the official website of Allan Frewin Jones

Here’s some potentially very good news.

I have just signed with a California-based Literary Agency. This is the first time I have had representation in America, and I’m really excited about it.

It all started when my collaborator and friend, illustrator Gary Chalk started tweeting with an American blogger @BookaliciousPam. Some years back, when The Faerie Path and Warrior Princess books first came out, Pam wrote glowing reviews of both series. Gary didn’t know anything about this, and it was only when he tweeted that he would be in California for a few days this September, that Pam told him she was now a literary agent and asked if he’d like to meet up for lunch. He said he would. Now, Gary and I have been coming up with new book series ideas for some time without managing to get any UK publishers interested, so lunch with an American agent seemed like a very good idea.

They met, lunched and Gary signed up with Pam’s Agency: Foreword Literary. Meanwhile, Pam emailed me and asked if I’d like to Skype with her to talk over the possibility of me signing with her as well. I said yes.

I had to get up at 6.30am because of the time-zone difference (California is 8 hours behind the UK). It was 11pm in San Jose, and Pam was there in PJs, with a glass of wine and a black kitten called Loki God of Mischief. We had a really good talk, and I signed up with Foreword Literary the same morning. You’ll find a link to their Website on the Home Page, if you’d like to check them out.

Gary and I have already given Pam a few of our ideas, and she’s very hopeful that we’ll get something rolling very soon.

Watch this space, as they say!

I’m still reading through The Faerie Path books in order to get my creative head in the right place to plot out my proposed final short story tying up all the loose ends of Tania’s adventures. Fingers crossed that I actually get the time to write it!

hello there
first of all, apologies for not writing anything here for a while – I got caught up with other things and kept putting it off and off. In fact it was Claudia who said – hey, you haven’t written anything for months. That spurred me on.

In my defence we have also just moved home. If any of you have moved home, you will know how much time that all takes. Claudia and I now have a very nice house in Kent, and I have a brand new study in which I can do my writing. The picture shows my desk and a few of my book shelves and book cases – there are plenty more – and I still have to sort out all my books, which got randomly shoved onto shelves shortly after the move, just to get them out of the cardboard boxes.

Anyway – most of my time has been spent recently on my new spy-boy series for the UK – Codename Quicksilver. I think the books worked really well and I’m very pleased with them.

My other series, The Six Crowns, which I co-wrote with illustrator Gary Chalk is still being published in America – book five of the series: Sargasso Skies, was released in July. Reviewers are saying the series is like Redwall meets The Lord of the Rings – which is great! That was pretty much the idea we were going for when we came up with the series.

Some of you will remember that I promised to write a short story to be posted on this blog – a Faerie Path story that would tie up all the loose ends left at the end of book 6. Well, I’m still hoping to get that done all these months later. The real problem is finding the time to write something just for love – I know a lot of you were really looking forward to this story a while back – and hopefully you still are. First of all, I’m going to re-read the entire Faerie Path series so I can get myself back into that world, then I’m really hoping to get writing  – very soon, if all goes according to plan.

I’ll keep you updated more regularly now, I promise.

My new Writing Room

First of all, my apologies to people visiting my site over the past few months and hoping for some kind of update. As a writer who has to make a living from my work, I’ve had to move on to other projects over the past few months, and these new book series have been taking up a huge amount of my time. I do read all emails and comments from readers, and when you write directly to me, I always respond…but it’s been difficult to find the time to write a new Blog recently.

I still get emails and comments from readers of The Faerie Path and Warrior Princess begging me to write more. I would be happy to do this, but the publisher has made it clear that for the foreseeable future, they have other books they want to publish and continued books of The Faerie Path and Warrior Princess series are not a priority for them. The other point I do need to explain is that I do not hold the copyright to these series. This means I cannot go away and write more books without the permission of the publishers – not even online books, as some of you have suggested.

I do still have the hope that I will find the time to write the Faerie Path novella that will take the story up to the wedding of Tania and Edric, but as I said above, I would need to do this is free time when I was not making a living, because all I could do is to make it available free for people coming to this site.

As for Warrior Princess/Destiny’s Path – I only ever planned on four books in this series – also, although the potential for more adventures exists, I have not thought through what these might be even if the publishers did ask for more. (Actually, I do have a few ideas, but – see above – the publishers are not interested right now).

I was asked about ebook format copies of the fourth Destiny’s Path (Warrior Princess) series: Caradoc of the North Wind. I went on Amazon.co.uk and it is available on Kindle there. I think its just a case of searching the internet to find it. The book is certainly out there.

Lastly – and maybe some of you will be interested in this – I come to the ‘lost page’ of The Charmed Return.

Here’s the thing. When I first sent in the manuscript of the 6th Faerie Path book, it had a different ending – an ending that took the story on for another page. The publishers did not like the ending as it was, and asked me to take out the final page. At the time I thought maybe they had a point, but with hindsight, I think I should not only have left the last page in, but extended the book by a few chapters to give answers to the questions many of you have been asking. Too late for that now, sadly – but I do think it was a missed opportunity and I apologise for that.

Anyway – the missing page still exists. Would anyone like to read how the sixth Faerie Path book originally ended? I’m going to warn you in advance that it is ONLY one page – but I’d be happy to make it available on this site if enough for you are interested. If there is an interest in this, I also have two full scenes from The Immortal Realm that had to be edited out because the book was running too long. I wonder if anyone would be interested in reading these ‘lost’ scenes?

As for other work – I am in the very earliest stages of planning a new series with a strong fantasy element. I’m plotting this out with my friend and colleague Gary Chalk, and we’re hoping to have something for publishers to look at in the next few months. That’s really all I can tell you at the moment.

Anyway – please let me know if you’d like me to post the lost page of Faerie Path.

I hope everyone is having a great summer. Claudia and I are going to the Greek Island of Kefalonia in 12 days for two weeks of sun and sea. I’m really looking forward to it – this year the Summer in Great Britain has been dreadful. Grey and wet. Yuk!

Bye for now.

A little while ago I received the following email from a reader of The Faerie Path series. Emma asks some questions about ‘what happens next’ – and I would be very interested to hear from you people about which questions you would like answered. Also, are there other questions not covered by Emma?

Here’s what Emma wrote to me:

I really want you to write an epilogue for the series. I just finished reading the books and I’m totally hooked. I was wondering what happens after The Charmed Return. I was hoping for information on the royal family and the Mortal world. I  just want to know the basic stuff; if Rathina ever got married, if Cordelia and Bryn have kids, if the King’s choice at the end was to die to renew the covenant, if the King died how did the Queen and her daughters cope, if Connor ever became a doctor, if Tania’s Mortal parents adopted other kids, if Tania visited her Mortal parents again, how did the Mortal world deal with Lear’s attack, do Edric and Tania have their own family, are the inhabitants of Faerie winged again after the covenant is renewed, how does Mallory fare when her new child is born? There are hundreds of questions I am still pondering, but I don’t wish to take up any more of your time. I am desperate for answers and I enjoy authors who say I must use my imagination, but

I am hoping you are an author who will tell me what I want to know. I realize you must get thousands of emails so I don’t expect a speedy reply, although one would be nice, but I do want to know if an epilogue is coming out. If you cannot think of questions to answer, I suggest posting a question on this site asking for other readers’ opinions. I hope to hear back from you. -Emma K

So? Thoughts, anyone?

Good news at last. My copies of Destiny’s Path: Caradoc of the North Wind have finally arrived.

I am gong to start mailing the books out to the winners of the competition in the next few days, but remember that the books are coming from London, England, so if you live in another country, you may have to wait a couple of weeks before your book arrives.

Here is my list of people who have won:

Isabel from Germany, Amanda from Texas, Alexandria from Milford, Jamie from Australia, Ingrid from Champaign, Carolyn from Maple Grove, Brittany from Windsor, Emily from Singapore, Alyssa from Ashburn, Sarah from Marblehead, Celine from St Charles, Taylor from Olive Branch, Laura from Innisfil, Tayler from Southaven, Theresa from Houston, Sumayyah from Houston, Megan from West Seneca.

If you sent in answers and were told you had won, but you are not on the above list, please get in touch.

Otherwise, happy reading when your book arrives. It’s one of my favourites.

For anyone else, you should be able to find the book online somewhere even if it is not published in the country in which you live.

This is just a quick blog to let you know that the Destiny’s Path: Caradoc of the North Wind competition is now closed. The winners have all been notified – or they should have been. If you sent in an entry before the 14th of April, and you haven’t heard from me, please write again, otherwise, I’m sorry, but all my spare copies have now been won.

American readers of Warrior Princess – which is what the Destiny’s Path series was called in America – should be able to buy copies of the 4th book on import, or it is also available on Amazon.com as a kindle edition, for those who are up on the new tech.

There was some confusion in the book warehouse about my address – which is why I have not yet received my copies of the book. They were trying to deliver to a house four doors down the same road, but because they didn’t get an answer they sent the books back. This has all been sorted out now and I am expecting the books on Monday 16th or Tuesday 17th April. As soon as they arrive, I will begin signing and mailing them out to the winners, but please remember that the books are coming from London, England, so if you live in America or anyplace other than the UK, you should expect to have to wait two or three weeks for the book to arrive.

I’d just like to say thanks to all of you who sent in the answers – if I’d known you were all so knowledgeable on the series, I might have made the questions a little harder!

First of all, let me apologise for not blogging recently. I’ve been crazy busy with new projects and there wasn’t a whole lot of new stuff to tell you about Faerie Path and Warrior Princess/Destiny’s Path.

As most of you will already know, the American Publishers decided they did not want to publish the 4th Warrior Princess book. The series was bought by a British publisher, and they decided to publish all four books – under the new series title of Destiny’s Path. The 4th book is called Destiny’s Path: Caradoc of the North Wind, and it was released in the UK and Canada and Australia and New Zealand etc on the 5th April 2012. I’m really pleased about this, as you can imagine, because at one point I thought this book might never see the light of day.

I’ve been told my copies of the new book are in the mail, so it’s time for me to set up the competition to allow a few of you to win signed copies. I’ve been getting regular mails about this for a while now, so I know people are eager to get their hands on a copy. With that in mind, I’m going to work the competition so that the winners will need to have read the first three books quite carefully.

As always with my competitions, there is no specific closing date, and I will send copies to winners in the order that the correct answers arrive with me – so, first come, first served, and I’ll blog to let you know when all my spare copies are gone.

Also, as before, don’t respond in the comments section of this blog – go to the contact page and write to me from there. Any answers given as comments will be ignored. So, write to me with your answers and I will get straight back to you to let you know if you’ve won. Then I’ll be asking for your home address. If you are under 14 years of age, you should really ask your parents or guardians before giving out your home address, although once I have sent the book, I will not be keeping the information.

So, here are the questions I’d like you to answer.

1. When Branwen arrives at Doeth Palas in book 1, she is given two servant women to help her get ready for the welcoming feast. (Chapter 13). What are the names of these two servants?

2. What is the full name of Iwan’s father?

3. When Branwen and Blodwedd enter Chester in disguise in Chapter 15 of The Emerald Flame/Merion of the Stones, they encounter a fishmonger. Name the six fish he tells them he sells.

There you are – as I told you, first come first served!

Good luck.

I have received a box of copies of the third book in the Destiny’s Path series: Merion of the Stones, which has just been published.

Just to recap for those who may not know, Destiny’s Path is the British title for the series published in America as Warrior Princess. So, Merion of the Stones is a reprint of The Emerald Flame.

If you would like to own a signed copy of this book, all you have to do is to write to me and give me the full names of the four Shining Ones – and you’ve already got one right here!

Don’t send your replies as comments to this blog – send them via my Contacts page. The first ten people who write in with the correct answer will get a copy of the book.

On the Faerie Path front, things have not changed since last I posted – I’m going to chase up information about the audio version soon, and I’ll let you know as soon as there are any developments.

I’m still working on my new spy-boy series, Codename Quicksilver, the first two books of which are due to be published in the UK in July this year.