NANP: Names With Meanings

Slightly delayed by a day since I totally forgot about this yesterday, but I’m excited to welcome author Michael J. Sullivan to the blog for Names: A New Perspective. Michael used to be a self-published author with a very successful fantasy series but his books were picked up by Orbit Books in 2011 and he published the sixth and final novel in the Riyria Revelations novel Percepliquis  through them (reviews of omnibus book 1, book 2, book 3). I read all the books in 2012 and they proved to be quite fun. His first prequel novel The Crown Tower (review) was also excellent, and I’m excited for all the other stuff he has coming out, such as the series set in the old times of the Riyria setting. That should be fun. Michael also writes some great articles about the publishing industry and he really helps everyone learn about the industry at large. Here’s what he has to say on the topic of names.

“Names: A New Perspective” 4th Edition

A little over a year ago, I started a guest post series on the blog where I invited two authors every week to talk about names in fiction. I gave them a fairly open brief for it, to talk about what kind of naming conventions they used, what the names of their characters, etc meant, whether they went for certain resonance or what have you. The result was dramatic and outstanding. Every single guest post proved to be well-worth the read, to say the least, and I received tons of feedback from all of you, saying that you liked it.

In August, I posted the last guest post and then took a long break since I had kind of run out of authors to contact at the moment and just wanted to take some time off in general to let the whole idea gestate for a new version down the line. The result of that is this new edition of the series. I’ve spent more than three weeks getting all of this together, and despite some delays at my end, the authors have all been rather understanding, which has been great.

Enjoy the schedule!

Epic Fantasy: A Personal Definition

Over at her blog, Helen Lowe has had an interesting discussion taking place of late on the topic of what makes epic fantasy what it is. Its been quite an informative discussion to say the least (more). The descriptions and definitions that people attach to this seemingly simple 2-word phrase have provided a lot of new perspectives, many of which I have never considered before.

And that made me think about how I define “epic fantasy”. What are the components of it? What are the essentials? Like with any other discussion about the definition of genre categories, there are no easy answers here either and that has a lot to do with personal biases and preferences. I’ve seen a lot of books come out in the last few years that have been hailed as epic fantasy but that I wouldn’t necessarily classify as such, since for me there are some basic requirements for a book to be hailed with that genre label.

Which is what this post is about.

Publishing and Marketing 07: A Reviewer’s Self-Examination

A few days ago I came across a review of Mark Lawrence’s second Broken Empire novel, King of Thorns (link), which is up for nomination for the David Gemmell Legend Awards in the Legend category. The Legend Award is given to the Best Novel of the previous year. On Twitter and Facebook, I talked about how that review justified all my reasons and fears for not reading further into this series after my experiences with the first novel, Prince of Thorns (review).

My tweets eventually spawned off a discussion about negative reviews, which led into the review that forms the basis and reason for this entire post.  In January last year, reviewer Liz Bourke wrote about Michael J. Sullivan’s first Riyria Revelations novel, Theft of Swords (link). This review was brought to my attention by a friend on Twitter who had taken exception to the way that Liz Bourke took potshots at the author and his editors at Orbit Books.

Going through the review and the comments thread, some things become apparent to me as to the intent of the review, the tone it is written in, and what, ultimately, were the reactions. However, what really ended up happening was that it all sparked off some self-examination about negative reviews. And that’s what this post is all about.

So welcome to another Publishing and Marketing blogpost.

The Cover Art Mega-Post

I haven’t done something like this before, but I was thinking of doing this for a while. Thing is, there are so, so many books coming out later this year or just about to be released actually, that I really, really want to read, and doing individual posts for all of them on The Founding Fields would be a bit of chore. So I’m just doing a general bumper post collecting all these covers and details on the books.

Hope you enjoy!

51 Most Anticipated Releases For 2013

With regards reading, 2012 was a fantastic year for me. It was the year that I stepped out of my comfort zone and read in genres that I normally would not read, such as urban fantasy (involving angels, vampires, werewolves etc) and historical fiction. It was also the year that I read more than the traditional fantasy, and tie-in fantasy at that. My experiments seem to have mostly been successful as I’ve started to really like reading these kind of books.

My goal for this year is to continue on that same path and read as widely as I can. Which is why this massive list is so huge in scope, with tons of variety. I went through the catalogues for most of these publishers and picked out things I liked,and which caught my eye. Getting through the entire list this year will probably not happen, but then again, never say never!

Best of the Best Part 2

I last did something like this in July for the six months from January 1st all the way to June 30th. This list is for July 1st and all the way through to December 30th (the last day doesn’t count!). As I mentioned at the end of that list, this isn’t going to be regurgitation of my “Reading Awards” page, but something more varied. The list takes into account everything I’ve read in the last six months.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!

Advent Reviews Day 11: The Viscount and The Witch by Michael J. Sullivan

Discovering authors through Twitter was the grand theme of this year, and last. Some of the best fiction I read this year was a result of that discovery and I’m really glad that things worked out so well, since most of these authors came highly recommended from bloggers I followed at the time, or their interactions on social media were always entertaining and professional and something I could learn from. Michael J. Sullivan is one such author and his Riyria Revelations novels are some of my favourite fantasy novels, because they are tales without the super-complex adventures that have become the norm in mainstream fantasy. Michael offers this prequel short story as a freebie to promote his books and it was my first taste of Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater, two of the most charming rogues I’ve read about, period.

Best of the Best Part 1

Twitter has been buzzing lately with “best of the year so far” and “most anticipated lists”. Looks like everybody and their fictional cat is on the bandwagon. So I thought I’d do one too, a “best of the half-year” list that is. I mean why not, I’ve read so much good stuff this year that it all deserves recognition anyway. I already do a top-of-the-month list anyway, as you can see on the Reading Awards page, so this should be good fun either way.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!

Self-publishing – Guest Post by Michael J. Sullivan

To people who follow my reviews and my tweets and facebook status updates, it will be no surprise to you lot that I am a very big fan of Michael J. Sullivan’s work, the Riyria Revelations novels. I discovered him quite accidentally through twitter and his novels were very much an impulse buy so it was quite rewarding when the novels turned out to be some of the best fantasy fiction I had ever read. I approached Michael in February once I was done with the last novel, the two-book omnibus Heir of Novron collecting together Wintertide and Percepliquis, as I had some questions about the ending and to see if he would be interested in doing some guest posts for the blog and for The Founding Fields. He accepted promptly and here’s the result. To give a small context to this guest post, I am myself very interested in self-publishing and have been seriously considering that route since December last year, so me finding Michael came at just right the time, as does this guest post. I’m sure quite a few of my friends will also be interested in this topic, so here’s to all of you.