Elves, dwarves, & orcs, oh my!

I'm a huge Tolkien fan, by which I don't mean that I can write elvish or remember the family trees implicit in the Silmarillion, though I can recite some of the songs from Lord of the Rings...

I'm a huge fan in that the story of JRR told owns a significant chunk of my heart and that the landscape of my imagination will always be mapped, at least in part, with Tolkien's iconic mountains, trees, and hills.

So, I'm in complete sympathy with those readers who want MORE. The ones who want more of that sense of awe and gravitas and scale, sprinkled with individual lives that matter.

My mother read me Lord of The Rings when I was 7 and I've read quite a few attempts to rebottle that lightning over the course of my lifetime. I read Terry Brook's homage (The Sword of Shannara) when I was 13 and it scratched at the itch without relieving it. I did enjoy the book at the time.

Many of the books that I've read which appear to want to build on / exploit / honour The Lord of the Rings do so simply by throwing in elves, dwarves, and renamed orcs into a similarly open and conflicted world that shares the bucolic farmlands of Southern England along with the wild forests of Germany and the white-toothed Alps of France.

It's here where the attempts to recapture LotRishness fail for me. What brought elves and dwarves (and to some degree orcs) to life for me wasn't the pointy-eared handsome of the elf or the gruff practicality of the dwarf, it was that they were products of cultures that were in turn products of a history, and that it was a history that wasn't merely complex (a broken plate is complex - moreso than an intact one). Tolkien's history for the world he created was a work of love, a work for its own sake, built over the course of many years and not to support a story. The story fell out of it as a by-product.

It feels (from the books I've read - which are only a small fraction of the elf/dwarf/orc fiction out there) that in pulling these races from the shelf for your novel you are then either forced to build your own history which will immediately be in competition with JRRT's in the reader's head, or to make vague swipes at a similar history/culture, these brush strokes being broad enough to avoid copyright/plagiarism whilst fine enough to benefit from riding the LotR wave.

To truly revisit the territory LotR opened up, I feel you would need to abandon elves, dwarves, and faux-orcs entirely and to construct something equally grand and deep using wholly new devices. Though this would of course limit your ability to stand on the bedrock of western myth.

I know that this has been done to some extent by various authors. But the ones I've visited have never really worked for me. Perhaps I need to be seven again in order to incorporate any book as deeply into my own personal mythology as I did The Lord of the Rings.

But, (and this is entirely personal), I don't think elves and dwarves and awks in anyone else's hands will ever light up the page for me.

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10 Years Full-time!

It is (give or take a fortnight) 10 years since I became a full-time author!

I was made redundant 😮

The story is here: https://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2015/04/redundant.html

I had, of course, been a part-time author for 4 years before that, since Prince of Thorns was published in 2011. 

All in all, it was a good move, albeit one that circumstance kicked me into. When you have a mortgage and children - one of them profoundly disabled - it's nerve wracking to exchange a regular paypacket and a (seemingly) stable job for uncertain piecework. Against the odds though, it has worked out so far, and for that I am very grateful. 

I've now been published by 36 different publishers in 28 languages and have sold over 3 million books worldwide.

In English Prince of Thorns has sold 720,000 copies - the UK paperback is in its 31st printing.

54% of those sales have been via my US publisher, 46% via my UK publisher.

I remember reading my contract back in 2010 and seeing a clause that marginally increased my royalty on any sales after 100,000 copies. I snorted at that line. It seemed so abstract. They might have well have added, 'And if aliens land it will go up to 10%'. I genuinely thought I would sell at the very most 5,000 copies. And it was a reasonable upper expectation.

You can never tell what will happen next, good or bad.

Very many thanks to all the readers who have kept picking up my books and who have thereby sustained me for the past decade. It's much appreciated.

My publishers!

UK    Harper Voyager

US     Penguin / Ace

Australia    Voyager Australia

Bangladesh    Paper Voyager

Brazil    Darkside Books

Bulgaria    Bard Publishing

Canada    Penguin/Ace – Canada 

China    ChongQing

Czech Republic    Talpress

Egypt    Bayt el Kotob

France   Bragelonne 

Germany   Heyne for The Broken Empire

FISCHER Tor for Book of the Ancestor

Georgia    Palitra L

Greece   Cryssalis Books

Hungary   Fumax

Indonesia   Ufuk Press

Iran Behdad Publications

Italy   Newton Compton

Latvia   Prometejs

Lithuania   Versus

New Zealand   Harper Collins / Voyager – New Zealand 

Poland   Papierowy Ksiezyc

Wydawnictwo MAG for Book of the Ancestor

Portugal   20|20 editora

Romania   Editura Trei

Russia   Fantastica for Broken Empire and The Red Queen’s War (CANCELLED)

Atticus for Book of the Ancestor (CANCELLED)

Serbia   Laguna

Spain   Minotauro

Redkey Books for Impossible Times

Thailand   Nokhook Publishing

The Netherlands   Luitingh-Sijthoff

Taiwan Fantasy Foundation Publications, a division of Cite Publishing

Turkey   Pegasus Yayinlari 

Ukraine   Ridna Mova 

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Early copies ... I have a handful!

One month from now The Book That Held Her Heart will be on bookshop shelves in the US and UK.

Here's the complete set along with Missing Pages (the short story collection).

And The Broken Binding limited edition (sold out) with purple edges!

And the UK edition!

And here, for good measure, is the whole of the US dustjacket.

Time to get excited! And also to pre-order 😃

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Great Expectations.

Writing is delightful and rewarding hobby.

Writing is a brutal and heartbreaking business.

Some of you will be familiar with the eponymous Dickens classic in which Pip, our young hero, is without warning lifted from grinding poverty and brought into a life of luxury where his horizons rapidly expand. Only to be unceremoniously shoved to the kerb once more - all of it controlled by forces beyond his control or even understanding.

There are a great many writers hoping for a publishing deal. Many of those reading this blog post will be among those legions. It will be hard to stir among such frequently disappointed souls any measure of sympathy for those happy few who against all odds do pass through the hallowed gates of agent and publisher onto the shelves of bookshops.

But, in truth, the disappointments of the querying author are small beer compared to the Pip-esque journey that very likely lies ahead of them if they do get published.

The querying author is typically only built up by their own enthusiasm before their many rejections. The published author gets to fail believing a spotlight to be on them and themselves the vessel of the publishers' hopes and fortunes, not to mention their own. They've been given lightning in a bottle. Surely they won't let it slip through their fingers?

And here are the sad facts:

Publishers take on many more new authors each year than persist into long term writing careers. In fantasy if you sign with a big publisher you'll typically get a three book deal, these will sell disappointingly, fizzle, and you won't get another contract. That's not failure - it's the norm.

It's also not your fault. Success depends on a great many factors beyond your control, and writing a great book was the entry stake in the poker game, not the pot-winning hand.

Publishing is primarily a "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" game. Obviously they put as much thought as they can into choosing what to throw - but if people knew how to spot successful books then those people would own super yachts and Harry Potter would not have been rejected a dozen times.

The publisher expects most of what's launched to sink. They have faith in each book but know that the sea of statistics is a rough one.

The author isn't in charge of this ship's rudder and whilst the publishers may have set the sail, you're really at the mercy of unknown currents.

Your book needs to have whatever the big vibe is at the moment it lands or to light the already in place tinder for the next big vibe. It needs to be crack to those readers. It needs to find people with loud voices to sing its praises. It needs to be adopted by influential communities. It needs to make the reader not merely smile with satisfaction and reach for the next book but to trample their TBR pile in their rush to tell other people about THIS book.

I advise people to write as if writing were a hobby. If I enjoy painting minatures or crocheting stuffies, I will spend many happy hours doing so. I won't expect to make a living at it. I won't quit my day job. I won't look back and think of all that wasted time and failure. That's what a hobby is - an end in and of itself.

If the finger of some benevolent god stretches through the clouds to point at you and you get a publishing deal then your mental health and wellbeing will be best protected if you think of it as I did when it unexpectedly happened to me. It's a blip in the Matrix, I thought. If these publishers want to give me money ... hooray! I'm not responsible for what happens next. I fully expected my first book to sell a thousand copies, maybe three thousand since it had a big publisher behind it. The next two would sell successively fewer (and they did) and that would be my 15 minutes of "fame" over and done with. The kind of fame where nobody knows who you are and the only people who are impressed are a small subset of your friends and family.

This is the reasonable approach. It's in line with what is statistically likely to happen.   

It can go differently, but don't expect it to, and absolutely don't consider it to be a personal failure if that happens.

You'll probably feel better about it if you did all you could to move the needle. Do interviews, start a blog, post pictures on social media etc. But in the end, I don't think any of these activities amount to much more than rearranging the deck chairs. It won't help you avoid the iceberg. You might, by luck, evade the iceberg - but it almost certainly wasn't because you made a fool of yourself on TikTok (which I do occasionally).

The process of being published raises your expectations, and if you're not very careful about it they will soar skywards. The process of selling books will very likely yank you back down to earth. It's better not to have allowed yourself to float too high at that point.

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How much engagement do I get on my various social media?

Here's the same post on 4 different social media platforms. First after an hour on each.

Those are follower/like ratios of:

Twitter --- 5,300

Bluesky --- 550

Threads --- 400 

Facebook --- 3,400

And after 4 hours this had become:

Twitter --- 3,700

Bluesky --- 366 + 2 reposts!

Threads --- 327 

Facebook --- 785

So Twitter is by far the worst for engagement. And even with 37,000 followers it was the worst in absolute terms too.

Bluesky was the best, but surprisingly Threads was also very good.

Facebook is largely garbage these days.

This was this morning's feed and it's typical for what I see:

1. Adverts for groups I might like

2. random account it wants me to follow

3. random account it wants me to follow

4. advert

5. random account it wants me to follow

6. Friend post

7. reels from random accounts

8. random account it wants me to follow

9. advert

10. random account it wants me to follow

11. random account it wants me to follow

12. Friend post

13. random account it wants me to follow

14. advert

With over 10,000 friends and followers I get very little engagement, and it's clearly being deluged in this never ending stream of "follow this" rubbish that's pushing people away. It's not rocket science, but apparently it's too complicated for Mark Zuckerberg. If it was just the adverts ... well ... ok. But why shove all these random people/pages down my throat when what I want to see is the people I have chosen to friend?

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Three Million!

Damn, January slipped by without a post!

In order to stop the rot, let me blog about having passed another milestone (likely on the road to obscurity, but you can't have it all).

Back in 2014 I posted about selling my first half million books. 

And at the start of 2016 I blogged to remark that I'd sold my first million.

It's been a while and that same heady sales rate has not been sustained in the nearly 9 years since then. Plus, I don't actually look at sales figures - it's not good for anyone's mental health to watch the needle on what is effectively your popularity and livelihood flicker back and forth. However, I can say with confidence that I have passed the three million mark in global sales.

The bulk of those sales are in English, roughly evenly divided between the UK (plus Australia and New Zealand) and the US (plus Canada). Why that split isn't more in line with the population numbers, I don't know!

I'm published in 28 languages, but for some of them it's just a single book that sold poorly. Most recently I've had my first contracts for books in Bengali (A publisher in Bangladesh), Ukrainian, and Arabic (A published in Egypt). It was nice to get the Ukrainian deal after pulling out of my Russian ones to show solidarity.

You might think that this has made me rich. I'm certainly not poor, but fact is that 14 years of whatever flavour of "best selling" I've been means that at approaching 60 years old I could just about buy an average priced detacted house in London (in the suburbs). It's not exactly "rock star", though I am better off than most of the populace and have a job I enjoy doing. So, in short, it's been a blessing and one for which I'm very grateful.

I've alway strived to plan/live/save as if this writing business is something that could vanish in an instant. The trajectory of most author careers is a modest boom followed by a rapid return to the day job as sales trail back down to insignificant. I'm very aware that my next book might not sell and that opportunities can vanish swiftly.

The fact that at least three million copies of my books have found their way onto people's shelves and kindles and phones is ... well, it's at once both mind blowing and also largely academic. If there were instead thirty million, or three hundred thousand, or thirty thousand, it would feel much the same emotionally. Though obviously each of those figures leads to very different financial outcomes.

Anyway - thanks for sticking with me. And if I ever make it to 5 million, I'll let you know.

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T-shirt design contest!

The idea here is generate some merch for readers to buy.

The rules are simple - just send me (empire_of_thorns@yahoo.co.uk) a T-shirt design that includes the first line of any of my books. Let's avoid AI.

Remember that these custom T-shirt places put the design in a box on the front (sometimes back too), so whilst coiling stuff all around etc look great, they're not things I can implement.

Any design must be sent in with the understanding that I can use it on T-shirts, hoodies and similar. I don't expect to sell a significant number of these, so the prize is the sole reward.

The winner/s will get a free copy of their design on a garment, plus a signed book, chosen from my stock pile. And of course the endless honour of victory, the tears of the vanquished, and the knowledge that a handful of dedicated readers will sport your creativity on special occasions!

I will post the entries here.

#15-16 Rachel

#7-13 Jade

#6 Tammy G

#5 Tammy G

#4 Tammy G

#3 Regina

#2 Saeed

#1 Rae

Here are some examples from over the years:

First lines you might consider using:

Prince of Thorns

- Ravens! Always the ravens. They settled on the gables of the church even before the injured became the dead.

King of Thorns

- Open the box, Jorg. I watched it. A copper box, thorn patterned, no lock or latch.

Emperor of Thorns

- I failed my brother. I hung in the thorns and let him die and the world has been wrong since that night.

Prince of Fools

- I’m a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down requires honesty, fair play, or bravery.

The Liar’s Key

- Petals rained down amid cheers of adoration.

The Wheel of Osheim

- All I had to do was walk the length of the temple and not be seduced from the path.

Red Sister (prologue & chapter 1)

- It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.

- No child truly believes they will be hanged.

Grey Sister

- There are many poisons that will induce madness but none perhaps quite so effective as love.

Holy Sister

- Markus had grown beyond Nona’s expectations.

One Word Kill

- When Dr Parsons finally ran out of alternatives and reached the word ‘cancer’ he moved past it so quickly I almost thought I’d imagined it.

Limited Wish

- I never expected to die in a punt chase.

Dispel Illusion

- The two saving graces of explosions are that from the outside they’re pretty and from the inside they’re quick.

The Girl And The Stars

- In the ice, east of Black Rock, there is a hole into which broken children are thrown.

The Girl And The Mountain

- There had been a great fire and there had been a great flood.

The Girl And The Moon

- Yaz had walked on water her entire life, and now in this place where it fell molten from the skies they planned to drown her in the stuff.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (prologue & chapter 1)

- The first arrow hit a child.

- They named Livira after a weed.

The Book That Broke The World

- Being able to see the walls of your prison is a luxury that few are afforded. Make no mistake though: every one of us is trapped.

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