REMEMBER HER?

Yes, it’s Blaze, the woman with an attitude… 

…and a very large sword.

 The three books of THE ISLES of GLORY will be legitimately available again through Hachette’s  ORION  SF GATEWAY  and you will be able to buy them via the usual eBook sellers, from 21st December, worldwide.                                  You can already pre-order!
See a review here:
Fantasy Book Review

Here’s what The Romantic Times USA had to say:

Rich world building will capture the reader’s interest. With a forceful
heroine who is mature and experienced, Larke crafts a fantastic tale
that moves beyond a typical coming-of-age fantasy. Fans of Lois McMaster
Bujold and Mercedes Lackey’s strong heroines will relish Blaze’s
adventures. 

Also available will be  HAVENSTAR (see below) 

HAVENSTAR
the story of a mapmaker’s daughter  
caught up in a world that shifts and changes from moment to moment, a world where changes can be fatal...

Here’s what Pauline’s Fantasy Reviews says about it.

Here’s a review from Tsana’s Reads

IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ & ENJOYED THESE BOOKS, how about giving them to friends as Christmas presents?

THE ISLES OF GLORY TRILOGY
THE AWARE       9780732276508
GILFEATHER     9780732276515
THE TAINTED    9780732276522

THE MIRAGE MAKERS TRILOGY
THE HEART OF THE MIRAGE        9780732281984
THE SHADOW OF TYR                     9780732281991
THE SONG OF THE SHIVER BARRENS  9780732282004


THE WATERGIVERS TRILOGY
THE LAST STORMLORD     9780732289294
STORMLORD RISING          9780732289300
STORMLORD’S EXILE         9780732289317

My last trilogy, THE FORSAKEN LANDS is published in Australia and worldwide by Hachette ORBIT, and if you can’t find it on the shelves in your local bookstore, ask them to get it in for you. (The Lascar’s Dagger, Dagger’s Path and The Fall of the Dagger.)

HAVENSTAR, my first published book, is now available in any format that you could possibly want. And I am utterly delighted to have it that way.


There is something extraordinarily special about a writer’s first published novel. You never forget that moment when you receive the news that you’ve had a book accepted for publication. The delight, the sheer disbelief, then wonderment that all those years of trying have not been in vain after all. 

eBook Smashwords cover

For me, there was also a devastating sadness. I received the news just before my mother’s funeral. She died without knowing that I had at last achieved a lifetime goal.

Although the first publisher went belly up very shortly after it was published, Havenstar has never failed me. You see, the people who read it have almost universally loved it. And that is incredibly rare. In fact, one thing an author has to get used to is a variety of reviews — you can’t hope for any book to be loved by everyone. 

Nonetheless, no other book of mine has been so widely loved as Havenstar has. Others have done well, but this one has been special to so many people, and they have told me so with their reviews, with their five stars, with their fanmail. Better still, new readers are telling me it hasn’t dated, not even 14 years after its initial publication.

Readers may love the book, but I am so grateful to them. Those readers have carried me through the bad years and at times when I’ve wondered if it was all worthwhile, or if I had another book in me.


I dedicated the original Havenstar, quite obviously, to my mother. But in this new edition I have added something: an appreciation to you, my reader. Thank you. You are special.


And to the new reader, I hope you enjoy it too.

TICONDEROGA PRESS: 
Is offering editions in hardback; Limited Edition hardback; trade paperback. Buy online here.

Isn’t this hardback edition gorgeous???

Australian bookstores: Try the independent bookstores first. Ticonderoga has a list here, where you have a good chance of finding recent Ticonderoga editions.

In UK and US and elsewhere, you can always order physical versions through your local bookstore.

At Amazon (if you must…)
Amazon  US $17.99 trade paperback, $26.60 hardback
Amazon UK ₤15.75 trade paperback, ₤21.94 hardback, (prices at the moment of writing)

Book Depository has copies too (also owned by Amazon).


Ebooks: $US 5.99
Available through
SMASHWORDS (click this link) offering versions for Apple, Kobo, Kindle, Adobe, Nook, Stanza, Aldiko, Sony,  PDF, your computer, etc.
 
 Note: The ebook version will eventually go up on Amazon, but I get a bigger slice if you buy your Kindle version through Smashwords!

Havenstar was found a new home. I have already been selling it for most e-readers from Apple to Nook to Kobo. (You can find the downloads at Smashwords here.)

But now I have an Australian small press who has taken on the book, to reprint it and sell it — paperback, hardback and a limited hardback edition! Fabulous! It will also be up on Amazon for folk who like to buy from that site. And thanks so much to Ticonderoga Publications for having the faith that this book can be republished, 14 years after its initial publication — and still sell. Watch this space for the publication date, in May.

It never sold many copies in its original form, because the publisher (an imprint of Virgin) went belly up with months of starting up.

It was the first book of mine to be published, but alas, there has always been a … sadness about that too.

I received the news that it had been accepted for publication just two days after my mother died. She never knew that I was finally about to accomplish a childhood dream by becoming the author of a published book.

 I wish she had known.

However, Havenstar, as the very first, has always been close to my heart. It wasn’t actually the book that snagged me my agent — that was The Aware — but it was the first in print. It has resonated with people so much that many read and re-read it, again and again.

Anyway, I am delighted to see that it is going to be available again with a new cover for another generation of readers. And I’m doubly delighted to be able to say I still have an Australian publisher — which is very important to me!

Last week, Rowena Cory Daniells tagged me to write a post about my “next big thing” by answering a number of questions.

Which presented me with a problem: I certainly have a next big thing coming — my next trilogy, but I don’t really want to talk about it, other than saying the first book, The Lascar’s Dagger, is finished and the second book is started … But to be published by whom, and to be out when, is not settled yet. Let’s just say, discussions are ongoing.

So I am going to talk about my immediate thing, which for you may be BIG or not — depending on whether you have read Havenstar, or not. So here goes.

1) What’s the name of your Next Big Thing?

Well, it’s actually an old thing big thing. A stand-alone fantasy, Havenstar, that was first published in 1999 in the UK under the name of Glenda Noramly, and which was soon out of print because the Virgin sf/f imprint folded. (Yes, that Virgin. You didn’t know they published books, did you?) Havenstar was also published in German and Russian.

As a very new author at the time, I found it hard to figure why a book should wend itself up to 81 on the general Amazon best seller list (of all book types) only to be out of print the very next day…  Talk about from supreme happiness to despair in 24 hours! (I know better now — weird stuff happens all the time in the world of publishing!)

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

Long before the days of GPS or Harry Potter, I had a conversation about how cool it’d be if you could look at a map in the car and see what was happening on the ground in real time — and dodge traffic jams, accidents etc. And my niece, the same one who did this map for Havenstar, said, “That’s an idea for a book…”  Which is kinda like waving a sardine under the nose of a starving cat…

3) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I wouldn’t. I think the great glory of reading a book instead of seeing a film is to imagine everything yourself. So go read Havenstar and imagine! 

4) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Do you really want me to reduce a 160,000 word novel down to one sentence? Go read it instead! Oh, all right. It’s a book about a mapmaker. And magic maps. And the looming end of a world. And … ah, see? I can’t. 

5) Will your book be self-published or…?

I am self-publishing it as an eBook. With help from my friends (thanks Patty and Rowena for advice, Jo for helping with the copy editing after I made a mess of it, Perdy for art work and gorgeous map) of which you can see a clearer version here.

6) When will
your book be available? 

It is available already. You can buy it at here at Smashwords. Just scroll down and click on the title, pay and download it straight onto your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony reader, iPad, iBook and just about any app you care to name! It’s also already up for sale on the Kobo site and will eventually turn up on Barnes and Noble sites too. I am in the process of putting it up on Amazon as well, but it will take a few more days for it to go live.

7) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I don’t need specific inspiration to write a book! I was born wanting to write books…


8) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?  

It’s a book for those who love traditional fabulist stories — it has all the tropes of the very best fantasy: a fellowship of unlikely companions, going on a journey, a land under extreme threat, a Dark Lord and his minions, adventure, tormented heroes, unlikely heroines, adventure, battles and unexpected twists and turns. And a love story, of course. And no, even though it has all those things, it’s not at all like Lord of Rings.

I guess the other intriguing thing about it  is how many people have told me they have re-read it multiple times.

And here for your amusement (its preservation showing just how obsessed I was with ratings at the time) is Havenstar at 81 on Amazon’s bestseller list, beating Visual Basic 6 Objects by Peter Wright…
Tom Clancy was at No 78 and 79, while Sword of Honour by Alexander Kent came in at No 80…

 (I wonder if it was possible to take screenshots back then? I just printed it off…ah, how things have changed!)

 Sometimes lovely things happen to writers, and this is one of them: when you find out that what you have written has inspired the creation of another art form.

Some of you may remember Havenstar, and the tainting that occurred to some of the people of that land when they crossed the areas of instability. 

Anastasiya Honchar, a Costume Design student, read and enjoyed Havenstar as a child. For a Foundation project, she designed the costume of a woman in Havenstar who “struggled through a doorway sideways because her skirts were too wide
to enter any other way“.

 
Anastasiya says the reason she chose such an obscure character is “because I wanted
to use my own imagination in terms of looks and personality, basing on
your description of the world. I imagined she would be quite extravagant
and ostentatious (hence the wide skirts). I thought that she could be
tainted as a peacock, which would suit her personality…”

This artwork is the result. You can see more of Anastasiya’s work here.

Thank you, Anastasiya. I think it’s lovely, and holds true to the spirit of the book.

.
Today’s blog post is here.

It’s all about how I got published in the first place, and why my first book was published in the UK, not Australia.

And to answer a question that keeps on cropping up: my next book (after the Stormlord trilogy is done with) will be a return to the Havenstar world – but no, it won’t be a sequel. It will have different characters.

.

Thirty-eight percent of the way into Stormshifter.

Yeah, I know, pretty slow going. Life keeps on getting in the way…besides I am having too much fun with having another writer to stay. Serious long reading/writing/books/fantasy conversations going on here.

After some nagging from Hrugaar, I wrote a book proposal for an in-the-Havenstar-world standalone, which I am now dying to write. If I don’t sell the Random Rain trilogy, I shall at least have something else ready for consideration.

Tell me, would you buy this book? Here’s the beginning of the proposal:

THE PRINCE, THE INVENTOR AND THE GARGOYLE CAT (working title)… is set in the same world as Havenstar, but in another country, at a time when Lord Carasma is at the height of his power. This time, Carasma has his sights set on the destruction of Mallow, the commercial and ruling capital of the land called Yedron.

Haze Oakhart is a Mallovian inventor of such useful items as an umbrella that opens and closes, but who never makes much money. At home he is much put upon by his scattily forgetful mother who nags him to settle down with a nice steady girl, and the two argumentative house imps – Dortliss Corkbarrow and his estranged wife Toffli – who live inside the roof beams and vie with one another to give him unasked advice.

Then, late one afternoon, Toffli tells Haze there is a gargoyle cat loose on the roof…

___________________

Husband and Hrugaar and I went to see the latest Indiana Jones today – loved the first half (up until the monkeys). Laughed until I had tears several times – wonderful fun. After that, though, I felt it was trying too hard, and the ending lacked a good-guy/bad-girl confrontation that had any meaning. Deus ex machina anyone?