Looking for more Riyria Adventures? Check this out.

I've been getting a lot of emails recently about people going through Royce and Hadrian withdraws now that they have devoured both Revelations and Chronicles. If you are one of them, then I just might have the cure.

The Jester, a Royce and Hadrian short story was released yesterday on Auible.com and the good news is it's FREE!  Yep, it won't cost you a cent or a credit to listen to Tim Gerard Reynolds weave his magic as he performs this short story.

The piece was originally written for the Unfettered Anthology. For those that may not be aware, this was the anthology that I (and a bunch of other authors) volunteered stories for to help raise money to pay off a huge medical debt that Shawn Speakman amassed while fighting (and beating) cancer.  The full anthology includes these works:

• Imaginary Friends by Terry Brooks
• How Old Holly Came to Be by Patrick Rothfuss
• The Old Scale Game by Tad Williams
• Game of Chance by Carrie Vaughn
• The Martyr of the Roses by Jacqueline Carey
• Mudboy by Peter V. Brett
• The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian
• The Coach with Big Teeth by R. A. Salvatore
• Keeper of Memory by Todd Lockwood
• Heaven in a Wild Flower by Blake Charlton
• Dogs by Daniel Abraham
• The Chapel Perilous by Kevin Hearne
• Select Mode by Mark Lawrence
• All the Girls Love Michael Stein by David Anthony Durham
• Strange Rain by Jennifer Bosworth
• Nocturne by Robert V. S. Redick
• Unbowed by Eldon Thompson
• In Favour with Their Stars by Naomi Novik
• River of Souls by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
• The Jester by Michael J. Sullivan
• The Duel by Lev Grossman
• Walker and the Shade of Allanon by Terry Brooks
• The Unfettered Knight by Shawn Speakman

The full version of Unfettered is also available on Audible. While it's not for free, the authors who weren't previously compensated will get a portion of it's earnings so buying it is a way of saying thanks to the people who so generously gave of their time in creating the anthology in the first place.

An ebook version of The Jester will be available soon. It was submitted to the various sites and I'm just waiting for them to go live. I'll update you when they are available.

Blood of Thieves featured on SFBC.com and special pricing

Hey everyone, Robin here, once more taking over his blog because he's asleep and this is a time sensitive post. We are both in Michigan (our old stomping grounds) to attend Legendary Confusion. Michael was out at "Barcon" with his "Horn Brothers"  (don't ask but I'm sure you'll be seeing a bit about it on the Interwebs in the next few days.

Anyway...he recently announced Blood of Thieves was available and so far it's doing really well. (Current #33 top seller on the site).  I think part of that comes from it being one of their featured books.  I think they did a nice job with it.

In any case, they have a $11.99 sale that ends tonight at midnight.  That means you can get 2 great books for essentially $6 a piece in hardcover.  (Blood of Thieves contains two full-length novels: The Crown Tower and The Rose and the Thorn.  Michael and I will be heading back to Virginia soon, but out of contact for a bit, so if you are emailing him and haven't received a response, that is why.

Introducing Blood of Thieves

Don't get too excited. This isn't a new Royce and Hadrian book it is a new hardcover omnibus which contains the two books of the Riyria Chornicles: The Crown Tower and The Rose and the Thorn.  It is only offered to members of the Science Fiction Book Club. But just as with the other hard covers, there will be people reselling them on Amazon's Marketplace so expect to see it popping up there soon.

It's really quite the steal as you can get both books as a hardcover for $17.99 + shipping and the trade paperbacks are $16.00 each. I have ordered a few copies myself and will sell a few signed copies via my website once the arrive.  I ordered these well before Christmas and my order still says "Processing" so I don't think they are actually shipping yet, but they should be soon and since sfbc.com is featuring it, I'm assuming they expect to be able to fulfill those orders soon.

For those that are curious about the title.  Well you can thank Robin for that.  We wanted to keep it in line with the other Riyria books hence the three words with "of" in the middle and as Blood Song and Promise of Blood and Blood Dragon are so popular these days it just had to have that in there.  Okay so that last part wasn't part of the equation...but it sounded good. It really has to do with the fact that blood of thieves plays a big role in both of these books. In the first one it is their own blood that is spilt and in the second it is the consequences of blood they spill - so it tied in nicely.  As to reading order...I suggest the following:

• Theft of Swords (contains The Crown Conspiracy & Avempartha)
• Rise of Empire (contains Nyphron Rising & The Emerald Storm)
• Heir of Novron (contains Wintertide & Percepliquis)
• Blood of Thieves (contains The Crown Tower & The Rose and the Thorn

When I have my copies for resell available I'll post here.

Independent evaluation - get your first five pages critiqued

Well the holidays are over and it's time to get back to work. Well truth be told I was working all through the holidays, but I was dedicating myself as much as possible to writing my current work in progress (which is in the home stretch).  But now that others are getting back to their jobs I thought I needed to take a minute out of my writing to make a blog post.  So here I am.

Whether you are submitting to an agent, publisher, or self-publishing, the first five pages of your work are essential. They can easily make or break any chance of a sale and I'm not the only one who feels this way.  Famed agent Noah Lukeman felt so strongly about this that he wrote a book...called ...you guessed it, The First Five Pages.  

If you've not had anyone but yourself (or a loved one) look at your writing, it's almost impossible to know whether it is ready for prime time or still needs more work. I'm really fortunate (in all kinds of ways) but also because I belong to a great writer's group, and I have fabulous beta readers to give me feedback. Others, may not be this fortunate. I also have some strong opinions...and a desire to help out other writers. So as part of my New Year's resolution I figured I would try to give back and one way I can do that is by offering some independent evaluation.

So here's the deal.

I'll review/critique the first five pages for 1 - 10 authors a month. I'm not saying that my opinions mean much in the grand scheme of things, but I have at least had a few books published and have a generally good idea of what publishers are looking for. What you do with the feedback is your own business...use it, throw it away, burn it and me in effigy, but at least I'm impartial and sometimes that is hard to find.

How do you get selected?  The fickle finger of fate will decide. In other words, I'm going to use a random number generator. I'll likely not even read the body of the emails, so that won't effect the decision. Plus it saves you the time of writing something to compel me to pick yours, and me the time of reading and feeling bad because I didn't select the person who has six months to live and their bucket list includes getting feedback from me on something they wrote (not that I think anyone has such a thing on their bucket lists - but you get the point).  How many will be selected is going to depend on how many come in, how long it takes me to review each one, and how much time I can devote to this.

So what should you send?  I'm glad you asked. It would really help out if you follow these instructions (and if you don't I reserve the right to ignore your submission for not coloring within the lines). Here is what I would like:

1. Microsoft Word document with 1" margins all around, double spaced, using 12 point Times New Roman font. Feel free to italic and bold as needed, but don't substitute underlines for such - I'd rather see the manuscript as it would appear in a book.
   
2. You can send less than 5 pages but no more than 5 pages. Don't cut off a sentence midway. Also this must be your first pages. You can send me your prologue or chapter one, but please don't send me five pages from chapter 3 or your best five pages that are in the middle of your book.
   
3. Email your manuscript to michael.sullivan.dc@gmail.com and in the subject put: FIRST FIVE PAGES (and yes use all caps - I need to find them)
   
4. Don't "follow up" to see if I received it or to find out if you were picked.  I'm going to try and keep the admin of this to be a minimum.  If I look at it, I will respond. If I don't respond, I probably didn't see it.
   
5. One entry per email address per month.  Which means that you can send the same piece (or a different one) each month. But please wait till the start of the month.  Don't send me 3 submissions in January and expect me to parse them out to the other months. 

Well that's all I can think of for right now. I might revise this as time goes on - but I think this is good enough to start the ball rolling. 

Oh yeah, one last thing. Don't submit if you don't have a thick skin.  If your work is great as is, I'll say so, but it will be more helpful to you if I look at it with a critical eye. The intention of this exercise is to learn and grow, not to have your ego stroked...and I'm not very good at "being nice." But if what you are looking for is honest...then I'm your man.

Audible's 5-star listens

Each year around this time Audible.com takes a look at their titles and highlights those with a significant number of 5-star ratings.  I'm pleased to announce that once again I have a title (The Crown Tower) that has made two of these lists:

• The Best of Everything - which, not surprisingly covers all categories of books
• Sci-fi & Fantasy - which, surprisingly, I got the #1 spot

In 2011, Theft of Swords made the same two lists - which really bowled me over. Lists like this, as well as the Goodreads Choice Award (where The Crown Tower was also picked), are especially gratifying because they are selected based on a bunch of readers raising their hands as saying, I really like this book. 

So I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who read, listen, and provide a good rating or review of the musing I write.  Also, since this is an audio accolade, I have to once again provide a tip of my hat to the exceptional work of Tim Gerard Reynolds who did the narration.

Yesterday, I just finalized a deal with Audible.com to release a free edition of The Jester.  For those that don't know, this was a Royce and Hadrian short story that I created for the Unfettered Anthology to help pay off the extensive medical bills that Shawn Speakman incurred when he was fighting his second bout with cancer.  The audio rights for the full anthology were bought by Audible and they, wisely, tapped Tim to do that recording...so look for that soon.  But for those that want a taste of the magic that Tim has given to my works, you can listen to him perform my other short story, The Viscount and the Witch. Even if you have read the short as a standalone, or as the second chapter of The Rose and the Thorn, you'll sure to enjoy this version.  Oh, and feel free to skip past the first 4 1/2 minutes as that is just ramblings from me ;-)

Have you heard?

If you haven't heard one of the Riyria stories as read by Tim Gerard Reynolds you're really missing out on something special. Tim is without question the "Voice of Riyria" and once you hear him act out the various characters, you'll never be able to read the books again without hearing his portrayal in your ears.

Over two years ago, I wrote a little short story called The Viscount and the Witch. At the time, it was a little present to my existing readers to act as a bridge between my self-published books being pulled from the market and the Orbit books starting to ship.  Since then, I've used Viscount as a free introduction to my stories...to give people a taste to see if they might want to read the rest. Nowadays, it is quickly growing into obsolesce--mainly because it was incorporated as a chapter in The Rose and the Thorn. In fact, the whole Riyria Chronicles series has grown from its tiny seed.

I've always loved this short story and, as I already mentioned, Tim's reading of my books. So after recording The Rose and the Thorn, I asked my audio book producer, Recorded Books, if I could have a copy of chapter two. They were kind enough to agree. I also went up to their studios in New York and recorded a brief  introduction (4 1/2 of the total 45 minutes) in case you were ever curious as to what I sound like...which I'm sure everyone is ;-). We are still working on how (and if) we can get this posted for free on sites such as audible and itunes, but in the meantime, I can certainly make it available here. Just hit the Listen Audio button and it will bring up a control in a new window.

Oh, and if you would prefer to download the file (to put on your ipod or kindle) just right click on the control then select "Save video as..." Yeah, I know it's not a video, but you will get a MP3 file that you can put on any device you desire.

Even if you've already read the short story, I encourage you to give this version a listen. Tim has a way of making me sound much better than I am. Oh, and if you do enjoy the listen, please send a tweet to @KanshoReynolds (add the hashtag #vatw) to show him your appreciation. I'd love to see him flooded with praise for the wonderful job he did on this and all of my books. Happy listening!

Last day to win limited edition copies of Hollow World

It's still 131 days until the release of Hollow World, but four lucky people will be mailed signed limited-edition hardcovers tomorrow. This means you have a chance to join the nearly one thousand people who are already reading the novel (because they participated in the Kickstarter). The Kickstarter backers paid $75 for these editions, and as there are only 250 of them in existence, they will become collector items. If you're not yet familiar with Hollow World, here's a bit about the book:

The future is coming...for some sooner than others     Ellis Rogers is an ordinary man who is about to embark on an extraordinary journey. All his life he has played it safe and done the right thing, but faced with a terminal illness he's willing to take an insane gamble. He's built a time machine in his garage, and if it works, he'll face a world that challenges his understanding of what it means to be human, what it takes to love, and the cost of paradise. Ellis could find more than a cure for his illness; he might find what everyone has been searching for since time began...but only if he can survive Hollow World. “This is a clever and thought-provoking story, with loads of interesting ideas, some adrenalin-pumping action and plenty of humor...overall an entertaining read with Pax being one of my favorite characters of the year.”  — Pauline M. Ross, Fantasy Review Barn

There are two ways to enter:

• Goodreads - open to US, Canada, and the United Kingdom 
• My parallel giveaway - open to all countries

If you live in a place where you can enter in both...feel free to do so.  For those outside the specified countries, you'll actually have two ballots entered in my drawing  (the software that takes the poll will determine what country you are from). This way everyone will have two chances to win.

Even if you've read Hollow World, or have your own print copy, I encourage you to enter. The books will arrive in time for holiday gift giving so you might just get a nice present for a friend or loved one.