A Divided River

Another quick note

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Hello,

thank you to everyone who entered A Divided River Goodreads giveaway. Those who won should, hopefully, have been notified by now.

For those who didn’t or were unable to enter, A Divided River is on sale for the next seven days.
You can pick up a Kindle edition for 99p/99c here:

UK

US

And a reminder

Don’t forget that Beasts of the Wildlands, the follow up to A Divided River in the Tales From Vasini series, is out on 19 January next year and is available now to pre-order on Kindle. You can find it here in the UK (please check your local Amazon store if you’re outside of the UK).

A Divided River giveaway

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US people

In celebration of Beasts of the Wildlands, the second book of the Tales From Vasini series, coming out in 9 weeks away, I’m running a Goodreads giveaway of A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I.

You have a chance to win one of 100 Kindle editions of A Divided River.

You can enter here.

You have until 7 December.

Everyone

Beasts of the Wildlands is out on 19 January 2023. Pre-orders for the Kindle edition are open and can be found here:

UK

US

Canada

Australia

France

Germany

Netherlands

Please check your local Amazon store if your location isn’t listed above.

Mea Culpa

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I have an apology to make.

It’s coming up on a year since I released A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I. When I was editing and preparing it for publication I spent some time um-ing and ah-ing over whether to include a little teaser for the next The Vasini Chronicles novel, The Theatre of Shadows, and whether to include a publication date.

I was keen to give people a little taste of what might be in store for Doctors Marcus Fox and Elizabeth Reid, but I was hesitant about including any form of date.

I knew there was an inherent risk in giving a publication date that I would miss it. The flip side was that I didn’t want to include the teaser without giving some indication of when it would be available, and saying ‘Coming Soon’ for something that I knew wouldn’t be published for at least a year would just be inaccurate and annoyingly vague. So I finally settled on including the teaser with ‘Coming in 2018’. At that moment in time 2018 seemed reasonable, there was a lot of editing to do, but publishing it by the end of 2018 at the very latest was achievable.

Or so I thought.

As I’ve alluded to in other posts, things haven’t quite gone as expected for the past six months or so and periodic low-grade interruptions that have needed dealing with have taken up more time than I would have liked.

Rather than force myself to put out a half-edited book just to meet, what is in truth, an arbitrary deadline, I’m going to say now The Theatre of Shadows won’t be out this year. I will make damn sure though it is out as soon as it can be in 2019.

Coming in 2018 revised date

Two months later

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Okay, let’s see if I can actually finish this post before something else happens.

It’s been two months since my last post. I never intended it to be that long. Life, however, has not played along and other things have required my attention for the past few weeks. Nothing critical, nothing too bad, just a lot of low grade interruptions and irritations that by themselves would have been fine and nothing exceptional, but they all seemed to come along in a steady stream. When they haven’t required my attention, I’ve been trying to focus on writing a novella and editing The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.

What was going to be

Before I took my forced hiatus from here, I did manage to write a title and a sentence of a post:

Misprints

I’ve recently finished reading The Complete Maus – Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel retelling of his father’s experiences during the Holocaust.

I’d intended to write about how, though I’d found to Maus to be compelling, I’d discovered that my copy – that I’d received as a present several years ago – contained a misprint. A section of pages were repeated and, in turn, the final pages were missing. So, technically, I hadn’t finished reading it and won’t until such time as I can find a copy to borrow to read those last few pages.

I then planned on writing about other misprinted books I’d owned, including:

  • The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower by Stephen King, where a third of the way through the book I’d discovered that a section of pages had been repeated and that it then skipped ahead 20 or so pages. I’d bought the book in hardback and given the time between buying it and discovering the misprint, I’d figured that I wouldn’t be able to exchange it. I decided to set it aside with the intent of buying the paperback when it came out. Of course, I ended up getting distracted by other books, and when I finally went back to it, I’d forgotten about the misprint until I reached it again. I ended up buying the eBook (the first Kindles were three years away when I started reading the book), but only used it for the bit that was missing.
  • The first misprint I can remember coming across was in my first copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition. I was twelve at the time and had been saving pocket money since buying the Player’s Handbook a month earlier. We were visiting my grandparents, and I popped down to the hobby shop where I bought nearly all of my role-playing game books and dice for the first few years of my gaming life. The book was wrapped in cellophane and I didn’t get a chance to open it until I was back at my grandparents. After eagerly unwrapping it, I became very confused when I discovered that although the illustrations and the headings were there, there was no actual text. My brain tried to come up with an explanation for why the elements that were there were perfectly printed, yet the majority of the book was blank. The best I could come up with was that I was supposed to fill in the gaps in someway, that TSR as it was then, would release the content through some means and I was supposed to copy it into the book. By the time I’d admitted that it was a misprint, the shops were closed and I was forced to wait until the next week to swap it for a copy with the actual words.

Other things

So that’s what I’d intended to write about back in January. Since then I’ve been concentrating on, slowly but surely, editing The Theatre of Shadows. It’s coming along, not as quickly as I would have liked, but editing 180,000+ words takes time. The hope remains to publish it by the end of the year, but there’s an increasing chance it may be early 2019 instead.

The non-Vasini related novella I’m working on, after an initial splurge of writing has settled into a slower, more steady pace. I’m likely to finish the first draft (all being well) by the end of March. I tend to guess at what the final word count will be for each story I write. Lately the final word count has ended up 50% over my prediction. This time it looks like I may only be 10% over.

Back towards the end of January, I was happily surprised to discover that The Winter Fayre from A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I was shortlisted in the Best Novella category of the Subjective Chaos Kind Of awards – a group of bloggers who have got together to have some fun judging their favourite books of 2017. You can read more about their endeavours at Bethan May Books and at The Middle Shelf.

Anyway, here’s hoping that the interruptions are over and it won’t be as long until my next post.

The final state of the To Do List 2017

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I started writing this post on Wednesday and was originally going to say that I’d just completed my Goodreads reading challenge for the year – 57 books (plus 11 that I didn’t add to my Goodreads list for various reasons plus many, many of my daughter’s books). However, between starting to write it and posting it, I’ve managed to finish off another three books.

Either way, it seems appropriate, especially with the end of the year so close, to do a wrap up on my To Do List for 2017.

In some sort of order, here’s how things panned out.

Reading

  • Read at least 26 books and cut down my backlog of unread books (now over 300 thanks to Christmas presents)

Done.

I started with a target of 26 books. I ended up reading more than double.

According to Goodreads, of the 60 I listed on there:

  • The shortest was The Play That Goes Wrong by Henry Lewis at 80 pages and the longest The Terror by Dan Simmons at 936 pages.
  • The average length of the books I read was 303 pages.
  • In total, I read 18,186 pages.

Despite having now read most of the hardcopy books that I’ve bought or have been given to me in the past two years, and having read 16 books that have been on my shelves longer (since my teens in at least two cases), my ‘To Be Read’ pile has continued to grow. According to Goodreads, it now stands at 327 books. I blame the likes of Humble Bundle and their providing a means to support charities while getting a load of cheap eBooks.

My favourites I’ve read this year have been Saga Volumes Five, Six and Seven by Brian K. Vaughan (given that it’s the story of two parents struggling to bring up a child in a universe that is hostile to them and their child’s existence, I discovered Saga at just the right time as I entered the realms of parenthood myself – although my life is far less dramatic and I’m not trying to escape an interstellar war) and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (I always feel more intelligent and knowledgeable after reading a Neal Stephenson book – whether I am or not, I’ve no idea, but I feel it).

Writing

  • Edit and publish a novella and short story

Done.

A Divided River, the first of the Tales From Vasini books, came out in July.

A Divided River eBook cover

Done.

The Theatre of Shadows has been written. I’m editing it.

ToS Title

There’s a hint as to what the story may be at the end of A Divided River. At the end the hint says:

ToS Date

Although the intention remains to publish it late next year, there is always the chance it will get delayed. If it does get delayed, by damn, I’m going to make every attempt to get it out early 2019.

  • Write some more things (not all of them Vasini related)

Done.

A longish non-Vasini-related story was written. What was meant as a longish story but turned into a more full-blown novella set in Vasini (or rather just outside) was written. I’m working on a non-Vasini related novella at the moment.

The Vasini-related novella will be part of the next Tales From Vasini book, along with another, yet to be written, novella.

The novella I’m currently writing will end up being published as and when its finished and been edited to a point I’m happy to release it.

I’m not quite sure what to do with the longish non-Vasini related story at the moment. It could go with the novella, but they don’t really fit together. It’s probably a little bit too short to publish by itself, so may have to wait a little while to see the light of day.

  • Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel

Not done.

With everything else, this has fallen by the wayside. I’ve dabbled with it, but haven’t been able to put in the hours on I’d have liked. Which sucks, as its one of my favourite things I’ve ever written and has taken years to get to this point. Maybe 2018 will offer more of a chance to work on it.

The World

  • Hope that the bad decision making the world seemed prone to last year doesn’t have as much of an impact as it could and try to play my part in counteracting said bad decision making

I’ll say that this has been a bit of a mixed bag and (mostly) leave it there.

For those who may be interested in different approaches to politics, I’ll draw your attention to More United, a UK-based attempt at (as they put it) “a new way of doing politics, making it less extreme, less tribal and giving you more power to make an impact.” Rather than supporting a particular party, they support candidates who agree with their principles from across any of the political parties.

If you’re interested, check them out, if not, don’t.

Life

  • Become a father (at which point my to do list will likely be much longer and quite different from the above)

Done.

She’s awesome.

 

Happy holidays and all the best for the New Year.

Ellingsen’s Third State of the To Do List

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Given that we’re now over a month into the second half of the year, and quite a bit has happened in the past seven weeks or so, I thought it was time for a ‘To do list’ update.

Edit and publish a novella and short story

A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I has been out for three weeks now. The handful of reviews that have appeared on Goodreads have been really positive.

Should you be interested in having a read yourself, you can find it on Kindle, iBooks and in paperback.

Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel

With everything else that has been going on, not much has happened with this. Hopefully, I’ll get some time to work on it in the coming months.

Finish writing and then edit The Vasini Chronicles II

If you’ve already A Divided River, you’ll know that the next The Vasini Chronicles book is called The Theatre of Shadows and you will have seen a couple of clues about what it will be about.

I’m deep into editing the first draft and have lots of notes about what needs to change for the second draft. A lot of it at this stage is shuffling around events into a more coherent order and getting rid of sections that blatantly don’t add anything to the story. I’m tempted to make some of these deleted scenes available on my website at some point in the future, but we’ll have to see.

The Theatre of Shadows is the second longest story I’ve ever written (the longest in the long novel mentioned above). Overall, I’m quite happy with it. There’s a lot of work still to do on it, but, for the moment, I’m feeling positive.

Write some more things (not all of them Vasini related)

I’m coming towards the end of a Vasini-based story that was originally going to be a long story, but is now hitting novella territory.

Beyond that there’s a non-Vasini related novella that I’m looking forward to writing more and more.

After that will be another Vasini-based novella and then I’ll probably start work on The Vasini Chronicles III.

Read at least 26 books and cut down my backlog of unread books (now over 300 thanks to Christmas presents)

At my last ‘To do list’ update, according to my Goodreads page, I’d read 32 books. In the 14 weeks or so since then, I’ve managed to finish another 13 for a grand total of 45 books read this year. I’ve pushed my target up to 52 books.

Unofficially, though, I’ve already read 55 books as I’ve slipped in some books for research purposes.

Hope that the bad decision making the world seemed prone to last year doesn’t have as much of an impact as it could and try to play my part in counteracting said bad decision making

No comment.

Become a father (at which point my to do list will likely be much longer and quite different from the above)

Parenthood achieved. My daughter was born in June. Some things may be taking a little longer to do, but I have an awesome daughter.

A Divided River is here

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Welcome back to Vasini…be careful what colours you wear.

It’s here… A Divided River: Tales from Vasini I – the first book in the companion series to The Vasini Chronicles – is out today.

You can read it on Kindle, iBooks or in paperback.

(As always, for those outside of the UK, please try your local US, Australian, New Zealand or EU-based Amazon or iBooks store.)

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A Divided River eBook cover

Vasini, founded and rebuilt from the ashes left by the fall of the deities. A city-state divided by politics, class, philosophies and by the Sini river.

As the tides turn and the riverbed is exposed, mudlarks search the silt for valuables that have been washed into the Sini. In The Mudlark’s Tale, one mudlark’s find may be worth far more than he first thought, but it comes with consequences.

In the depths of winter the Sini river freezes, and the comte calls the Winter Fayre upon its ice. In The Winter Fayre, five citizens of Vasini find their lives intersecting and changing as they enjoy the festivities. A sergeant of the Palace Regiment watches for trouble amongst visitors to the Fayre. A pickpocket plies her trade. A palace bureaucrat looks to make political connections. A banker hunts for a mysterious young girl. A follower of a philosophical path attempts to make contact with a fellow adherent who may well be dead.

Tales From Vasini is a companion series of short stories and novellas to The Vasini Chronicles novel series. It tells stories of the wider world of Vasini and its environs. A Divided River contains two stories: The Mudlark’s Tale (a short story); and The Winter Fayre (a novella).

Inside Vasini 5: Rasah, Goddess of Obligations, Promises and Contracts

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Before the fall of the deities, Rasah was the goddess associated with obligations, promises and contracts. The youngest daughter of Shen-ak-Vhah, she was depicted as a young girl made of brilliant white marble with contracts and obligations carved into her. In honour of her form, and as part of their worship of her, followers of Rasah would tattoo contracts with the goddess onto their own bodies.

Since the fall, some city-states, including Vasini, have outlawed tattooing certain body parts (none have outlawed it entirely), to ensure that it isn’t the “covert” worship of the goddess.

Law on Tatoos stage 2

We interrupt this silence…

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I’m still on paternity leave for a little while, but I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who entered my Goodreads giveaway of A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I.

The signed copies will be going out to the winners in the coming days.

For those who missed out, the eBook of A Divided River is available for pre-order on Amazon and iBooks. It will be published as an eBook and in paperback on 21 July.

As always, for those outside of the UK, please try your local Amazon or iBooks store.

A Divided River giveaway

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As I write this on Tuesday, I have still yet to enter the realms of parenthood. By the time the post is actually published on Thursday morning (UK time), who knows what the situation will be.

Anyway, UK-based people, I’m running a Goodreads giveaway for the chance for you to win one of five signed paperback copies of A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I ahead of its release on 21 July. You can enter the giveaway here. You have until 6 July to enter.

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And here’s the copies of The Silver Mask from the last Goodreads giveaway just before they were posted on Tuesday.

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