THE STORMLORD series (aka THE WATERGIVERS)
is on the Sara Douglass Award shortlist.

This is the inaugural award, in honour of one of Australia’s great fantasy writers, who made it huge on the international stage, and died far too young. It is really an honour to be one of the first writers to be considered for the award, and — win or not — I am truly humbled.

My latest book 

 is on the Aurealis shortlist for the Best Fantasy Novel (as well as on the Ditmar shortlist, as I mentioned on Monday). The difference between these two lists? The Ditmar is a reader voted award, and the Aurealis is a judged award.


This is my ninth shortlisting for the Aurealis for the Best Novel — without ever winning — which I suspect is some kind of record!

In short, this has been a terrific week for me. Will I win anything at all? I doubt it, as the books I’m up against are truly a wonderful selection by the best of Australia’s many talented writers (and in fact, there were many others who missed out, who could so easily have been chosen). It doesn’t matter. To know that judges and readers have loved my work enough to put them on a shortlist is the best compliment I could  have. 

 I would love to be there, to applaud the winners. Unhappily, a very important family commitment/celebration means that I will be unable to attend the awards ceremony, and I really do regret that the two occasions clash. 

USA Orbit edition

Sometime in the next week, you should be able to get your hands on a copy of Stormlord’s Exile, the final volume in the trilogy. That’s half a million words all together by the time you arrive at the end of volume three! And Publisher’s Weekly did say – twice in the same paragraph – that this last book is exciting, and so I hope you will enjoy the ride.

British edition — Orbit

I am already getting news about readers who have got their hands on a copy already, so now I am waiting to see just who puts up the first reader review on one of the Amazon sites, or Good Reads or the Barnes and Noble. And yeah, I am one of the pathetic authors who does indeed hang around looking for reader feedback.

Australian covers – Voyager HarperCollins

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Just received an offer for translation rights for a specific language of The Stormlord trilogy. I shan’t say any more than that for the time being as I haven’t signed on the dotted line yet, and things could go wrong on the way to a formal contract, but I am chuffed that one offer is in even before the whole thing is published in English.

And I heard a whisper that book 3 Stormlord’s Exile is not as bad as I imagine it to be in my nightmare moments…so today was one happy day. Oh, and it looks as if Australia might have a woman P.M. tomorrow morning?? Wow.

STORMLORD RISING is of course the second book in the Watergivers trilogy, and HarperVoyager have put up Chapter 1 here, and will put up Chapter 2 Friday the 22nd, just to get you all worked up enough to put your orders in at your favourite bookstore, right? The release date in Australia is March 1st, 2010. Which is about when Book 1, The Last Stormlord, has its release in US and UK.

And above is the cover, the work of the wonderful UK fantasy/SF artist Vincent Chong.

Oh, and for all you cold country peoples, that white stuff is not ice … it’s salt.

Happy reading!

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Like many writers, I go through long periods of self-doubt concerning my ability. I write for weeks – no, months, without anyone seeing a word that I have committed to paper. I re-read and re-work and re-read and re-work, until words and story are a jumble of impressions, no longer fresh or interesting to their creator because they have been rehashed so much.

I send the result off to beta readers, who come back with a load of criticisms that lead to more teeth gnashing on my part, and more reworking, and a load more doubt.

Then off it goes to editors and agent.

With Stormlord Rising, book two in this latest trilogy, this culminated in considerable praise. My agent, for example, thinks it the best thing I have ever written, and every time I send her a copy of a lovely review of The Last Stormlord, she gleefully informs me: “Wait till they read Stormlord Rising.”

And still I couldn’t see it.

The copyedit – two of them, in fact, came back, and I have worked my way through both over the past couple of weeks.

Now I have a printed-out copy of Stormlord Rising and I am reading it to make the final tweaks.

And today, suddenly out of the blue – it burst on me, that wondrous, joyous revelation: “Hey, you know what? This is actually good.”

I sent off the MS of Book 2 Stormlord Rising for copy edit – with a glossary added because many of you said you liked them*.

Now I am clearing the deck desk, ready for the plunge into book 3.

And as a continuation if my last post: apparently many fans of sff really don’t seem to like book trailers – at least those fans who follow the genre on line.

…For any of the following reasons:
“I want to do my own imagining, especially of characters and the world.”
“I can get what I want from the blurb.”
“They are mostly amateurish and boring.”
“What is on the trailer isn’t really in the book (unlike movie trailers.)”

*There was no glossary for book 1 and I have designed this one for people who need an aide memoire of who and what was in book 1.

Well, it started maybe not so well – with a traffic jam followed by a long overdue mammogram (squash) and ultrasound (squish). Perked up a lot at lunch with several friends who work for the Malaysian Nature Society, then was dampened down by their reports on the Various Strange Ways Authority Try to Wriggle Out of Taking Care of Our Mutual Environment, because Immediate Money is More Important than Longterm Economic Benefits and Health.

More traffic jams, then spent the afternoon with a very dear friend from University days who is recuperating from knee surgery.

Then, home again:
Editor emails me with the finished cover of the Oz version of Book One of The Watergivers trilogy, The Last Stormlord. (And here’s a tiny tantalising bit for you to look at on this post. Artwork by the very talented winner of the Best Fantasy Artist for two years in a row, 2007 and 2008, Vincent Chong. Aren’t I the lucky one!).
Then:
Agent tells me she thinks Book 2, Stormlord Rising, is the best book I have ever written. Wow. Double wow, in fact, especially as it is the middle book of a trilogy, usually a tough one to get right. Triple wow, because she has high standards.
Then:
She adds that I have an offer for translation rights for The Isles of Glory in yet another language (so far it is out in English, Russian and French). Fingers crossed that goes through. Yay. And I wrote the first book of this trilogy back in 1990, so it is really nice to know that it is still relevant and has not dated!

So there you are, apart from the squash and the squish, this was a pretty good day!

The shape*-eyed among you will have noticed a couple of things about the cover I put up a couple of days ago.

Firstly, it’s not the title we had decided on some time back. In fact a number of titles have been suggested during the baby’s gestation: Cloudmaster, Random Rain, The Rainlords, Rogue Rainlord, Droughtmaster, Stormlord, and so on.

The Last Stormlord is definitely it for US and UK. I am not absolutely sure about the Voyager Australia title yet.

Secondly, there is no trilogy name on the cover. That is quite deliberate. The books are simply going to be The Stormlord trilogy.

Thirdly, the date of publication has been changed to March 2010 from September 2009. But that only applies to US and UK – in Australia, publication date is still September 2009. This year. Slightly less than 6 months from now, in fact. (Eek, I had better finish that copy edit…)

Fourthly, that lovely quote from Kate Elliott. And yes, you doubters out there, she does read my books. And I read and love hers, too. Can’t wait to get my hands on book 3 of her Crossroads series.
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*Sharp-eyed, sharp-eyed. Grr. I am such a hopeless copy editor!