The Enchanted Quest - Chapter Two

By Allan | Monday, 30 November 2009 at 10:52
Category: Writing, book excerpts | Tags: , ,

I know the wait has been driving some of you crazy, and I know the new chapter I’ve just posted won’t make you any less impatient for the new Faerie Path book to come out…but here it is at last: Chapter Two of The Enchanted Quest.

I suppose the best thing about this new post is that it marks the point where I can tell you: Only Two Months To Go! The Enchanted Quest is due to hit the bookstores on 1st February 2010.

So, what else can I tell you about this new book without giving the game away entirely? Well…I think that by the end of the book the question of Tania/Connor or Tania/Edric will probably have been answered one way or the other. Also answered will be the question as to whether Tania will ever be able to get back to the Mortal World again. The Dream Weaver will make her presence known again. In the course of the journey, Tania, Rathina and Connor will encounter some dangerous enemies and some unexpected friendships, as well as being confronted by people they already know but whose allegiances are uncertain.

I think that’s about it for now.

Other news. The Charmed Return has now been through its UK edit and has been sent to the Publishers in New York for their verdict. I don’t imagine I’ll be hearing back from them before the end of the Year - but I’ll keep you in the loop regarding progress on the final book of this second Faerie Path trilogy.

Warrior Princess. I’m getting some very positive feedback about the new Warrior Princess book: Destiny’s Path. It’s great to know people are enjoying this new series as much as The Faerie Path.

Book four of the Warrior Princess series has been plotted out, thanks to a couple of long sessions with my friend and collaborator James. This week, the full storyline will be sent off to the New York publishers for their opinion. Hopefully, they’ll like it as much as I do. I plan on starting writing it early in the new year.

I have also been sent early copies of the UK editions of the first two Warrior Princess books. The covers are similar to the American ones, but with a different typeface - and on the cover my name is Allan Frewin Jones - not Frewin Jones as it is in America. Also, the first book is called Warrior Princess: Rhiannon of the Spring. This is the original title of the book. The American Publishers weren’t keen on it, so they dropped the “Rhiannon” stuff - but the UK publishers think it’s great.

These UK editions are not officially due out in England till October 2010, but they will be available in Australia before that date.

Other stuff? Well, I’ve been invited to a Christmas Party at the UK Publishers on December 2nd - Gary Chalk, the guy I’m writing Sundered Lands with is coming over from France (tomorrow!) and staying with me for a few days, so we can both go to the party. We’re planning on hinting to the important people at the party about a few new ideas we’re working on together. A new series or two, hopefully.

Well, that’s about it for now - hope you like the new chapter - and I hope it will keep you going till the book comes out on the 1st February 2010.

And The Winner Is…

By Allan | Monday, 16 November 2009 at 13:00
Category: Writing | Tags: ,

Well, plenty of you decided to enter the competition. For those of you who missed out and are wondering what this is all about - it all began when a fan asked where Edric got the White Rose that he gives to Tania in The Lost Queen.

I asked for you guys to come up with explanations, the prize for the answer I liked best being a signed copy of Warrior Princess book 1.

A lot of you went with the idea of Edric using the Dark Arts to get back into Faerie, which I think is a perfectly good explanation. One of you suggested that the rose appeared because it knew he was sad (after fighting with Tania) - which I actually thought was quite a cute idea - empathic Faerie flowers, I can see that.

But in the end, I found two particular entries that I particularly liked. In fact, I liked them so much (for quite different reasons) that I’ve decided to announce joint winners and send them a signed book each. (I am such a sucker like that!)

My favourite idea was so simple and so quirky and so unexpected, that I couldn’t resist it.

It came from Reese.  She wrote:

“I think Edric borrowed it (the rose) from Shakespeare, who isn’t really dead but is hiding out somewhere in Faerie writing plays.”

I love that idea!

But then I got a message from another fan: Regina Peters. Her idea wasn’t quite as original as the Shakespeare one, but she had written the idea up in full as a fanfiction story. You can find it on http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4760377/1/The_White_Rose

At least, I hope that link works! The reason I have awarded her joint first place is because the story is so well written, and fits really well in the world of Faerie Path - and could actually have happened, I think! Now, I know I didn’t ask you to write stories as such, but Regina just went for it - so I’m partly giving her joint first place for initiative and dedication.

To all of you who took part but didn’t win, don’t worry - I’m sure I’ll be setting up more competitions soon. In fact, if any of you have ideas for competitions to win signed books, why don’t you let me know?

So, finally - if Reese and Regina will mail me from the Contacts page, letting me know what name they would like on the book, and where to send it, I will get the prizes in the mail.

Speak to you all soon.

Allan

Warrior Path & Faerie Princess, more or less…

By Allan | Monday, 2 November 2009 at 10:08
Category: Writing | Tags: ,

It’s been a busy couple of weeks over here.

I got two parcels from my UK editors recently. One had a bunch of new hardback Warrior Princess 2: Destiny’s Path books in it, the other had a batch of Warrior Princess book one paperbacks. Some of the latter have now been sent off to the winners of that competition that was running in the fan site. (The one about the mountains, not the story competition).

Speaking of competitons, I have a new one for you to try out. Kyra posed the question: where did Edric get the white rose from that he gave to Tania in The Lost Queen. I have a signed Warrior Princess paperback to send to the person who comes up with the explanation that I like best. I’m going to give you guys two weeks to respond - so answers please, by Monday 16th November. The Lucky winner will get the book. Oh, and please send your answers as a message through the Contact page, that way no one but me gets to see what you’ve said. Suggestions already given up to this date will be accepted, though, so you’re fine, Shannon!

What else? Well, I think most of you have a pretty good idea by now of the process that gets a book out of my head and into your hands. Well, I received back a few weeks ago, the suggestions and comments from my UK, London-based editors, Karen and Rosie for The Faerie Path Book 6: The Charmed Return. They know the books really well, and they had some great ideas, most of which I agreed with and worked on.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of stuff I’m talking about, they would let me know if there were things they didn’t quite understand. It’s really easy for a writer, who knows the plot inside out, to forget that new readers may not be able to figure out who does what or why unless it is explained really clearly. So there were a few places, where Rosie and Karen asked me to explain things a bit more clearly. They will also tell me when I’ve repeated myself or contradicted myself. (That’s easier done than you might think in a book as long as Faerie Path!).

Then there would be sections where they think I spend too long describing something, or where a conversation goes on for too long, and then they’ll make suggestions for cuts - where I agree, I make the cuts, where I don’t, I explain why not, and usually the stuff stays in. An easy thing to do in a scene where there are five or six people, is to lose track of one of the characters. That’s how books are different to movies. In a movie, a character can just stand there doing nothing in the background, and everyone can see them - but in a book, if a characters isn’t doing or saying anything, they can kind of disappear. So what I do when a character in a scene gets lost, is to give them something to do - either some small piece of action or a snatch of dialogue, so that readers are reminded that they are there.

So, as you’ll see from the above, these editorial suggestions are all pretty minor, and don’t have any impact on the plotlines at all. But there can be quite a lot of them, so working on edits takes a while.

What will happen now is that my UK editors will take another look at the book and maybe get back to me on unresolved issues - and when everyone is happy over here, the book will go to the American editors of Harper Collins in New York.

Something you need to know about editors, is that they all want to make their own little changes. You all probably know someone who always wants to make little changes to things you do. Brothers, sisters, friends, parents - teachers, they can all have ideas for how you could look better or act better or be bettter. Editors can be a bit like teachers - you know, giving you 7 out of 10 and making comments about how your homework could have been improved. It’s like, you hardly ever (never?) get 10 out of 10 - there’s always something they think you could do better. Well, editors can be like that. If a book went through the hands of 20 different editors, each of them would have a whole list of “improvements”, and each list would be totally different to any other. It’s a little strange to have to deal with, but it’s all part of being a published author, and I’m not complaining at all!

So, what now? Well, I have a couple of things to do in the next few weeks. I have Sundered Lands book 6 to tinker with. I also have the Teach Yourself Writing book to look at again. Oh, and of course, I have a couple of meetings set up with my editor pal James, to discuss the finer points of the plot of Warrior Princess book four.

And by the time I’ve finished all that, it will almost be Christmas - and then it will be New Year, and then it will only be one month to the publication of Faerie Path 5: The Enchanted Quest.

Oh, and I have a few sketches of characters to do, I guess. Oh, yes - I almost forgot! I will be posting chapter two of The Enchanted Quest here on 1st December.

Warrior Princess 2: Destiny’s Path

By Allan | Tuesday, 20 October 2009 at 11:11
Category: Writing | Tags: , ,

Well, yesterday a big padded envelope arrived at my house with my advance copies of the hardback edition of Warrior Princess 2: Destiny’s Path. So now I know for sure that the book really does exist out there in the real world, rather than only on my computer!

I’m hoping to get the time to read it through soon. You know, what with all the trans-Atlantic editing and tinkering and rewriting that goes on, I only actually get to read the book cover-to-cover once it’s in print! So I have my fingers crossed that it’s good. I do know it has one of my all-time favourite characters in it. She’s Blodwedd the Owl-Girl. She was sent by one of the Old Gods - The Shining Ones - to be a guide to the hero Branwen. Thing is she used to be an owl. In fact, to explain it properly, she still is an owl, but she looks like a young woman. This proves tricky for everyone. I’ll give you a small example - owls sleep standing up - so Blodwedd doesn’t know how to sleep as a human. Plus, owls don’t chew when they eat. They rip bits off and swallow them whole, or they just chug small animals down as one solid chunk. So Blodwedd doesn’t even know how to eat - imagine trying to swallow a mouse whole and you get an idea of the practical problems she encounters. Plus she thinks like an owl - which is a deadly predator without any sympathy or compassion. Like I said, things are tricky with her in the mix!

Anyway, copies of the book should be hitting the stores in a few days now, so if your local bookstore doesn’t have it on the shelves, and you’d like to buy it, ask them to order it for you, why not?

On other issues, I’ve got the UK editorial suggestions back for The Faerie Path 6. I haven’t looked at them yet, because I’m in the middle of writing the 6th Sundered Lands book. Have any of you taken a look at the Sundered Lands pages? The covers are really great, I think, done by an artist who specializes in fantasy and sci-fi. The books are for a younger age group than The Faerie Path or Warrior Princess, so maybe they’d be good for younger brothers or sister or cousins or whatever?

Oh, and its suddenly gotten really wintery here in England. Not snowy at all yet, but with a cold north wind and grey skies and falling leaves. But on the bright side, this is exactly the time of year that I like to check out The Lord of The Rings. I have just bought myself the Audio CD version, which I’m listening to on an iPod kind of thing called a Sanza Fuse. Frodo has just arrived in Rivendell. When I was a teenager, I constructed a fake window on the wall in my bedroom and did a painting of Rivendell in it so it was like I had a magic window that looked out into Middle Earth. Do any of you do crazy stuff like that, or is it just me?

Anyway, I’d better get back to work now. Keep those suggestions coming for people you’d like me to do sketches of - I’m hoping to have some time in December to get my pencils out and do some drawing.

Someone suggested to me that I might like to add a page to this site where people could post fan-fiction. What do you guys think of that idea?

Cats, Mostly.

By Allan | Wednesday, 7 October 2009 at 09:11
Category: Uncategorized

As most of you probably already know, I am a big fan of cats. A pal of mine, who also knows this, forwarded me some URLs of a bunch of really funny animated cartoons of a cat, which I thought you might like to check out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1qHVVbYG8Y

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ffwDYo00Q

If any of you have a cat, you’ll recognize the behaviour! Apart from the baseball bat, the Cat-Man-Do one is exactly how Siouxsie behaves in the early morning!

By the way, while you’re here, I’ve been asked why I didn’t draw Tania along with her sisters - it was partly because I ran out of time, and partly because she already appears on the covers of the books. But if I had the time, are there any other characters from Faerie that you’d like me to draw?

The Enchanted Quest - Chapter One

By Allan | Friday, 2 October 2009 at 09:16
Category: Writing, book excerpts | Tags: ,

The eagle-eyed among you may have already noticed that I have posted Chapter One of The Enchanted Quest here.

Now then, a couple of things.

Thing One is that if you haven’t yet read The Immortal Realm, you really should NOT be reading the first chapter of The Enchanted Quest - it includes some really big spoilers. You’ve been warned, and now if you spoil The Immortal Realm for yourself, you have no one else to blame!

Thing Two is for those of you who have read The Immortal Realm. You will remember that the book ends with a brief “epilogue” that has Tania, Rathina and Connor on a boat.  Well, the posted chapter covers things that happen before they get on that boat. It starts pretty much where the main story of The Immortal Realm leaves off. As promised, I will be posting the next chapter at the start of December. In Chapter 2 they enter the town of…hey! Wait a minute! I’m not telling you that yet.

Anyway, as I’ve said before, you get the first chapter now, the second chapter in December, and the book itself hits the stores on the 1st February next year.

I know for many of you, this is too little and too long between, and next February is a million years away - but if I show you more or tell you more before February 2010, the publishers have threatened to beat me to death with a shovel…in a manner of speaking…and you wouldn’t want that happening, would you?

Pictures of the Princesses

By Allan | Wednesday, 30 September 2009 at 10:21
Category: Fan Club | Tags: ,

Ever since I posted some of my artwork on the Fan Club site, I’ve had requests to draw pictures of what I think the princesses of Faerie look like. Well, I have just posted some quick sketches of Tania’s sisters on the Fan Club website - go to Picture Gallery, and you’ll find them.

But here’s the thing: this is only what I think they look like - if you have them looking completely different in your imagination, then your version is as valid as mine.

The great thing about books is that they allow the individual reader to imagine what everyone and everything looks like. Sure, I’ll describe places like the Royal Palace and Crystalhenge and the sinister fortress of Dorcha Tur (oops - sorry…that’s in book five…), or people like the princesses or Lord Aldritch or whoever - but ultimately, you the reader will decide inside your head what they really look like. And that is why I prefer books to movies - in a book every reader is in charge of how things look, not some casting director, set designer or CGI computer freak.

So, what I’m trying to say, is that if you disagree with how I see Tania’s siters, that’s fine with me - in fact, that’s great. Don’t let my idea of how the girls’ look change the way you see them.

Warrior Princess Book Four

By Allan | Saturday, 26 September 2009 at 08:25
Category: Writing | Tags:

Hello there.

Now, I know most of you come here because you are enjoying The Faerie Path series, but there are also some of you who enjoy Warrior Princess - and I’m kind of hoping that my Faerie Path fans like my stuff enough to give Warrior Princess a try, especially as the first book is now out in paperback

As you probably already know, the 2nd book in the Warrior Princess series is due out at the end of October - and for me, its with this book that the series really takes off. It introduces one of my very favourite characters - Blodwedd the owl-girl. Acdtually she isn’t really an “owl-girl” - she’s an owl who happens to have been magically put inside a girl’s shape - but everything else about her is pure, 100% owl!

Anyway, I wasn’t writing this to tell you about book two, but to let fans know that on Friday I visited with my UK editor friend and colleague James, and (by phone) with the New York based editor Clare, to discuss the plotlines for Warrior Princess book four.

We call these “brainstorm” meetings. I had already given James and Clare a six page document of ideas and thoughts and “wish-lists” for the book, and this was where we’d work out what we liked and what we didn’t like, what made sense and what didn’t make sense and so on.

James is a really great guy to bounce ideas off - and in only a few hours we had split the book into four parts and had more or less worked out a story-arc for each part. The first three books take place in summer, but for this book we’re skipping ahead six months and setting it in the coldest and snowiest and blizzardiest winter ever.

I’ve been looking forward to writing about a snowy landscape ever since I started this series - I think this is probably because I like The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe so much - and that’s set in midwinter. Also, the book that got me hooked on fantasy in the first place - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner - has a climax in the snow after a ferocious blizzard.

Anyhow, James wrote up the notes of the meeting (I’m way to lazy to do that kind of thing) and has mailed them to me and Clare to make sure we’re all happy with what was agreed. Then James and I are going to have a few smaller meetings over the next month or two (probably over a beer or two…) to iron out more details. It’s so much easier to plot stuff if you can bounce your ideas off another person. (That’s a tip to all you aspiring authors out there!) I actually find that the process of speaking my ideas out loud helps me to come up with new stuff, and the great thing with James is that one of us can say “remember that scene in Buffy The Vampire Slayer where…?” and the other will say “Yes! And what about that bit in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom…”  and we put the two ideas together and come up with a whole new idea.

Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know what I was doing last Friday. And for those of you who are more interested in the Faerie Path, I’m expecting the UK editors’ comments back some time early in October. Watch this space!

The Charmed Return - First Draft

By Allan | Monday, 21 September 2009 at 08:53
Category: Writing | Tags:

Well, at half past ten on Saturday night I typed the words THE END on page 300 of the first draft of The Charmed Return and sent it off to the UK editors.

Now, as most of you know by now - this is not the end of the line for the book. For a start, don’t make too much of the 300 page thing - at this stage the book is typed up double-spaced. I’m not quite sure why this is still the case. It used to be so that editors could write their comments between the lines when the books were sent off on paper, but I think these computerised days, when the book is an email attachment, it’s just tradition.

Anyway, the book will now be read and commented on by two UK editors - Karen and Rosie, with whom I have been working since The Immortal Realm. They’ll be getting back to me in a few weeks, at which point I will check through what they have suggested and make all the changes that I think help make the book better. These changes can range from places where I haven’t explained things very well (places where I know what’s going on, but I kind of forget the reader doesn’t…), and places where I’ve repeated words too often - and places where things might work better if they are put in a slightly different order. It can also include some “strikeout” - which is where the editors put a line through words, phrases, sentances or paragraphs that they think are not necessary - you know, where I repeat myself or tell readers things that the editors don’t think are relevant. Editors are also really keen on pace and action - and they’ll always be looking to keep the story moving at speed, so I sometimes have to be careful they don’t want interesting stuff edited out just to keep the plot moving fast. Descriptions of places are always being edited down in this way - they think people get bored by long descriptions of places.

Something else they do is to ask me to put some dialogue in among long action scenes - and to put some action in among conversations - they also think readers get bored by action without conversation and conversation without action.

Very occasionally, they will ask me to take out entire scenes because they think they are not relevant to the plot. Sometimes I will agree to this, sometimes not.

But among all this editing, I can tell you one thing - they have never tried to edit the songs or poems.

Anyway, I’ll let you know when the book comes back from Rosie and Karen, and how much work they want me to do on it, and whether I agree with it all.

Artwork & Photo

By Allan | Wednesday, 9 September 2009 at 21:21
Category: Fan Club | Tags:

I just thought I’d let you know I’ve posted three more pieces of my artwork on the Fan Site - plus a photo of my cat taking over the office!

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