Full steam ahead on Liberator
Contracts all signed, structural edits received from US, UK and Australia - I'm doing them all at once. So now it's full steam ahead on Liberator, the second half of the duology with Worldshaker. This is one amazing sequel. I've had two trilogies published before in Australia, but this is the first ever time I truly believe the second book matches the first. Worldshaker has the plus of creating the world, but Liberator is a bigger story. Everyone said Worldshaker was a hard book to put down, but responses from editors and sample readers are telling me Liberator is almost impossible to put down!
And it's going to be getting better, because I've just started work on the revisions, and I can feel the improvement coming through! Very exciting! It'll take me a couple of months, because I always revise through from first page to last, a total rewrite. It'll be coming out in the first half of next year.
US edition of Worldshaker in bookstores now!
Yes, it's now out, the Simon & Schuster edition of Worldshaker. Ditto the UK edition (there's a separate website for it at www.worldshaker.co.uk.) And the German edition follows by the end of this month. It's all happening!
Tours Over!
Two weeks touring Worldshaker in the US, two weeks touring Worldshaker in the UK, time spent meeting publishers in France, UK and US - and now I'm back in Australia feeling very satisfied. The tours exceeded expectations … all my publishers are great people … and the final week of holiday with Aileen in Paris, Bruges and Amsterdam was a bask in the sunshine. All wonderful!
The only hard part is that now I have to get back into a writing routine. I'm so far out of it! I'll be glad when the structural edit suggestions on Liberator come in - that'll be a nice easy step for getting back in the mood. I guess the touring author lifestyle was a bit overwhelming for this simple provincial lad!
I kept up a blog on Wordpress while I was overseas, at www.richardharland.wordpress.com. Now I'm back. I've posted it up on the News & Blog page of this website
US TOUR - EVENTS AND TIMES
I've just put up the latest info in the News column of the NEWS & BLOG page. I'll keep up the blog coumn until I fly off (so soon now, Saturday May 22nd!), but then I'll do all blogging on http://richardharland.wordpress.com
JUGGERNAUT IMAGE
I've just put up another vision of the juggernaut 'Worldshaker' by artist Laurent Linn. Exterior view and interior cutaway - check it out here!
Tips on Writing Steampunk -
I just put them up! They're in the Blog part of the NEWS & BLOG page.
For the history and world of the novel, for the construction and diagrams of the juggernaut, for author readings and extracts from the novel - it's all there and more behind the WORLDSHAKER button.
And since it's a steampunk fantasy, there's info about steampunk as a genre of fiction/movies and as a fashion style under the STEAMPUNK button.
The AUTHOR button is about me - life story, awards, novels and short stories published. And as you can see from these piccies, I'm now dressing steampunk as well as writing it.
Ah, the WRITING TIPS button - this is the one I want to explain! It's a free guide to writing fantasy and SF - everything you need to know, from building suspense to point of view, from creating characters to developing action, from dialogue to setting, from climaxes to revision - and not forgetting the business of getting published (how to do it, how the system works, how to self-promote, etc.)
