Showing posts with label Anarya's Secret. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anarya's Secret. Show all posts

29 December 2011

How To Buy My Books: Men Briefly Explained, Anarya's Secret And More

 

Books


You can find details of all these books at my Amazon.com author page.

If you want a print copy and can't find one, please email me.

Recent Anthologies


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04 August 2011

How To Buy My Books: Anarya's Secret, Transported, Voyagers, And More

Welcome! Since I'm between blog posts at the moment, here are details about how to buy some of my books. You'll find my recent posts listed on the left-hand side of this blog.

You can find details of all these books at my Amazon.com author page.


You'll also find my work in these recent anthologies:



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24 July 2011

How To Buy My Books: Anarya's Secret, Transported, Voyagers, And More

Welcome! Since I'm between blog posts at the moment, here are details about how to buy some of my books. You'll find my recent posts listed on the left-hand side of this blog.

You can find details of all these books at my Amazon.com author page.


You'll also find my work in these recent anthologies:



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18 February 2011

How To Buy My Books: Anarya's Secret, Transported, Voyagers

Welcome! Since I'm between blog posts at the moment, here are details about how to buy some of my books. You'll find my recent posts listed on the left-hand side of this blog.

You can find details of all these books at my Amazon.com author page.


You'll also find my work in these recent anthologies:

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23 December 2010

Anarya's Secret: An Earthdawn Novel - Now Available On The Kindle

My 2007 novel Anarya's Secret: An Earthdawn Novel is now available on the Kindle from Amazon US and Amazon UK.

It's the third of my books to become available on the Kindle. My short story collection Transported and the NZ science fiction poetry anthology Voyagers, which I co-edited with Mark Pirie, are also available.

You can find out more about Anarya's Secret in this introduction to it [note: some of the links are now out of date] and read the first part of the Prologue, which gives the context, derived from the Earthdawn universe, in which the novel takes place.

Anarya's Secret is also available as a hardback, paperback, or e-book (via RPGNow or DriveThru).

Anarya's Secret was the first in RedBrick's line of Earthdawn novels, which includes both originals and reprints, and you can see the full line of novels (and other Earthdawn products) on their site.

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14 October 2010

Welcome To My Blog

Welcome! If you're visiting for the first time, here are some of my books, and how to get hold of them.


You should also check out Helen Lowe's Australia/New Zealand F&SF Author Series, which she's organised to celebrate the release of her novel The Heir of Night.

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28 July 2009

We All Have To Eat: Anarya's Secret Moves Home

My Earthdawn novel Anarya's Secret, published in December 2007, now has a new home page on the revamped site of RedBrick, which has just released the Earthdawn 3rd edition. You can now find Anarya's Secret here:

http://www.redbrick-limited.com/cms/index.php?categoryid=67&book_id=12

Here's the first few paragraphs of Anarya's Secret, to give you an idea of what the book, and Earthdawn, are about:

Anarya's Secret - Prologue

We all have to eat.

Anarya grew up in a community sliding down the long slope to extinction. She played with toys handed down through the generations, and followed her parents from plaza to farm, from farm to market stall, from market stall to plaza, without wondering why there were so few other children, or why the lights were dim, or why so much of her world was shadow and silence. And as for the sun and the sky, she never thought of them, for she had never seen them.

Fifteen generations ago, the ancestors of her ancestors lived in the fertile valley of the river then known as the Volost, which rose on the northern flanks of the Tylon Mountains. There they farmed, and sometimes fought. They traded with the human communities of the Tylon and the t‘skrang of the Serpent River, and did not give undue thought to the future.

Then emissaries from the Theran Empire came among them and told them of the coming Scourge: the time when the magical potential of the world would be so great that Horrors from other dimensions would be able to enter and ravage it, devouring bodies, devouring minds. The people of the Volost took a lot of persuasion, but the Therans were persistent; and as the years went by, even farmers who never stirred from their soil could no longer deny the reports that reached them from north and south, of terrible things gathering at the margins of the inhabited lands, and breaking through to wreak havoc on the innocent and the ill prepared.

So the elders of the villages along the Volost swallowed their pride and began the construction of Kaer Volost within the mountains at the valley‘s head. They paid a high price in coin and freedom, but they built well, hewing as closely as possible to the Theran plan; and when the time came, they retreated behind their orichalcum doors and prepared to wait out the Scourge deep within the rock.

The doors and the barriers, both magical and physical, held against the worst that came to their world. Even as their valley was turned from fertile earth to Horror-haunted wasteland, its people survived deep within the kaer, and recounted their history in the plaza at night, comforting themselves with the hope that, though they would never again see the sun themselves, their far, far descendants would once more walk free on the surface.

But if Kaer Volost was a refuge, it was also a prison: a prison for the souls of the old, living out their days in a growing darkness, and a greater prison for the souls of the young, trapped in a cage they could not escape.

For the first ten generations after the doors were sealed it was, at least, a well-lit and well-provisioned prison. Using natural water and magical light, the people could grow all the food they needed, and though their skins became deathly pale from the absence of sunlight, and their bones were unduly prone to breaking, in most respects they were healthy enough in body.

Then the magic began to fade. Who can say why? It may be that a little knowledge was lost as each generation of magicians and adepts passed on its learning to its successors, until some irrecoverable threshold was crossed. It may be that the loss of magic within the kaer was connected with the loss of magic in the world outside, for it was at this time that the kaer‘s elemental clock first showed movement. The ball of True earth, suspended above its dish of True water, began, infinitesimally, to fall. The closer it got to the water, the less the level of magic was in the world outside; and when it reached the water and dissolved, then the magic in the world outside would have gone too, and with it the Horrors. Then all could rejoice, and throw open the doors of the kaer.

Eventually, the doors do get thrown open. It doesn't prove to be such a good decision, because we all have to eat ...

You can buy Anarya's Secret online as a hardback, paperback, or e-book (via RPGNow or DriveThru).

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18 December 2008

My Earthdawn Novel "Anarya's Secret" Is One Year Old

My Earthdawn novel Anarya's Secret was published one year ago today.

It's a fantasy novel, set in the universe of the Earthdawn roleplaying game - a game developed by FASA, and continued and expanded by New Zealand games publisher RedBrick.

Here's the publisher's blurb:

Kendik Dezelek is a young Swordmaster. He's tall, strong, and well-trained. But when he leaves his home village on the road to adventure, he soon finds that those things will only get you so far. In the land between the Tylon Mountains and the Serpent River, friend and foe are not always as they appear.

In a world still recovering from the Scourge, when Horrors ravaged the land of Barsaive, Kendik is soon forced to choose between a range of evils. He travels with the surly and disreputable Turgut brothers. He encounters the bloated tyrant Lord Tesek, ruler of the growing city of Borzim. And he is ensnared in the plots of the feared and mysterious House of the Wheel.

Most of all, he meets Anarya Chezarin, who enters his life from the depths of an ancient stronghold. Who is she, and what is her secret? It may cost Kendik and Anarya more than their lives to find out.

I had a great time writing Anarya's Secret! It's stuffed to the gills with plot, incidents, happenings, mysterious humans and even more mysterious non-humans. It's got adventure, romance and tentacles. If you're a gamer yourself, or there's a gamer in your family, I think there's plenty in Anarya's Secret to keep them entertained.


You can buy Anarya's Secret online as a hardback, paperback, or e-book (via RPGNow or DriveThru).

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12 November 2008

What I'm Writing

I set up this blog to write about and promote the three books I had published between September 2007 and June 2008 - All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens, Anarya's Secret and Transported - plus post about other writers, books, and matters of interest to me. I've been doing all that, and will keep doing it, but I realised a few days back that there was one topic I hadn't tackled: what I'm writing now.

I write short stories, poetry, and novels. Inefficient, maybe, especially for someone who writes part-time, but that mix doesn't seem likely to change in the near future - because I've got all three types of writing on the go. My main focus is my new novel, but short stories and poetry refuse to be entirely set aside.

First, the novel. I'm prone to calling it "my new novel", but that's not strictly accurate. Before I wrote Anarya's Secret, I had written another novel, with the working title "Antarctic Convergence". The jumping off point for "Antarctic Convergence" was a story I wrote in 2000, "The Wadestown Shore", which is included in Transported.

[SPOILER ALERT]

This is the story that begins:

I cut the engine in the shadow of the motorway pillars and let the dinghy drift in to the Wadestown shore. The quiet of late afternoon was broken only by the squawking of parakeets. After locking the boat away in the old garage I now used as a boatshed, I stood for a moment to soak in the view. The setting sun was winking off the windows of drowned office blocks. To the left lay Miramar Island, and beyond it the open sea.


and ends:

The sunken office blocks of the Drowned city were far behind me. The rich waters and virgin shores of Antarctica lay ahead. I made my way forward to greet them.


[/SPOILER ALERT]

"The Wadestown Shore" is (in revised form) also Chapter 1 of the novel.

I finished the initial version of this novel in 2004, but was unable to get it published. I decided to shelve it for a while, write something else (that turned out to be Anarya's Secret), and then revisit the novel and the feedback I'd had on it.

I did that earlier this year, and though there are some valid arguments against rewriting your first completed novel, I felt that the basic idea of "Antarctic Convergence" was still good, but that the novel had major structural problems, especially in its second half. So I'm rewriting it pretty much from scratch, and I'm almost half way through the redraft. More news, I hope, in 2009.

Next, the short stories. I've written three new stories since Transported was put to bed, and am currently working on a fourth which I'm trying to finish in time for an anthology submission deadline. That isn't exactly enough for a collection, and I'm putting completing the novel ahead of writing lots more stories, but I will keep plugging away. When new stories of mine do appear in print or online, I'll let you know.

Last but not least, the poetry. Although All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens was published in 2007, I completed the manuscript (more or less) in 2005, so I have had three years to get some more poetry written. But, whereas I can decide that I'm going to work on my novel for the next two hours, sit down, and get 1000 or so words written, I have found that I can't make myself write poetry: it arrives when it wants, and when it doesn't want, nothing will induce it - yes, it's that old favourite "the muse" again!

All the same, when checking the other day, I found that I had 29 poems which I'd consider putting towards a new collection - and what's more, 29 poems that fit a theme. Will I write more poems that fit this theme and assemble them beautifully into a collection, or will I go off on a complete tangent? Watch this space!

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28 September 2008

Self-Publishing: How Does It Stack Up for Authors?

The first two books I had a hand in were self-published. I edited two small anthologies, What on Earth (1992) and Electroplasm (1993), which contained stories and poems from the writers' group I belonged to in Dunedin - one of the writing groups to which there's a dedication in the front of Transported. Dan McCarthy designed and printed them, and we sold a decent number of copies of each - you can find them in some New Zealand libraries, and I still have a few copies of Electroplasm if anyone would like one.

My next three books, Boat People (poetry), Extreme Weather Events (short stories) and All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens (poetry), were published by Wellington small press publisher HeadworX - I say "small", but HeadworX publishes at least four books per year. My fantasy novel Anarya's Secret was published by RedBrick, a New Zealand games publisher, who publish the hardback and softback editions of their books via Lulu.com, which is a big self-publishing firm. And my short story collection Transported was published earlier this year by Vintage, an imprint of Random House New Zealand, a large New Zealand publisher.

So I've had experience with self-publishing, small press publishing, and large press publishing. The latter two haven't changed a lot since the early 1990s, but self-publishing certainly has. It used to be all about getting down and dirty and producing the book yourself, then selling it off to friends, family, and through the occasional bookshop that was willing to take a few copies on a sale-or-return basis.

Now there are companies that specialise in helping authors to self-publish, including the New Zealand-based BookHabit (which specialises in e-books) and PublishMe. PublishMe puts the pitch of the new self-publishers concisely:

The world of publishing is changing fast. Everyone is feeling it, from the authors through to the book stores. The age of Internet publishing has arrived and is redefining how written information is shared. Whilst such change is creating frustration and uncertainty it is also creating opportunities that have never been available so clearly before. One of these is the rise in the power of the author to become his or her own publisher.


That is the fundamental advantage that self-publishing offers to authors: there's no gatekeeper standing in the way. If you want your book to be published, it can be, without having to jump through the hurdles of acceptance by a traditional publishing company. And you no longer have to do all the scut work yourself: for a fee or a percentage, the self-publishing company will do it for you. They will even put you in touch with freelance editors, proofreaders and so forth. These roles are vital to ensure the quality of a book, but it's no longer only traditional publishing companies that can provide them (though, in my experience, publishing companies' editors do an excellent job).

Yet there is still one major hurdle to be surmounted, and I am not sure that self-publishing has cracked it. If you want people to buy your books (and some people are happy to offer them for free or a donation), then they have to be able to find out about them, and find them.

Traditional publishers have built up a sizeable infrastructure devoted to precisely this - a system involving advance review copies, promotional material, national and/or international distribution networks, and representatives who promote your book to bookshops. Despite claims that Amazon has revolutionised book publishing (note: article will open after an ad, which can be skipped), the traditional publishing industry makes a strong case that their approach still results in a better income for writers.

I have no ideological objection to self-publishing. But I am yet to be convinced that, except in rare "breakout" cases, it can reliably offer as much in the way of distribution, publicity, sales, and income for the writer as traditional publishing can.

Nevertheless, self-publishing has come a long way towards closing the gap on traditional publishing since the 1990s. In five or ten years' time, the current arguments against self-publishing may no longer apply.

What do you think?

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24 August 2008

Snippets: Earthdawn Sale; Readings and Launches; Valley Micropress; Likeable Things

Earthdawn 15th Anniversary Sale

This month marks the 15th anniversary of the roleplaying game Earthdawn. To mark the occasion, publishers RedBrick have discounted the prices of Earthdawn products until 4 September, so you can get my novel Anarya's Secret for a little bit less until then (in hardback, paperback, or e-book via RPGNow or DriveThru).

Readings and Launches

From the social pages: here in Wellington, it's been the season of readings, launches, and both combined. I wasn't able to make the launch of Sue Orr's Etiquette for a Dinner Party: Short Stories, but did attend the Wellington launch of AUP New Poets 3 - Wellingtonian Janis Freegard is one of the three poets included in this volume, together with Katherine Liddy and Reihana Robinson, and Janis ran an enjoyable launch at Mighty Mighty.

I was also an apologetic no-show at the first instalment of the annual Winter Readings Series, which featured the launch of three books by Mark Pirie, including Slips which I reviewed a while back. There's an excellent report on Helen Rickerby's blog.

I'll be there next week, though, when Helen's new book of poetry My Iron Spine is launched with Harvey Molloy MC'ing, and the following week sees the launch of Michael O'Leary's Paneta Street.

I've had a sneak peek at My Iron Spine, and it's excellent.

And the launches don't stop there: Harvey Molloy's Moonshot is not far away from lift-off!

(Enough capital-centrism: there's lots of readings and poetry events right round the country, such as Kay McKenzie Cooke reports on from Dunedin.)

Valley Micropress

I took part recently in a Montana Poetry Day event in Upper Hutt, and organiser Tony Chad kindly sent me a copy of the "Poetry Olympics" booklet arising from the event, and also a copy of the magazine he edits, Valley Micropress. This is a monthly - that's right, monthly - poetry magazine which Tony produces. Subscriptions cost NZ $30 per annum, and contributions are mainly from subscribers, but also include other work at the editor's discretion. If you'd like to know more, please email Tony, tony.chad (at) clear.net.nz

Likeable Things: Second Instalment

maps, a poem by Jill Jones

The Bibliophilia shop, which sells the handmade books of Meliors Simms

Blackmail Press 22

Strange Horizons

Eating Greengages, a beautiful piece of writing by Fionnaigh McKenzie.

A few things I've learned about writing poetry, a very useful and interesting blog post by Janis Freegard.

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10 August 2008

New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors

My fantasy novel Anarya's Secret, set in the universe of the Earthdawn roleplaying game, was on the ballot for Best Adult Novel at the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand's local equivalent of the Hugo Awards. The award was won by Russell Kirkpatrick's novel Path of Revenge, and I was impressed by the quality and range of the novels and other works up for awards, and the number of them that had found international publication.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) has provided a measure of this upsurge in New Zealand science fiction and fantasy by listing books in the field by New Zealand authors. The listing was based on one created by Jack Ross, subsequently updated by Alan Robson.

Although the listing (split into A-L and M-Z) is short on bibliographic detail in places, it does show that a lot more New Zealanders have successfully written science fiction and fantasy than is commonly assumed by those outside - or inside - the field.

There's more to come, too - for instance Helen Lowe's forthcoming YA fantasy novel Thornspell, about to be published in the US, and her subsequent fantasy tetralogy for adults, Wall of Night. Although it has flown mostly under the radar so far, New Zealand science fiction and fantasy is becoming hard to ignore.

UPDATE: There's more about Helen and her new book on the HarperCollins (Eos) blog.

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17 July 2008

Earthdawn News: A New Novel, A New System

Two quick items of Earthdawn news:

My Earthdawn novel Anarya's Secret has become the head of a dynasty (well, a line of books, anyway). RedBrick has now released a second Earthdawn novel, Dark Shadows of Yesterday, to join Anarya's Secret.

Also, Redbrick and Wizards of the Coast have jointly announced a tie-up between Earthdawn and the mother and father of all roleplaying games, Dungeons and Dragons: Earthdawn Age of Legend Announced for D&D Fourth Edition.

Things are happening in Barsaive!

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09 April 2008

How It Came To Pass: Transported

I posted earlier about the origins of my Earthdawn novel, Anarya's Secret. That started with a call from a RedBrick staff member who'd seen some of the writing linked from my website and thought I might be the person to write an Earthdawn novel for them.

The origins of Transported are a little similar, but more convoluted. In early 2007, I got an email message from Fiona Farrell, appointed to edit Random House New Zealand's Best New Zealand Fiction 4 anthology, to say that she had seen my story A Short History of the 20th Century, With Fries online in Flashquake and enjoyed it. Did I have any stories in the 3000-5000 word range, previously unpublished in book form, that I'd like to submit for BNZF4? I thought this offer over for 1.2 seconds, said I did, and submitted four stories, from which Fiona Farrell chose "Win a Day with Mikhail Gorbachev!" for the anthology.

That was rather nice. Striking while the iron was hot while not letting the grass grow under my feet, I mentioned to Harriet Allan of Random House that I was putting together the manuscript of my second collection of short stories (following 2001's Extreme Weather Events), and would she be interested in seeing it? She replied that she would. After we did some reordering and I added a couple of new stories, the deal was sealed, and my second short story collection, Transported, came into being. With the aid of excellent editor Claire Gummer, the manuscript was kneaded into shape


Transported Cover


I recently learned that Transported will be published on the 6th of June, and there's preliminary publicity up on the Random House NZ website. This is my first book to be published by a major publisher. Before the process started, I had a little trepidation about it - would I be chewed up and spat out by the giant corporate machine? So far, however, everyone at Random House has been an absolute pleasure to deal with, and I'm looking forward with no little excitement to launch day and beyond. I'll keep you posted!

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27 March 2008

Sir Julius Vogel Award goes to "Path of Revenge"

My novel Anarya's Secret didn't win the Best Adult Novel category in the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards. In a strong field, the winner was Russell Kirkpatrick's Path of Revenge.

It would have been nice to win, but I was most impressed by the quality of the field, not just in the Best Adult Novel category but throughout the categories. It's a very good sign that New Zealand speculative fiction writers are being so widely published.

The Awards were presented at Conjunction, the 2008 New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention, which was held at Easter in Wellington. I attended the Saturday of Conjunction as well as the awards ceremony on the Sunday evening. It was my first New Zealand SF convention for a while, and I was impressed with what I saw: attendance seemed to be good, and on the Saturday, I attended a particularly interesting panel on science fiction and fantasy appropriate for different age groups - or, in other words, what books are suitable at what ages to introduce children to science fiction and fantasy. "What can they read after Harry Potter" was one of the topics discussed.

I've now been nominated for a Sir Julius Vogel Award three times: I've been a runner-up twice, and on the other occasion, my book (in that case, my first short story collection, Extreme Weather Events) was the only book nominated in its category, and thus ineligible for an award. I guess I'll just have to keep writing science fiction and fantasy until I win one - which might, of course, set me up for a very long career.
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24 March 2008

Reviews Roundup

I posted a while back on the first two reviews of my poetry collection All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens. Several more reviews have now come in, and my fantasy novel Anarya's Secret has received its first review, which you can read in the Earthdawn Live Journal.

All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens reviews


In the New Zealand Herald's Canvas magazine on 8 March, Graham Brazier gave favourable reviews to both All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens and Johanna Aitchison's A Long Girl Ago. Despite insisting on describing me as a young poet (well, I look young, but I have this really dodgy portrait hanging in the attic), Graham said some very nice things about the book, describing it as a standout among the recent flood of local poetry publications, and saying "each poem stands on its own merit, a polar opposite of its predecessor". Given that Graham is the lead singer of New Zealand band Hello Sailor, it's perhaps not surprising that he draws particular attention to "New Live Dates", my poem about an aging rock star strutting his stuff one more time.

In Poetry New Zealand 36, Owen Bullock describes the book as "a second collection from this wry and insightful Wellington poet". He focuses on those poems in the book which incorporate some reference to the rich and famous, such as "Fitness" and "Oprah Relents", saying that "the results can produce a zen-like, frozen look at the ridiculous in life".

In Bravado 12, Michael Lee is kind enough to say that the last line of the opening poem in the book, "Elfland", makes his scalp tingle.He also notes the varied subject matter, and gives some extracts from his favourite poems in the book, concluding by saying that the book "gives us Tim Jones's lively, poet's mind".

In the March issue of a fine line, the New Zealand Poetry Society newsletter, Joanna Preston is less keen: she calls the collection "uneven", and particularly dislikes "Oprah Relents". On the other hand, she does like "First Light" and several other poems, so it's not all bad news.

So, three very good reviews and one less good one: that's not too bad a ratio.

I'll add links under "Sample Poems" on the left to those of the poems mentioned in this post that are available online. And here's "Oprah Relents" - see what you think.

Oprah Relents

Oprah relents
allowing us food and water.

Her guards look on
as we wash off the grime.

The symphony of severed heads
demands a new movement.

In fifteen minutes
we go live.


This poem was first published in the New Zealand Listener, 2 July 2005, p. 42, and republished in All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens.

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07 March 2008

How It Came to Pass: Anarya's Secret

Anarya’s Secret began with an email message in late 2005. It was from Richard Vowles of RedBrick Limited. He explained that RedBrick had recently taken over the rights to the “classic” version of fantasy roleplaying game Earthdawn from its American parent company, and were looking for someone to write a novel set in that universe. They had found my website, and thought I might be their man. Would I be interested?

At first I wasn’t sure. It had been many years since I had done any gaming. (I was very fond of Runequest – the first edition, set in Glorantha – and had played a little D&D as well.) I had never played Earthdawn, and was worried that this would lead to me inadvertently breaking the rules of the world. What’s more, novels set in gaming universes didn’t have a universally high reputation.

On the other hand, I’d greatly enjoyed many of the Shadowrun novels produced by FASA, especially those written by Nigel D. Findley, and my interest was piqued when I found out that Earthdawn is set in the same universe as Shadowrun, except that Shadowrun takes place in the future and Earthdawn in the remote past.

And just as I wasn’t yet sure that this was a project I wanted to take on, so RedBrick had to be sure that I could do a good job of an Earthdawn novel. So we agreed that I’d write and send in the first few chapters, and we’d see how both parties felt after that.

By the time I’d written the Prologue and Chapters 1 and 2, I was hooked. I had a protagonist, a naive but well-meaning young man called Kendik Dezelek. I had got him in over his head with some dubious new associates, the Turgut brothers. I had taken them to the mouth of an ancient, long-abandoned stronghold. And someone had emerged from the stronghold to meet them – someone with a secret.

Earthdawn is set in a world in which, though magic, the human race has split into many branches – some familiar from mythology (orks, trolls, dwarves), others not. Perhaps the most alien are the lizard-like t’skrang, and I decided that they would play a crucial role in the story. With that decision, the general outline of the rest of the novel fell into place.

So I sent in my few chapters and waited to see what RedBrick would say. They said yes, and I was away. Kendik Dezelek, Anarya Chezarin – the woman with a secret – and the Turgut brothers left the mouth of the ancient stronghold, Kaer Volost, and went on their way. Adventure, as they say, lay in wait. So did guards, wizards, petty tyrants, and t’skrang with a whole slew of hidden agendas. And if you play Earthdawn, you’ll have some idea what I mean when I say that the Scourge has never quite ended.

I broke the odd rule in my early drafts, but Carsten Damm, my excellent editor, was there to point out my transgressions and suggest creative solutions. With his help, I had a lot of fun writing Anarya’s Secret. I hope you’ll find it a lot of fun (and a lot of shock, surprise and excitement) to read.

Anarya’s Secret is available in hardback, paperback, and e-book formats.
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10 February 2008

Anarya's Secret on ballot for Sir Julius Vogel Awards

My novel Anarya's Secret is on the ballot for Best Adult Novel in the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, the New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards, which will be voted on by the members of Conjunction.

The full list of nominees is available online. It's great news for science fiction and fantasy in New Zealand that so many works are eligible this year.
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18 December 2007

Anarya's Secret Published

My fantasy novel Anarya's Secret: An Earthdawn Novel was published yesterday. I'll put up more information about it soon, but in the meantime, you can see more details about the book on the Earthdawn site. It's available in e-book, paperback, and hardback formats.

You can now read the novel's Prologue online.

In late 2005, shortly after New Zealand company RedBrick took over the Earthdawn licence from its American originators, they approached me to write a novel set in the Earthdawn universe. And that's what I set out to do. My hope is that Anarya's Secret will work equally well as a novel for those who play the game, and for those who've never heard of it before. You don't need to have played Earthdawn to enjoy this book.
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