My new best friends are… Stephen Youll, ROC publishing and Brent Weeks

Because look at  the US cover for The Adamantine Palace. Look! LOOOOOK! Is it not a thing of beauty? Is it not perhaps the best classic high fantasy cover art of ALL TIME?

Fantasy dragons the way fantasy dragons should be!

Alright, I’m biased. But it’s definitely unquestionably the best classic high fantasy cover art with my name on it. The French were good, but this, this is awesome.

Stuff like this makes the endless re-write-athon seem just a little brighter (Gazetteer now sent for proof-reading. Next task: Last edit for King of the Crags and then that is done).

The one (and only) big advantage of being sent to far-away places in service of the day-job is suddenly finding myself with lots of free time at very strange hours of the day. Even in sub-urban Los Angeles, there really isn’t a huge amount of touristy stuff that I want to do when I’ve just woken up a three o’clock in the morning. Actually, mostly what I want to do is have breakfast. However, it’s also turning out to be a fine time to get some writing done, and so King of the Crags has raced ahead. Word count is sitting at 113k and the book is very nearly finished (the very first draft, at least). With a bit of luck it’ll be done in time for the proofs of the Adamantine Palace to arrive next week. It’s not going to be any longer than The Adamantine Palace, but the chapter count is a little lower which might please a few people. There’s more dragon, too, but you’ll still all have to wait until book three for certain mysteries to be resolved.

And the other America news is that a deal has been struck and The Adamantine Palace and all its little friends will be being published in the US as well. More when I know it.