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

[merlinscribe]

Thank you so much for your kind words. It's often difficult to set up a proper balance between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil (some times are more difficult than others *G*).

(We do not discuss *cough*Star Wars III: No Guts No Story*cough* in this household, as Diogenes dislikes wails of frustration and despair.)

And on to the questions!

The Obsidian books are collaborations. That being said, "collaboraiton" is a very broad church. Ms. Lackey set up the parameters of the world and often provides the entire plot, as well as other elements to incorporate into the story. That being said, most of the writing in the last two trilogies has been mine; Ms. Lackey reads the finished manuscript at will often polish a bit here and there before we send it off to Our Mutual Agent and thence to the publisher.

As for the actual physical book, the author has zero input into cover art, book design, and typeface/formatting. One learns very early on to judge a cover in terms of how likely it is to sell the book and to indicate the publisher's support of the book, and by that standard, Tor has treated us very *VERY* well. That being said, the covers are not very accurate...but then, that is not their function.

A partial list of the ways the books stray from accurate representation: Valdien is the wrong color, Ancaladar is much too small, the Elven armor is neither the right design or the right color, and so on. While some of these things are actually described in the course of the book, others, like the full details of the armor, are not--simply because everyone in the stories already *knows* those details and to enumerate them at length would derail the forward motion of the narrative.

If there's someone out there who can draw and who is willing to trawl the series for all of the various details of Elven armor, I would love to see the result. Until then, alas, we are all left with our imaginations.