Today, it’s Andrew McKiernan.

Who is Andrew?

Andrew J McKiernan is an author and illustrator living and working on the Central Coast of New South Wales. His first short story, Calliope: A Steam Romance, was published in the 2007 anthology Shadow Plays and was named in a number of year’s best recommended reading lists for fantasy. Since then his stories have been published in magazines such as Aurealis, Midnight Echo and the Eclecticism e-zine, as well as the anthologies In Bad Dreams 2, Masques, Scenes from the Second Storey, Macabre: A Journey Through Australia’s Darkest Fears, and Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2010. His stories have twice (2009 & 2010) been shortlisted for both Aurealis and Australian Shadows Awards, as well as a Ditmar Award shortlisting in 2010. His story The Desert Song from the Scenes from the Second Storey anthology received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Vol.3. Andrew’s illustrations have appeared on many book and magazine covers, as well as featuring in the collections Shards: Short Sharp Tales by Shane Jiraiya Cummings from Brimstone Press and Savage Menace & Other Poems of Horror by Richard Tierney from P’rea Press.

What are you tooting about?

Three short blasts from my own trumpet today…

Toot the First

In a land where the veil between life and death has been torn aside, how far would you go for the one you love? This is the question asked in Love Death, my new story appearing in Aurealis #46 on Kindle and at Smashwords. It is about the death of love and the love of death and how those two things entwine like lovers within the human psyche. It has romance. It has love lost and love regained, and love lost again. It has life and death and states in between. It is exotic and erotic and disturbing by turns. And in the end, there is hope. But most importantly, it is available to read for FREE from Smashwords!

Toot the Second

After a 650,000 year round-trip through the Oort Cloud, long-period Comet C2094VI is returning to our solar system. The Peregrine Expedition is sent to the very edge of the Kuiper Belt to land on Comet C2094VI. Their mission? To unlock the scientific secrets trapped within its icy time-capsule. But what nameless horrors lurk at the comet’s heart? And what does its return mean for the future of humanity? Find out in my Lovecraftian SF story The Wanderer in the Darkness available now in Midnight Echo 6, the official magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association.

[NB - My own story, Trawling The Void, also happens to be in that particular issue of Midnight Echo - Alan]

The Final Blast

Having just passed that most wonderful Festive Season of stress, depression, credit card debt and familial disfunction, what could be more appropriate to our mood than an anthology of Christmas themed horror? Ho Ho Horror from The Australian Literature Review is now available in both print and e-book formats. Edited by Steve Rossiter and featuring stories from both new and up-and-coming authors such as Gordon Reece, Belinda Dorio, Sam Stephens and Cameron Trost this anthology is certain to have you quaking in your santa boots. And believe me, I know! I had to illustrate each of their sordid and depraved tales for the anthology, as well as supplying the full-colour cover illustration! Even weeks after reading the stories, I still can’t look at a plum-pudding or sprig of mistletoe without a shiver of terror. Go get it now… it will make a great stocking filler for your kids next year.

Andrew’s website: http://www.andrewmckiernan.com

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As it describes itself:

The Drabblecast is an award-winning, illustrated, listener-supported audio fiction magazine, released as a free to download, weekly podcast. It features short stories at the far side of weird, including science fiction, horror, fantasy, and everything in between. It is hosted and produced by Norm Sherman. The Drabblecast is open to submissions and is a paying market.

The production values are excellent, the host is great, there are all kinds of fiction including Drabbles of 100 words and Twabbles of just 100 characters. These things really aren’t stories per se, but they are good fun. In a dark, sick and twisted kind of way, which is exactly how I like my fun.

And I’ll certainly be submitting some work to the Drabblecast in the future. If you like your fiction weird and podcasted, get on board this crazy train.

All the details here: Drabblecast.

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Well, it actually started with editors extraordinaire Liz Gryzb and Amanda Pillar, who came up with the concept for this book and put out the submission call. It’s a great theme. I love noirish stories and all my work tends to have some influence from the noir or crime angle. Even a lot of my sci-fi – I just can’t help it.

And yes, I have a story in this book, of which I’m very proud. But it’s not as simple as that, because I can’t take all the credit for the story. For the first time ever I’ve collaborated on a piece of writing, and the story in this book is called Burning, Always Burning, and was co-written with the hugely talented Felicity Dowker.

I would often see collaborative stories and think to myself, “How the freaking fuck do people do that?” My work is usually so personal. I sit here in my cave and tap away at my keyboard, letting the sweating babies of my fetid imagination creep out into the world. How could I ever share that process with anyone?

As it happens, it was surprisingly easy. Felicity and I have been good friends for a long time, and have long respected and enjoyed each other’s work. During an email exchange one day, when we should have been working, we started slinging lines back and forth in a noirish, Mickey Spillane kinda way, just for shits and giggles. We only got about half a page of stuff down before it petered out, but we both agreed it would be kinda fun to write something together one day.

A while later, Liz Grzyb and Amanda Pillar put the call out for paranormal noir stories. It seemed fated. So we decided to give it go and dusted out those couple of parapgraphs, polished them up, talked about our ideas and plot and then just started bouncing the thing back and forth. We’d write about 500 words, edit the previous 500 and email it away. Sooner or later, it would come back – the 500 new words edited and another 500 added. Or so. It just worked. The story grew. We live nearly a thousand kilometres apart, but through emails and text messages we came up with our yarn and, without any subjective bias of any kind, it’s fucking great.

We submitted it and we’re both very proud that it was accepted. Seriously, look at the company we’re in:

Lindsy Anderson – The Third Circle
Chris Bauer – Three Questions and One Troll
Alan Baxter & Felicity Dowker – Burning, Always Burning
Jay Caselberg – Blind Pig
M.L.D. Curelas – Silver Comes the Night
Karen Dent – A Case to Die For
Dirk Flinthart – Outlines
Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter – Prohibition Blues
Donna Maree Hanson – Sangue Sella Notte
Rob Hood – Walking the Dead Beat
Joseph L Kellogg – The Awakened Adventure of Rick Candle
Pete Kempshall – Sound and Fury
Chris Large – One Night at the Cherry
Penelope Love – Be Good Sweet Maid
Nicole Murphy – The Black Star Killer
Brian Grant Ross – Hard Boiled

And you’ll notice among that stellar company the All-Time Collaboration World Champions, Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter. Sixteen stories, eighteen authors, paranormal, noir, sexy covers, murder and mayhem, monsters and mysterious femme fatales. How can this book not be freaking awesome?

Damnation & Dames will be launched at Swancon 37, Easter 2012, and will be available in trade paperback for $30, and as an ebook in Kindle format post-launch. The anthology will be available from Ticonderoga’s online shop at indiebooksonline.com, and internet bookstores such as bookdepository.com and amazon.com. Seriously, I can’t wait.

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Episode 36 is live now and we have a great chat with short story expert and all around top lass, Angela Slatter. We talk about the highs and lows of various lengths of fiction and Angela gives some great advice.

Get a listen on here.

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Have you ever become so deeply fascinated with the setting of a book that it lingers on, invading your mind long after reading is done? We all know good world building is essential to any story. But occasionally an author takes that art one step further, creating an environment that enthralls, breathes, lives.

I was very pleased that Mary asked me to contribute, because I’m a huge fan of well-realised places in fiction. Locations are definitely characters in my stories.

You can find my guest post on the subject at Mary’s site here.

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The first ep of 2012 has just gone live and it’s a corker. We talk about our plans for the year, discuss KDP Select, have some free books to give away AND have a chat with Myke Cole, author of the Shadow Ops books – the first one, Control Point, is out next week from Ace.

The books sound great:

Cross The For­ever War with Witch­world, add in the real world mod­ern mil­i­tary of Black Hawk Down, and you get Control Point, the mile-a-minute story of some­one try­ing to find pur­pose in a war he never asked for. – Jack Camp­bell, New York Times Bestselling author of The Lost Fleet series

I’m definitely looking forward to reading that. Myke is a great guy too, and a total nerd for roleplaying games. It’s a fun chat.

Check out the new episode here.

And check out Myke’s site here. You can pre-order Control Point now.

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Firstly, there were a couple of contributor copies of things I have work in that I hadn’t got around to yet. Apart from the obvious joy of getting published and sharing a Table Of Contents with some seriously talented other writers, having a story in a publication usually (and should!) means that I get a copy of said publication. Free reading material – one of life’s highest pleasures.

Midnight Echo 6 – I’ve mentioned this a few times recently, so I won’t bore you again. Suffice to say that it is a bloody brilliant issue of the magazine, and I don’t say that only because I have a story in it. The standout story for me was Joanne Anderton’s Out Hunting For Teeth. But every story is great and there’s extra interviews and all sorts of stuff. This is the sci-fi horror special and you’d think that might make for saminess. (Yes, that’s word, so get fucked.) But it doesn’t. There’s a great variety here and as the issue also includes the winners of the AHWA Flash and Short Story competitions, there’s a couple of non-sci-fi horror stories too. Great bang for your buck.

Anywhere But Earth – This is another contrib copy for me, as it features my story, Unexpected Launch. However, mine is only one of 29 stories in this 728 page epic tome of a sci-fi anthology. I think this book will go down as a must-read in modern science fiction. The scope of the stories and the talent of the contributing authors is astounding. It really is a fantastic array of ideas and style. If you’re a sci-fi fan, you’ll dig this book. If you’re not, it’s a great place to start. And if you know someone who says they don’t like sci-fi and you want to try to convert them, buy them this book. There were a handful of stories that didn’t really work for me, but that’s the case with any anthology. And this one has 29 stories, so there’s definitely something for everyone and I would bet that the majority of people would really groove with the majority of stories in here. Probably the standouts for me were Penelope Love’s SIBO, William R D Wood’s Deuteronomy, Robert Hood’s Desert Madonna, Damon Shaw’s Continuity, Brendan Duffy’s Space Girl Blues, Angela Ambroz’s Pyaar Kiya and Steve Cameron’s So Sad, The Lighthouse Keeper. Although the real star of that last story is a secondary character. In fact, a brick.

Blue Grass Symphony – This is the debut collection from Canadian-born Australian writer Lisa L Hannett. It’s an outstanding achievement. A selection of tales of magic, darkness, intrigue, mystery. Hannett’s style is clear throughout, even though the stories cover very different ground. There’s a brilliant vampire story here that’s worth the cover price alone. Seriously, if you thought vampire stories had been done to death, buy this book and read From the Teeth of Strange Children. There isn’t a bad story in this book and it’s a superbly dark and twisted exploration of life in mythical Blue Grass towns and counties. Great characters, great stories. Lisa is a friend of mine, but this isn’t just mate’s favours. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

The Boys, Vol. 9: The Big Ride – Garth Ennis is one of my favourite writers and I’ve been loving this series. The Boys is about a world where superheroes exist and they’re a bunch of dangerous, narcissistic prima donnas and The Boys exist to keep them in line. If you like your graphic novels to be powerful, irreverant, digusting, offensive, thought-provoking and just downright fucking brilliant, you should read The Boys. In fact, you should read everything by Ennis. And volume 9 knocked me sideways. The end of the book just takes your guts and wrenches them out. Stunning. And for the comic book nerds out there, check out the cover and think about The Dark Knight Returns. Classic.

Prophecy by Joanna Penn. You may remember I was talking about Joanna Penn’s first book, Pentecost, a while back. This is the new one, a sequel and the next ARKANE thriller. It’s a short book, around 65,000 words I think, and rocks along nicely. It’s a religious thriller, with a kick-arse female protagonist called Morgan Sierra. Sierra is a bit like a female James Bond/Jason Bourne/Indiana Jones hybrid. In this book she’s in a race against time to unravel a mystery before a powerful international health and wellbeing company can destroy a quarter of the world in accordance with the prophecy of the Four Horsemen. Penn’s ability as a writer is improving and her characters are developing well. There’s clearly going to be a series of ARKANE books (the next one is touted at the end of this one) and I think they make for great reading. Penn has a degree in theology and her knowledge and research, of ideas and locations, really shines through in these stories. In some ways I preferred the story in the first book, but I loved the ideas in this one. There’s nothing world-changing here, but as rollicking thrillers these books are great – perfect for holiday reading.

So that was my recent word consumption. I’ll also post these comments on Goodreads and Amazon. Remember, folks, we’re the gatekeepers now. If you read things and enjoy them, talk about them – blog, post reviews at online stores, tell your friends and families. As authors, we’ll love you for it.

So what about you? Did you read any great books over the end of year break?

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I was lucky enough to see the first four chapbooks published so far.

Spectral I – What They Hear in the Dark – Gary McMahon

An absence is more terrifying than a presence…

Rob and Becky bought the old place after the death of their son, to repair and renovate – to patch things up and make the building habitable. They both knew that they were trying to fix more than
the house, but the cracks in their marriage could not be papered over. Then they found the Quiet Room.

This is an excellent tale of loss and grief and the damage it can do to people. McMahon has created such a depth of bleakness and melancholy that it takes you down into the black depths of the character’s lives and it’s not an entirely pleasant place to be. But it is excellent writing and compelling storytelling.

There are some truly horrible ideas in this one, not least the hoods themselves, which I won’t spoil here. The Quiet Room as well is a brilliant device, something so simple yet so ethereal.

Spectral II – Abolisher of Roses – Gary Fry

It’s not always the guilty who have the darkest secrets . . .

Peter has been married to Patricia for nearly thirty years. He’s a practical man, the owner of a thriving factory and the father of two fine lads.

He also has a secret mistress.

One day, his wife takes him along to an outdoor arts exhibition involving some of her paintings, staged in a dark, deep wood. But his are not the only secrets in this marriage, and as Peter strays off the only path through the woods, he soon realises that Patricia has more than a few of her own…

In this story Fry creates a kind of artistic warning that’s extremely well contructed. We go on a journey of self-discovery with Peter in this excellently written piece. What seems initially to be a very harmless and possibly boring environment, certainly to the protagonist, turns out to be anything but. Very creepy.

The characters are strong in this story and in no way the kind of stereotypes it would have been easy for the author to fall into. It’s details like these that set apart truly quality writing from the merely good.

Spectral III – Nowhere Hall – Cate Gardner

We want to live…

In the ballroom, wallflower mannequins stretch their fingers towards Ron. He can’t ask them to dance. He’s already waltzing with other ghosts. Someone stole the world while Ron contemplated death. They packed it in a briefcase and dumped him in the halls of the ruined hotel – The Vestibule.

A nowhere place.

This is a beautiful story, haunting and powerful. It’s superbly written, with rich, stirring language and an excellent sense of place. It’s one of those stories where you think you know all along what’s happening, but even at the end you’re left wondering if you got it at all. It bears reading and re-reading, to savour the idea as much as the exquisite writing.

In fact, it’s the kind of writing that makes other writers, like myself, shake our heads at the sheer levels of artistry involved. Inspirational and aspirational stuff. Absolutely top notch.

Spectral IV – King Death – Paul Finch

In 1348, England is stricken by the Black Death.

The worst pandemic in human history has reached the kingdom of the warlike Edward III, a monarch who in battle against human adversaries cannot imagine defeat. Two thirds of his subjects now perish. Woods become wild again, farmland goes to rack and ruin, villages, towns and castles are left empty, inhabited only by ghosts. Little wonder that fear of the supernatural reaches an all-time high. Little wonder stories ignite about witches and demons spreading the plague, about ‘King Death’, an awesome harbinger
of doom from whom there is no protection.

Cynical opportunist Rodric doesn’t believe any of these. With reckless indifference, he sets out to enrich himself…

Unlike the previous three stories, all contemporary settings, this is a medieval story, historically accurate. It’s told in fine language, evocative of the time – so much so that a glossary is provided at the end to explain some of the terminology.

It’s another brilliant piece of writing, and a dark and hypnotic story of opportunity and bleakness. The protagonist here is an excellent creation, an antihero of sorts who we can probably all relate to. It’s difficult to see where human evil and the sheer horror of nature blur one into the other with this story.

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Editor and publisher Simon Marshall-Jones can certainly pick a damn fine tale and he’s putting together something very special here. Definitely a publisher to watch – keep an eye out so you don’t miss any.

Forthcoming titles are:

Spectral V Rough Music – Simon Kurt Unsworth (March 2012 – SOLD OUT)
Spectral VI The Eyes of Water – Alison J. Littlewood (June 2012)
Spectral VII What Gets Left Behind – Mark West (September 2012)
Spectral VIII Title TBC – Wayne Simmons (December 2012)
Spectral IX Creakers (provisional title) – Paul Kane (March 2013)
Spectral X Cold Havens – Simon Bestwick (June 2013)
Spectral XI Soul Masque – Terry Grimwood (September 2013)
Spectral XII Title TBC – Thana Niveau (December 2013)
Spectral XIII Title TBC – Robert Shearman (March 2014)
Spectral XIV Home and Hearth – Angela Slatter (June 2014)

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I’ve also taken to responding to, “You can’t have Xmas with Christ!” with, “Then you can’t have Thursday without Thor! Where’s your celebratory hammer?” There’s history with all these things, and it behoves the modern mind to know it.

If you get off on the whole Christ mythology, then bully for you. Why you pick one crazy mythology out of hundreds and insist it’s the truth absolutely mystifies me, but if that’s your wagon, then giddy up. And the Western world has certainly jumped on board the whole Xmas lunacy and subverted it into a materialistic circus of misery and one-upmanship. So I can understand the desire to suggest that people look past the crass commercialism and look for what Xmas is really about. But you know what? It’s not Christ. Sure, it’s been hijacked to be about Christ, but if these people were really honest with themselves, they’d admit there’s more to the story. Then again, as that great physician Gregory House said, “Rational arguments don’t usually work on religious people. Otherwise there would be no religious people.” – (Season 4 Episode 2, The Right Stuff.)

The Christians, since some decades after the death of Christ when the Christians began (thanks to the cult set up by Paul), have always been keen on appropriating something popular, pretending it’s theirs and then using it to further their own agenda. They’re like a virus, chewing up holidays and spitting out Christian rhetoric. But it’s not only the Christians who have pinched things for their aims.

Over the years we’ve merged and melded many things into our modern culture and, while the Christians always shout the loudest at Xmas, there are many other influences that have survived the Jesus takeover.

Burning candles, mistletoe and holly berries, for example, are originally from Yule, the Pagan celebration of the sun god, Mithras. Who is also a very clear blueprint for the myth of Christ himself:

“Both Mithras and Christ were described variously as ‘the Way,’ ‘the Truth,’ ‘the Light,’ ‘the Life,’ ‘the Word,’ ‘the Son of God,’ ‘the Good Shepherd.’ The Christian litany to Jesus could easily be an allegorical litany to the sun-god. Mithras is often represented as carrying a lamb on his shoulders, just as Jesus is. Midnight services were found in both religions. The virgin mother…was easily merged with the virgin mother Mary. Petra, the sacred rock of Mithraism, became Peter, the foundation of the Christian Church.”

Gerald Berry, Religions of the World

Mithras (from the Persian god, Mithra, adapted to Greek as Mithras) allegedly has many features Christians might find familiar:

- Mithra was born on December 25th of the virgin Anahita.
- The babe was wrapped in swaddling clothes, placed in a manger and attended by shepherds.
- He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
- He had 12 companions or “disciples.”
- He performed miracles.
- As the “great bull of the Sun,” Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.
- Mithra ascending to heaven in his solar cart, with sun symbolHe ascended to heaven.
- Mithra was viewed as the Good Shepherd, the “Way, the Truth and the Light,” the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah.
- Mithra is omniscient, as he “hears all, sees all, knows all: none can deceive him.”
- He was identified with both the Lion and the Lamb.
- His sacred day was Sunday, “the Lord’s Day,” hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.
- His religion had a eucharist or “Lord’s Supper.”
- Mithra “sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers.”
- Mithraism emphasized baptism.

Funny old list, that, eh? I said allegedly above as there’s often about as much evidence for these things as there is for the mythology of Christianity; that is to say, not much at all. Though the vast majority of it is backed up by archeological evidence well predating Christian times.

The Roman emporer Aurelian first instigated Dies Natalis Solis Invicti in 274 CE, which is the birthday of Sol Invictus, the sun god, often considered to be one and the same as Mithras. This birthday festival was celebrated with a huge party and feast on December 25th, a date I’m sure you’ll find familiar. It was Constantine who decided, for mostly political reasons, that Christianity would be the state religion, though he did release an edict in 313 CE proclaiming religious tolerance of all faiths. But there were still enough adherents to the Mithraic tradition that even in the 5th century, Augustine preached against them as Christianity continued its takeover.

Incidentally, it was also Constantine who made Sunday a day of rest. Not because of Christ myths, but for Sol Invictus. In March, 321 CE he decreed:

On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country however persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day is not suitable for grain-sowing or vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.

But I digress. Going back to Christmas being a Sol Invictus celebration, even the Syriac bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi wrote in the 12th century:

“It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day.”

Ernest Renan, in 1882, pointed out how things could have been when he said, “if the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic” (Renan, E., Marc-Aurele et la fin du monde antique. Paris, 1882, p. 579)

And the whole celebration of the sun god idea can be taken back to well before Roman times. There is much evidence — including many ancient monumental alignments — to demonstrate that the event of the winter solstice, and the return of the sun through longer days, was celebrated hundreds to thousands of years before the common era in numerous parts of the world.

When “the people” are really into something, the worst thing to do is try to tell them they can’t enjoy it any more. The best option is to co-opt it into your own agenda over time. So the Pagan sun worship was Borged (resistance is futile) by Mithras and Sol Invictus celebrations, and those in turn swallowed by the Christians; not as biblical doctrine but to compete with Pagan cults.

Regardless, in the end the effect is the same: “Christmas” is not the birth of the “son of God” but the birth of “the sun”. The deity Mithras and the celebration of Sol Invictus, inextricably intertwined, also ended up drawing in the Christian mythologies and the Christ myths gathered the most adherents and strength and swallowed up those things that birthed them.

Then combine into this Saturnalia, described by the poet Catullus as “the best of days”, which was a big old party in honour of the Roman deity, Saturn. There was a huge banquet followed by gift-giving and partying, where social norms were put aside in the name of hedonism and good times. Which sounds damned fine to me. This festival was originally held on December 17th, but subsequently extended right through to the 23rd. After all, why party for one day when you can get your groove on for a week. And many of those practices were also taken into the Christmas celebration and made a part of the whole thing.

Saturnalia

And everything I’ve written here only touches on the depth and complexity of the history of our culture. So the next time some twat says, “You can’t have Xmas without Christ!” you can respond with, “Yes, you can, actually. Just ask Mithras.”

Enjoy the things that make you happy. Be nice to each other, have fun and indulge yourselves. Give gifts, eat too much, drink too much, and don’t forget to spare a thought for those less fortunate and try to do something to help them as well. But don’t be wilfully ignorant. It’s never been easier to explore truth and history, to understand yourself and your culture. Get out there and expand yourself.

And blessed Solstice to you all.

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GRRM is one of the best and most popular fantasy writers, but his A Song Of Ice & Fire series, which started in 1996, has been a long time to completion, and isn’t finished yet. At the end of book 4 it said to expect book 5 in a year. It took six years to see publication. There are still two more books to come, with no release date even hinted at. So people are getting concerned that the whole story may never be told, and the query posted to Neil Gaiman is still valid. As, potentially, is Gaiman’s answer.

Gaiman’s point is that GRRM doesn’t have to live up to our (readers) expectations. As a writer, I can kind of agree with that to an extent. Gaiman posits that the reader, by buying the first book, assumed some kind of contract with Martin. Gaiman says, “No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.”

Art is not something you can force, and Martin is well within his rights to do whatever he wants with his story. Even quit now and never finish. He’s not our bitch and that’s his prerogative. However, if he does do that, I think he is also letting his readers down. And not just GRRM – this applies to all of us as writers. If we’ve said we’ll do one thing and we do something else, that’s either our choice or a situation forced upon us. But we are letting people down when we do it. It’s not an either/or proposition.

Recently, Brent Weeks, author of the Night Angel Trilogy and The Black Prism, posted an opinion piece at SciFiNow in which he says that Gaiman is wrong. In the article, Weeks says:

“Part of what entices us to buy a book is the promise conveyed in the title. “Gragnar’s Epic Magical Dragon Quest Trilogy: Book 1” promises there will be two more books. Whether through the title, or interviews, or through a note to readers at the end of a book that says the next book will be out in a year, when an author makes that kind of commitment, maybe technically there’s no contract, but there is an obligation.”

He also says, “…writers make mistakes about how fast they’re going to finish books All The Time. GRRM’s situation is merely illustrative.” This is well worth bearing in mind, as I’m not out to bash GRRM here, or anyone else in particular. I’m simply addressing the issue as a whole.

But I think Weeks is right – there is an obligation there. When a writer says they’ll write X number of books, readers start to invest their time and money into that series. It’s quite reasonable to feel cheated when the author doesn’t come through on that promise. For this reason a lot of people are now loathe to buy into a series until they know it’s finished. After all, they don’t want to spend time and money getting into a story without an end. Which is fairly reasonable. I’m tempted to make a sexual metaphor here, about encounters without happy endings, but I’ll be a grown-up and rise above that temptation.

I wrote a piece a while back called While you wait for book three, authors die! in which I point out that this method can be damaging. If an author’s first book doesn’t sell well, their publisher may decide to cut their losses and not publish the rest of the series. Bad for readers and writers. I always advise buying the first book, but not reading it yet. Collect the whole series as it comes out and read it all once it’s finished. Of course, this could turn out to be a waste of your hard-earned if the author doesn’t finish the series. But life without risk is like an untoasted tea cake. There’s no crunch.

Readers and authors are entering into unwritten contracts with each other. The author says, “I’ll write this series.” The reader says, “Cool, I’ll buy it and read it. I might even like it and give you a positive review and tell my friends about it.” It’s a symbiotic relationship.

The author doesn’t have to finish that series. There’s no legally binding contract, no demon’s blood on the page to force the magic out. But, should they not see through that originally stated obligation, they are letting the readers down. We all fuck up sometimes, we all get distracted by life and things that happen which are beyond our control. We all let people down sometimes, however much we may wish and try not to. But we should also own up to that let down. “Sorry, folks, I let you down” is lot more conducive to an ongoing relationship than, “Fuck you, I’m not your bitch!”

I really want GRRM to finish A Song Of Ice & Fire. I’ve invested a lot of time and money into it and I really want to know how it all works out. But Martin isn’t my bitch and I can’t force him to do something that he may not have the ability (due to other things in his life) or inclination to do. But, should the series not be wrapped up, I will feel let down.

How do you feel about it?

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