[QuickTidal]

Can you guys take the racism debate thing that sprang up out of nowhere to another thread? It doesn't really belong here.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 05 December 2013 - 11:59 AM

[lastname]

Right ... so can you three chaps of varying degrees of Brent Weekness comment on the Lightbringer series. Lightbringer > Night Angel or the other way around? Also, is this going to be wrapped up in four books?

[Tattersail_]

lastname, on 05 December 2013 - 12:07 PM, said:

Right ... so can you three chaps of varying degrees of Brent Weekness comment on the Lightbringer series. Lightbringer > Night Angel or the other way around? Also, is this going to be wrapped up in four books?

Exactly! What I am waiting for too

[Aptorian]

I could never chose which of my children was my favorite child, and as such I am sure you could not expect BEST SELLING AUTHOR BRENT WEEKS to pick one over another. How ever if you check out his AWESOME WEBSITE:

http://www.brentweeks.com/

You can read that:

Quote

I promised a while ago that I would give you an update on the progress of The Broken Eye. Then, I broke that promise—by giving you an update early! But, this is epic fantasy, a genre fraught with fan-angst about whether your author is working on the next magnum opus or just tooling around the Caribbean, spending your reading bucks and releasing action figures to fund his or her lavish lifestyle.

So. Here’s another update: I have finished the first, second, third, and fourth drafts of The Broken Eye. Content edits are done. The book is out of my hands and into production. (We still have copy edits and one last look to go, so if you see me posting on social media about “edits” that’s what I mean.) The Broken Eye is slated to release on the week of August 26th in US/UK/AUS. (US releases are on Tuesdays, and if I recall correctly, UK releases are on Thursdays.)

I believe (and my editors and agent agree!) that The Broken Eye is my best work yet. It is also my longest. By far. I promised Orbit—contractually—that this book would be 155-160,000 words. I like to think that I’m good at a fair number of the many skills necessary to be a successful novelist, but one thing I’m apparently not so hot at is “estimating the length of a story.”

Me, two years ago: “Oh yeah, this book’ll be about 150 thousand words. But I might go a little long, so let’s say 155 or 160.”

Actual length: 306,000 words, not counting glossary or appendices.

Orbit has been gracious to me in that they are not splitting this book into two books. The length may, however, cause some problems with translations—different languages can add up to 30% to the word count.

Now, we like big books. (And we cannot lie. You other readers can’t deny, a book flops open with an itty-bitty font, and a map that’s in your face, you get—sorry! Sorry!) We all love a big book, but we’ve also all probably read the big book that goes nowhere. I hope you’ll agree that The Broken Eye isn’t THAT book. Despite how long the manuscript already was, when she first read the book two drafts ago, my editor’s first comments were that I needed to add more about X, Y, and Z.

What’s next for me? I’ll take a few days off. (Yeah, only a few. I get depressed if I’m away from writing for long.) Then I’ll work on The Way of Shadows graphic novel for a few days.

And then I’ll dive into the next Lightbringer book. When will that one come out? I don’t know. I will note that in the last ten years, I’ve written a book every two years… and while the time between books has remained the same, I’ve doubled the length of my books. And, I think it fair to say, I’ve added a level of polish and skill I didn’t possess before.

And yet still, you must wait. I know waiting sucks, so I’m doing all I can (hiring an assistant, working six days weeks, working while on vacation) to minimize your wait as much as possible without compromising the finished product. And that last clause is important. I have to live with these books forever. A few years from now, no one will care that it was two years between books rather than 18 months. They—and I!—will care if it’s not as good as it could have been. This tension of wanting to please fans and wanting to get it right is something every author has to negotiate for himself or herself.

I will continue to let you know how things are going every so often with update posts like this for the next book (probably titled The Blood Mirror). I’ll write my next writing update in April.

p.s. Anyone want to buy a few pallets of action figures? Yacht maintenance is expensive!

p.p.s. No, Dinkheisel. There are no action figures.

This post has been edited by Not Brent Weeks: 05 December 2013 - 12:34 PM

[Studlock]

I've never read any Brent Weeks, how would you describe his style? I assume that everyone going around as him because he's awesome?

[Aptorian]

Personally, Not being a world famous writer of Assassin litterature, I have not read any of the Lightbringer books yet. However if I was to describe the Night Angel trilogy books I would call them action focused popcorn novels, that got off to a shaky start but improved over the course of the 3 books.

I had problems with the character development and the plot but Weeks can write a great action scene and the world he was building was quite interesting (in a completely exaggerated comic book fantasy sort of way).

[Studlock]

Maybe I'll look into it, I've been looking for something to 'sub-in' when reading heavier books get to, uh, heavy.

[HiddenOne]

I just finished Way of Shadows, it was pretty good - I intend to read the next installment in the future

[QuickTidal]

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is proving to be very entertaining. I had no idea Diana Wynne Jones books were so satisfying.

[Tiste Simeon]

I dunno what y'all are looking at me for... I don't know anything about Lightbringers or assassins... *whistles nochalantly*

[Coco with marshmallows]

Neither do I.

Currently re-reading Mage's Blood by David Hair as I picked up the sequel the other day.

[QuickTidal]

I Am Brian Blessed Not Brent Weeks, on 05 December 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

Neither do I.

Currently re-reading Mage's Blood by David Hair as I picked up the sequel the other day.

Whenever I see that title on the shelf I see MAGE'S HAIR by David Blood...and it makes me think the book is a book about an epic, magical, coif of hair...and it's written by a Death Metal lead singer.

[Tiste Simeon]

QuickTidal, on 05 December 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

I Am Brian Blessed Not Brent Weeks, on 05 December 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

Neither do I.

Currently re-reading Mage's Blood by David Hair as I picked up the sequel the other day.

Whenever I see that title on the shelf I see MAGE'S HAIR by David Blood...and it makes me think the book is a book about an epic, magical, coif of hair...and it's written by a Death Metal lead singer.

I would read the heck out of that book.

[Mentalist]

I'm very slowly reading "the Castle of Lord Valentine". Majipoor chronicles isn't grabbing me.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 05 December 2013 - 03:42 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

Just crossed the halfway mark of The Power That Preserves. This is still my least favorite of the First Chronicles--it just doesn't grab me like the first two--but it's still pretty dang good.

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 05 December 2013 - 01:48 PM, said:

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is proving to be very entertaining. I had no idea Diana Wynne Jones books were so satisfying.

YES!

One of us! One of us!

The Christopher Chant books are stunners as well.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 05 December 2013 - 06:08 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 05 December 2013 - 01:48 PM, said:

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is proving to be very entertaining. I had no idea Diana Wynne Jones books were so satisfying.

YES!

One of us! One of us!

The Christopher Chant books are stunners as well.

They have moved onto the list of "Need to get" now, yes.

She reminds of Terry Pratchett actually, just less satirical. Very fun book!

[amphibian]

Oh, my firecracker of a post a while ago regarding the Glen Cook/reader dynamic was somewhat jesting, but somewhat serious.

The shift from the more familiar northern European mythology/monsters-style books to the southern Asia/African books within the Black Company series is a big one. The narrators sometimes change, which is important because Cook actually shifts his writing style to match the character writing/speaking, and the references to mythology/monsters/general settings aren't as familiar to most Western readers of SF (usually white people) because thus far, mainstream SF/fiction doesn't play within those sandboxes.

I strongly suspect the strangeness of the setting/mythology turns people off more than Cook's writing or narrator changes - which is kind of a shame because I strongly believe it's the latter books that best live up to Erikson's almighty book blurb: "Vietnam war fiction on peyote".

[Coco with marshmallows]

It could be that Amph,

or it could just be:

Spoiler

People prefer Croaker as a narrator.

Look at the complaints MBOTF gets when the new characters arrive in DG compared to GotM

Or again for HOC (i'll admit i was one that found the first 1/3 being dedicated solely to Karsa annoying as hell)

sometimes minor things like that can throw people off too.

Edited - wrong book title

This post has been edited by I Am Brian Blessed Not Brent Weeks: 05 December 2013 - 08:37 PM

[Vengeance]

I Am Brian Blessed Not Brent Weeks, on 05 December 2013 - 08:02 PM, said:

It could be that Amph,

or it could just be:

Spoiler

People prefer Croaker as a narrator.

Look at the complaints MBOTF gets when the new characters arrive in DG compared to GotM

Or again for MT (i'll admit i was one that found the first 1/3 being dedicated solely to Karsa annoying as hell)

sometimes minor things like that can throw people off too.

Spoiler

It was the first 1/3 of HOC that was dedicated to Karsa. MT went off the radar and to Lether