This Is The October Open Thread

[merlinscribe]

So Blade of Empire is out on 10/24 and the cover looks like this. It's a striking cover—in a Soviet Brutalist way. (That's supposed to be Runacar, I suspect. Now let's see if the image drives sales the way Marketing hopes it will.)

Greetings from the far side of the autumnal equinox (for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere). It's been a busy summer here in the Enchanted Forest, though none of it has involved responding to emails and other notifications from Tor because they haven't sent any. Most of what I'm learning about the progress toward publication of Blade of Empire has come from your comments. They are greatly appreciated!

I have one other project to deliver before going back to work on Scourge of Fate, but it should be out of the way by the end of the month. George RR Martin is a cautionary tale for modern storytellers, as we are all well aware, and I have no intention of forcing those of you who have been gracious enough to come along with me on Vieliessar and Runacar's epic adventure to languish for years without the rest of the story...

Meanwhile, a question: do you want to see snippets from Scourge as it is written—even if they might contain possible spoilers? Or do you want to go into the third book in the trilogy completely unspoiled?

And now, onto the comments backlog...

Comments

[chichiri]

I'm really excited that "blade" is finally out!!

I've been a fan of these books since "the outstretched shadow" came out. I wasn't aware "crown" existed until a few months after it was published, but quickly bought and devoted it once I knew about it. "Crown" is my favorite of all the books, so obviously I've been eagerly awaiting "blade" ever since. Sometime during the wait I started visiting here periodically to get updates on "blade."

When I read "crown" my second child was just a baby. Now I have 4 kids (!!) and the only me-time I manage to carve out is web browsing/reading while my toddlers nap on me, which I'm doing now, lol. This means I'm difficult to get gifts for these days and am trying to be considerate by waiting for someone to give me "blade" at Christmas, because it's the only thing I really want at the moment. Waiting is really hard since I've been waiting for it roughly 5 years!

Anyway, this is my long way of requesting you put spoilers behind cuts with warnings for "blade" for at least a few months and "scourge" until publication. :) Though I'll probably cave and read the "scourge" snippits after I've read "blade", lol.

[merlinscribe]

I'm excited that BLADE is out too! And with four young children, I'm actually amazed that you have any "me time" at all, and honored that you choose to spend it reading something I've written. I promise to be careful and conscientious in screening and tagging spoilers, too. It will be something of a learning curve, I suspect.

[chichiri]

If I didn't make any me time, I'd go crazy, which would be bad for everyone, lol. I wish I got more, but hopefully it will get better when the twins start going to school.

I did get "Blade" for Christmas, but am rereading "Crown" first. No use rushing it since it will still be many months before "Scourge" is published even though you work at a faster pace than GRRM. :)

And I totally understand spoiler screening takes a certain mindset that may be hard to adjust to, not to mention trying to keep track what details were covered in each book may not be trivial, lol.

[merlinscribe]

(Because unlike some other Robin Hoods GRRM, this *is* my day job...)

Keeping track of what was said where is like herding overcaffinated ferrets, especially when Tor want so much information cut from each book. I do my best, but sometimes glitches will slip through. I appreciate both readerly forgiveness and also having them pointed out, so that I have some vague hope of fixing them.

I will do my best to tag and screen spoilers, potential spoilers, and stuff that has become AU due to cuts made in the final manuscript. (There's a good little bit of that.)