Germans speak English these days, so I’m hoping that many of my fans over there will be able to pick up the books in English and follow the story that way. Shame, though! In case you’re wondering, it is because the sales of the books in Germany haven’t been great. So, you can see now what I’ve been telling you for a while - getting more books published is all down to good sales. And it will be the same in America - for sure there will only be a 7th book if sales of the first 6 are high enough for the publishers to think it is worth it.
Word of mouth from fans, online blogging and publicity, and all the MySpace and You Tube attention the series can get will help. Speaking of that, check out the following two YouTube videos:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj3GxfQKc9o
which has pix of actors who could play the parts of various characters,
and www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIyyJCkNT9M - which has a great little trailer of a possible movie if it was made in Bollywood!
The Publishers have also been in touch to tell me that they want me to sign two books for that Winter Escape promo thing they did in February.
Anything else? Well, I’m still working on getting a Gallery on this site and a Fan Forum - more news on that towards the end of April, I hope.
Okay, that’s it for this non-Blog Blog.
I’ll be in touch when there’s more news.
Meanwhile: keep spreading the word, people!
bye for now
Allan
Blog? What Blog?
By Allan | Tuesday, 23 March 2010 at 09:11
Category: Writing | Tags: The Faerie Path, Warrior Princess
Cirque du Soliel
By Allan | Monday, 15 February 2010 at 14:32
Category: Writing
Last Saturday evening Claudia and I celebrated Valentine’s Eve by going to see VAREKAI by the Cirque du Soliel.
If you have never heard of the Cirque du Soliel, let me tell you it is totally amazing and well worth checking out if they come to a town or city near you!
It’s a two hour show, full of tumblers and acrobats and high-wire acts and jugglers and all that kind of thing - and the costumes are so colourful the world outside looks like it’s in black and white for a while after you leave. The music is also wonderful and the performance is stunningly good.
I was watching it and thinking - this is EXACTLY the kind of entertainment I’d have at a Royal Wedding in Faerie! If ever a movie were made of the Faerie Path series, I’d want the Cirque du Soliel to perform in the Great Hall in the Royal Palace. If you’d like to get an idea of what they’re like, google Varekai Cirque du Soliel -and you’ll find some websites to look at.
Totally brilliant!
Oh, and for Valentine’s Day itself, we had champagne and red roses delivered! Romantic, or what?
Fan Mail
By Allan | Saturday, 13 February 2010 at 09:43
Category: Writing | Tags: The Faerie Path
this blog is aimed in particular at Kristal Patton - but also at anyone else who writes to me and doesn’t get a reply.
Thanks Krystal for taking the time to write to me and tell me how much you like the Faerie Path series. I did try to send you a reply to your mail, but my server rejected your email address and wouldn’t send it.
I just want to say here that I try to reply to all the mail I get from fans, and that if you don’t get a response, it means either the mail never got to me or I was unable to send one back.
I start the day reading fan mail and I always read everything I am sent - your mails mean a lot to me and I don’t want anyone who reads and enjoys my books to think I don’t care about you. I do!
Oh, and while I’m here - Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
Faerie Path Winter Escapes Promotion
By Allan | Friday, 5 February 2010 at 13:00
Category: Writing | Tags: The Faerie Path
Hi there! Some of you may have noticed mention of a special promotion that the publishers of The Faerie Path series are working on right now.
They have given me the following URL, so you might like to check it out:
Also, there’s more stuff on: http://seaofpages.blogspot.com
The seaofpages blog suggests that the book being given as a prize will be a signed copy - but I’m not sure that’s correct - Harper Collins the publishers certainly haven’t asked me to sign any for them. Anyway - if any of you guys win the book, get in touch with me by sending a message from the Contact page, and I’ll arrange for you to send me the book for signing.
Latest News
By Allan | Thursday, 4 February 2010 at 12:24
Category: Fan Club, Writing | Tags: Sundered Lands, The Faerie Path, Warrior Princess
Wow - February already! For the time being all the snow we’ve been getting in England has gone away - and we were getting plenty! Up to 16 inches in the Counties around London. I’ve had to trek to the bottom of the garden to break the ice from off the bird-baths, but apart from that, I’ve learned that working from home can be really great when there is four inches of snow outside!
I have been working on the suggestions for The Charmed Return (Faerie Path book 6) that came to me from the American editors, and the manuscript is back with them again at the moment. I think the book is not due out till January 2011 - which must seem like entire lifetimes away! The thing is, publishers like to have a “finished” book in their hands 12 months before they publish - I’m not really sure why, but it is partly to do with advance publicicty and print-runs and stuff like that. Hopefully, in a few months, I should get a cover I can show you and then some sneak-peeks like I did with The Enchanted Quest.
I have the green light for starting to write Warrior Princess 4 now - so I’m going to be getting down to that from next week. It should take me till about mid-April, so if I’m slow at answering your mails or posting new blogs over the next eight or nine weeks, I apologize in advance.
As the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed, I have a couple of new “Coming soon” books on the Home Page - and I’ve added some new information about Warrior Princess Book 3 (The Emerald Flame) and also more about The Sundered Lands series.
My information at the moment is that The Emerald Flame will be out in October this year. I’m intending to post some sneak-peek stuff for this in the same way I did for book 2 - but it will be a few months before that starts happening.
Some of you will have noticed that Marisa’s Fan Site is down at the moment. I’m hoping this will be sorted out quickly, but for the time being there’s not really anything I can do about it. Sorry.
On the other hand, I have been speaking with a friend of mine - the one who helped me to set up this AllanFrewinJones site in the first place, with the plan of adding a “Picture Gallery” page here. I can post some photos and drawings and paintings of mine here, as well as letting you see alternate books covers for other countries. And I’m also thinking that maybe I could post pictures that you guys create - I think it would be fun to see how you imagine the characters and places in Faerie look. Does that seem like a good idea?
Also, I’m considering adding a “Fan-Fiction” page, which might work a little like the Fan Site - letting you chat among yourselves and post your stories online for other people to read.Thing is, that kind of site really needs a moderator - someone who will regularly check what’s being posted and weed out spam mails and anything else that shouldn’t have gotten in there. I’m not sure I’ll have time to do that, but I’ll have a think about it and let you know what’s what in a little while.
A lot of you guys are asking about the possibility of a Faerie Path book 7.
Here’s the thing: originally I was asked to write three books. These books sold well enough for the publisher to come back to me and ask for three more. So, in answer to fans who are clamouring for book 7, 8, 9 etc - it’s really out of my hands right now. If the word is spreading about The Faerie Path series, and plenty of people are buying the books, then there’s a good chance that the publishers will want more. I know that some of you are already out there spreading the word - and the more you do this, the more likely it is that there will be a 7th and an 8th book.
Amy Havre posted a comment a few days ago, asking for good ideas about how to spread the word. So - why not let us all know your thoughts on this. If you’ve already started telling people, tell us what you’ve done, and also post some ideas about what you think might work. You know the kind of thing: airships flying over New York with BUY THE FAERIE PATH BOOKS! written on the side. That kind of thing! Over to you!
The Enchanted Quest: Publication Day!
By Allan | Monday, 25 January 2010 at 11:55
Category: Writing | Tags: The Faerie Path, Warrior Princess
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: Warrior Princess
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: The Faerie Path
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.)
Happy Holidays!
By Allan | Thursday, 24 December 2009 at 12:02
Category: Writing | Tags: Sundered Lands, The Faerie Path, Warrior Princess
Well, Christmas Eve already! Claudia has decorated our tree and our refrigerator is crammed solid, and most of the presents have been wrapped, so we’re all set for a few days off.
I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have posted and commented and written to me on this site - and all of those who have joined the fan club. It makes a huge difference to me to be able to interact with people who are reading my books and enjoying them.
If things go according to plan, the next Faerie Path book will be in the stores on 1st February 2010 - that’s only a few weeks away now!
I have some other news about which I am rather excited. Those of you browsing my site will have spotted a new series I’ve been working on with the illustrator Gary Chalk - Sundered Lands. Well, the good news is that the series is going to be published in America as well as in the UK. Interestingly enough, the series has been picked up by a publisher who has links to the publisher of Faerie Path and Warrior Princess. But as this new series is a fantasy adventure for younger readers (8-12 years old), the publishers don’t want it to come out under the Frewin Jones name as they think people might be confused. So, I’m to be called Allan Jones on the covers of the new series. Oh, and it probably won’t be called Sundered Lands in the USA. The publishers have asked whether they can give the series a different title, and I’ve said that’s okay with me (and with Gary, of course - co-creator!).
Although Faerie Path readers might be a bit old for these books, they will be really good for younger brothers and sisters and for young cousins and possibly even nephews and nieces. I’ll let you have more details as soon as I get them.
Meanwhile, I’m working on new ideas with Gary, which is a lot of fun. I also have the American edits of Faerie Path 6: The Charmed Return to work on in the new year.
Here’s the opening comment from the American editor:
Oh my goodness, I can’t believe book #6 of Faerie Path is here! Bravo to Allan for wrapping this final adventure up in so much fantastic drama, magic, intrigue, and suspense.
But then the editor goes on to say that there are some things she’d like me to look at again for various reasons - so I’m going to be busy with this for a few weeks in January.
Then what? Well, the American editors still have the storyline of Warrior Princess Book 4to look at - I haven’t heard back from them about that yet, but once I do and everyone’s happy, I’ll start writing that.
And some time in Jan or Feb, Gary and I will be having a meeting with a website designer to put together a website for Sundered Lands.
Well, I think that’s all that’s new for now. Once again, I’d like to wish all of you a great Holiday Season and a really exciting and happy new year!
Storytelling Competition Results
By Allan | Saturday, 19 December 2009 at 10:55
Category: Fan Club | Tags: Writing
Hello there - I just realized I haven’t put a new post up for a while! Quite a lot has been going on, though, and I’ve been kept pretty busy.
Here in the the south east of the UK we had our first snow of the winter yesterday - up to four or six inches around London, but there was only a thin coating where I live. I’m a big fan of snow - but then I get to work from home, so I don’t need to go out in it, except to go down to the bottom of the garden with a kettle to un-freeze the water in the bird baths and keep the wildbird food topped up.
My wife Claudia has to go out in the bad weather, poor thing! But it’s only a fifteen minute drive for her to work, so it’s not so very bad - and today she brought home our Christmas tree. I’ve just set it up by my desk, and I’m going to let it settle for a while before we start to decorate it. Because Claudia is German, we tend to decorate German-style - which means all white and silver with just a touch of red here and there. The lights are white and the hanging balls and bells and stars are silvery, plus we drape lameter over the tree. We inherited the hanging balls from Claudia’s parents - they are very delicate and made of very thin glassy stuff - so we have to be careful with them. Fortunately, Siouxsie the cat doesn’t find them interesting, or there would definitely be trouble.
Anyway, my chief purpose in writing this post is to let you know the results of that story writing competition that Marisa set up on the fan site a few months back. I have now had the chance to read through all the entires.
I’ll tell you guys one thing - every one who entered could make a living from writing if they wanted, I’m totally sure of that. I enjoyed every single one, and it was really hard to come up with a winner.
I was especially excited to read the ones that dealt with other aspects of the world of Faerie - like “Before Anita”, where Liz explained really well what it must have been like for Princess Tania when she first stepped into the Mortal World and got sick. And “Her Little Doll” by Laurelei was a great idea - seeing the attack of the Sorcerer King from the perspective of someone else in Faerie. I really liked that one a lot. And Kayla’s story of how childhood wings faded with first love was great - it’s such fun for me to see you guys taking part of the world of Faerie and adding stuff to it.
Christina’s Moon Spirit worked really really well, I thought - the idea of a love found but almost immediately lost was very intense. Oh, and I adored Reese’s idea of the elf who could make a carnation out of snow. That is a very Faerie idea indeed! I want to make a special mention of Kayla’s The Pigs On The Furniture story. I thought that was fantastic - totally weird but funny and engaging and a lot of fun. Come up with more stuff like that, Kayla, and you’re set for life!
But in the end - and it took a while, I can tell you - the story that really worked best for me was the one by Arya - the story of Ikos the Selkie. I know there are lots of stories out there of people saved by merfolk and suchlike, but somehow this story just rang really true to me - and also left a lot of questions unanswered, which is what a good short story ought to do, in my opinion. How had Elizabeth’s parents drowned? What kind of world is this story set in? Will Elizabeth survive her leap of faith? What is the underwater kingdom like? Do selkies always hear the thoughts of people about to drown, or was there a special bond between Ikos and Elizabeth? I really like thinking through questions like that after I’ve read a story. It leaves me wanting to know more.
So, well done Arya - all you now need to do is to go the the Contact Page and send me a message with your full address on it, and with the name you’d like the book dedicated to when I sign it. Then you’ll need to be patient with me for about 6 weeks, I think. I’m expecting to receive my copies of The Enchanted Realm a week or so before publication - 1st Feb next year - and I’ll sign and send your copy off as soon as I get it.
I do have more news - but I think I’ll save that for later…it’s nothing mind-blowing - just some updates on what’s going on work-wise for me. So, for now, congratulations to Arya - and I guess its maybe time for me and Marisa to come up with another competition. Anyone out there got any ideas?