Dancing to Dirges

Depressing and happy things Tim says, sometimes while drunk

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Musing on the Dead

Here's what I've been struggling with: People didn't read Heart of Veridon. Not many people, at least. I appreciate all of you who bought it and read it, but I assure you that you're in the minority of genre-reading individuals. And now I have a contract for book two in the series, which I am finally starting. Took longer than I thought to recover from Horns, but I worked harder on it than I expected. Point is, I now have this project, and I need to decide how to approach it.

Do I make this second book utterly dependent on the first? That automatically limits the people who are going to want to read it. And if someone who doesn't fall into that subset picks up the book, it would be incomprehensible to them. Who is this Emily. What Cog?

The answer is obviously no, we need to make it more independent. Appeal to those who read HoV, follow through on the promise of the narrative, but without cutting out the new readers. It's a challenging thing. I've started to form in my head the changes that will come to Veridon as a result of HoV that will in themselves do a lot of explication of the first book. There's a lot I want to bring to this book, thematically, things that got left out of HoV due to the cut-chase nature of the plot. It will be a fuller book. I hope.

Anyway. It's going to be challenging. It's going to be good. I hope you like it.

And yes, it's still all about Jacob Burn.

6 Comments:

At 1:58 PM , Blogger Aetius said...

You could cheat a bit and do a "Tolkien synopsis" at the beginning to get people up to speed.

 
At 6:42 AM , Blogger thexmedic said...

I just finished reading Hearts of Veridon this morning, and was looking for a way to contact you to express my general sense of awe, and just a thank you for writing such a bad ass piece of fiction, and I find this, which seems like a wonderful piece of news. Very excited to hear it. Veridon really blew me away - fantastic action, a great mystery, and the plot was virtually airtight which seems a rare thing to find these days.

Anyway, while you're working on the sequel I'm looking forward to hunting down more of your work.

Thanks again,

Jonathan

 
At 11:20 PM , Anonymous Robert said...

I agree with Matt. A short overview of the first book would do the job of getting a new reader up to speed with the story and refresh the memory of someone who read HoV. But I'm sure whatever you do will be great. I really enjoyed HoV, it is one of my favorite books.

 
At 9:07 PM , Blogger Caedo said...

I found this blog while hunting for information about a HoV sequel. I really enjoyed HoV and hoped the second book was already out. Guess I'll have to wait.

Making the second book independent of the first is probably a good idea. I know that I wouldn't pick up the second book in a series without having read the first one, and HoV is lamentably hard to come by.

 
At 7:52 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I borrowed H.o.V. from the Toronto Public Library. I hope to buy an epub version for my e-reader, if not, then a new copy from Amazon.

I loved the spooky atmosphere, the blending of obscure technology and oppressive religion, the vivid descriptions of violent activity and beautiful locales. I don't normally read subgenre fiction (e.g., steampunk, cyberpunk) but would recommend this book to anyone interested in general fantasy.

I cannot yet imagine how the sequel will continue the story, but the Veridon universe will surely provide a good foundation for many more plots.

 
At 9:21 AM , Blogger Psychophant said...

I suppose I am quite late, but I have been out of the (virtual) world. I think you know what you should do, make the second book more independent, maybe capitalize on the success of Horns and DoV to get a reedition of HoV, so you need enough to pique people's interest, but not enough to be incomprehensible. Something like Elric, rather than Corum, if I may use Moorcock as an example.

 

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