News News News, and Thank-Yous

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I’m pleased to announce several new developments. First of all, the combined 5-day free promotion for The Clans through Amazon was a resounding success, with several hundred copies downloaded worldwide in that short span of time. I was absolutely floored at the response; I know that a lot of those downloads came from readers of my blog, and also from people who heard about it from them. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all for helping out with this. The success of that promotion is due in very large part to all of you, and I want you to know that I greatly appreciate it. My hope is that people who are looking for something a little different in the realm of epic fantasy find it in The Clans, and opportunities to spread the word like this are some of the best ways for this to happen.

Also, on that note, Dark Tree is now free on Amazon as a result of their price-matching policies—which, again, is thanks to all of you who helped out with the “Help Me Save the World” campaign I launched last month. This is huge, as it is likely that Dark Tree will stay free and thus will allow potential readers to become actual readers with no risk to their pocketbooks. I know that some of my readers became fans of the series due to trying out Dark Tree for free on sites like Smashwords, so having that available for free full-time on such a prominent site is incredible. Again, thank you to everyone who contributed in any way.

Speaking of Smashwords, The Clans is now available there. When I first released The Clans, I had wanted to try out Amazon’s KDP Select program, which provided perks like the 5-days-for-free promotion (which was great) as well as the Kindle Lending Library (which didn’t do a thing for The Clans). However, it came with the caveat that no other site could offer The Clans for at least 90 days, so anybody who bought their books from other sites weren’t able to read it unless they got their hands on a Kindle app (a problematic situation if you mainly read on your Nook).

I had heard a number of arguments for and against the program, and I knew that I would be taking a risk by participating in it, but I wanted to know one way or another if such a program could help get the word out for the Fourth World series. As I said earlier, the free promotion paid off, but it was at the expense of those who wanted to get the book from a different site. It was an interesting experiment, but I have determined that it would probably be better just to release future books to all sites and for all formats as soon as possible rather than allowing anyone to have exclusivity to it. After all, isn’t that what spreading the word is all about?

On the writing front, I’ve been plugging away at The Born Sword—which is shaping up quite nicely—as well as a couple of stories for a future Fourth World collection like The Clans. Also, thinking of the deep future for when the Fourth World series is complete, I have been toying with a few ideas for a new fantasy series. I’m getting pretty excited about it, but don’t worry. The Fourth World is still priority number one. *grins*

Well, that’s it for now. I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! See you next year!

Help Me Save the World…

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… 99 cents per download on Dark Tree by making it free through Amazon. It’s easy, doesn’t cost you anything, only takes a couple minutes, and would be really awesome.

Want some undying gratitude from yours truly? Here’s how to get it. Click on the following link to go to Dark Tree‘s Amazon page:

Dark Tree on Amazon

Once there, scroll down to the section titled, “Product Details.” You should see something that says, “Would you like to give feedback on images or tell us about a lower price?” Click on the “tell us about a lower price” link.

A little window will pop up asking where you saw the lower price. Click on the radio button that says “Website (Online).” A URL bar will come up. Copy the following and paste it in that bar:


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-tree-brandon-m-lindsay/1112440327?ean=2940044762299

For the price and shipping cost, type in “0.00″ and hit “Submit Feedback.” That’s it. You’re done. Though if you want to, you can do the same again but with the following URL:


http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Dark-Tree-Tale-Fourth-World/book-wiwhKtkMzk-Cm_2CkUMejA/page1.html?s=J8avGdUgQEWud7pkOGo3qw&r=2

Then you can start collecting that undying gratitude I told you about.

Why do this? Why make a book free when I can charge for it? The short answer is: a free book is a much easier entry point for a reader who hasn’t heard about an author yet than a book that comes with a cost, even a minimal one. Dark Tree had done a pretty good job of drumming interest in its followup, The Clans (now available on Amazon), mainly because people were willing to take a chance on it due to the fact that it was free through most retailers.

However, I hadn’t quite anticipated just how well a free book could do on Amazon. Recently, The Clans had been made free on Amazon for two days. By the second day, it shot up to #20 in the bestselling free Epic Fantasy list, and #78 in the overall free Fantasy list. The number of downloads of The Clans during those two days destroyed Dark Tree‘s lifetime record. It even got a good number of downloads in the UK and Germany. That’s right – Germany. Who could have guessed?

I was astonished. While Dark Tree had been making strides up the rankings on other sites such as Barnes & Noble, it had been slow progress, and almost nonexistent when compared to The Clans’ rocket ride up the Kindle bestseller lists.

Now, part of this (maybe even a substantial part) had to do with the fact that The Clans is a full-sized book at over 100K, and Dark Tree is a novelette. Shorter fiction has always been a harder sell, and while that’s changing thanks to e-publishing, it’s still true that most people prefer longer works to shorter ones. So I don’t discount the length factor. Even so, I also can’t discount the fact that Amazon is still the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to selling ebooks. Other retailers are gaining market share, true, but for now Amazon is still the undisputed king.

Having a free ebook there would only be augmented by the fact that I also have a full-length follow-up book as well. Epic fantasy readers love their series, and they typically don’t like waiting around for the next installment in the series, so when it’s already out, they may be more likely to try it the first one. That’s what I’m hoping will happen with the Fourth World.

I believe that my plans for the series actually will work quite well in this regard. I will be releasing novels in series, starting with The Born Sword, in addition to smaller works which in between novels so that fans won’t have wait as long for new Fourth World books. Some of them will be free, just like Dark Tree.

However, the first step down this path starts with you, dear friends. By telling Amazon that Dark Tree can be bought for cheaper than what they’re selling it for, they will hopefully match the price. Once that happens, readers the world over will have free access to Dark Tree from their Kindles, phones, and computers.

Who knows? By doing this, you very well may save the world… 99 cents per download.

Introducing the Fourth World

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July 12, 2012 marked the beginning of a new era for me. This was the day that Dark Tree: A Tale of the Fourth World went live on Amazon as an ebook. The reason that this is so significant for me is because Dark Tree is the introduction to my epic fantasy series, The Fourth World.

It all began many, many years ago (two, to be exact) when I was but a wee lad (aged 26) when I first conceived of a character whose sole purpose was to kill, even though he himself could not die, a weapon of mass destruction that was doomed to live with all the pain and death that he caused for all eternity (although that, of course, is not the end of his story). His name was Bladefray, and he was what I would come to call a Born Sword—the title given to each of the six immortal warriors that lived in what was to become the Fourth World. He was the spark that quickly became a roaring conflagration that has consumed my imagination ever since.

At the time, traditionally publishing novels seemed to be the only way to go, so that’s what I began to do: write a novel that I would shop around to various agents and publishers to see which one would bite. It was the tried-and-true method, if ever there was one, and though it was very difficult and very chancy, it was what I was prepared to do. It seemed to me the only legitimate option at the time.

I had met some other writers who were at a similar stage in their writing career who were considering self-publishing their works as ebooks, but I scoffed at such folly. Self-publishing? Ebooks? Pshaw! Although I decided to watch the phenomenon with mild interest, I didn’t really think it would amount to much, considering the sad and sordid history of self-publishing. I was convinced that if I was going to be a writer, I would do it the old-fashioned way.

Then came claims of publishers misreporting their authors’ royalties.

Then Borders closed its doors for good.

I started to worry, but also, to wonder.

Shortly before those things happened, when I was about 60,000 words into my novel The Born Sword, I went to World Fantasy Convention to peddle another novel that I had been working on for centuries, as well as rub elbows with the people who I had hoped would be my coworkers—the agents, editors, publishers, and authors involved in the fantasy industry. It was there that I bullied a senior editor from a major imprint into dinner with me and some of my peers so that we could finagle our way into his good graces and hopefully interest him in our work.

The “interesting him in our work” part didn’t turn out so well, but he did give me some advice that stuck with me, and that was to write short stories. Once you proved you could write those, he said, then I might consider looking at your longer work.

Well, if that’s what it took, then by golly, that’s what I would do!

The popularity of short stories, especially fantasy stories, seemed to be waning as more and more of the markets that carried them were going the way of Borders. My early years as a reader were shaped by short stories, particular those by Ray Bradbury, so I had long regarded the short story with romanticized awe, and often thought about writing some, even though I believed they would do little to advance my writing career. Armed with my new insider knowledge, I quickly revised this misconception and began to write one in earnest.

Since it was to be a springboard for my fantasy novel (though I had since abandoned the previous one and was now focusing on The Born Sword), it seemed natural that the story I was to write be a fantasy as well. And hell, while I’m at it, why not in the same world as The Born Sword (an idea shamelessly pilfered from fantasist Peter Orullian, who released a whole gamut of related material before his debut novel)? If I could find a magazine that wanted to publish it, great; if not, well, maybe I could give that silly little self-publishing thingy a shot.

One story became two, and I realized that I had a whole lot more of them in me, screaming to get out. Furthermore, these stories seemed like they would be a good introduction to the increasingly complex metaphysics of the Fourth World, and so it was that I decided to collect them into a book called The Clans: Tales from the Fourth World.

It was about that time when I finally realized that publishing wasn’t what it used to be. I had to make a decision: I could place myself in the uncaring hands of a major corporation that expected me to fail and was existing in a bygone era, unwilling to change or adapt; or I could go it alone, without support from the industry, into uncharted territory out of which very few had ever come out alive.

Of course I chose the sexier option, and decided to self-publish all the way.

It was while I was working on the sixth and final (sort of) story in The Clans when I was struck by an image I had seen of Yggdrasil, the sacred tree of Norse mythology. Now, the Fourth World had a bit in common with Norse mythology already: the purpose of life was to prove oneself ready to battle at the God’s side in the afterlife, and I already had a massive tree that was the source of all human souls. The problem with that last was that the Birthing Tree, as it’s called, was three worlds away from the stories I had been writing, and there seemed no natural way to integrate such a nifty image into the Fourth World.

For some reason I can’t fully understand or explain, I had to have that image in my world. It was going to happen. I just had to figure out how.

So while the beta edits for the various stories of The Clans started rolling in, I let the image of a giant tree made of smoky glass, its massive branches sheltering a city from the light of the sun, simmer in the black cauldron of my mind. I even threw in some eye of newt for good measure.

Finally, after several months of slowly coming to a boil, Dark Tree was ready. And what a potent brew I had concocted.

Once I knew what I wanted to do with it, I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out. Dark Tree, at over 13000 words, is a novelette; stories graduate from short story into novelette when they reach about 7500 words. It would normally take me three days of uninterrupted inspiration to write a 7000-word short story.

I wrote the bulk of Dark Tree in two days.

For me, that was an awful lot of inspiration.

I took the time to polish it up, of course, with the help of my beta readers. But the polish was simply that; the story itself was, to me, already immensely satisfying and complete as I had written it. A couple of times, especially with the ending and implications the story has for the series as a whole, I even surprised myself. I couldn’t be happier with the end result, and I am content to send it off into the world.

The facts that The Clans is supposed to be an introduction to the world of The Born Sword, and that Dark Tree is in a way another introduction, may cause you to wonder in what order you should be reading these books. After all, The Clans was mostly written before Dark Tree, and The Born Sword mostly written before that. Should they be read in the order that you wrote them, or in the order you published them, or what?

I would recommend reading them in the order that they are published, but really you could read them in any order that you want. Each work informs the greater narrative in its own ways, adding its puzzle piece to create the larger picture, but is complete in its own right. You could read The Clans and then The Born Sword, and go back to Dark Tree later (and hopefully have an “A-ha!” moment, when you finally break free of your New Wave comic book prison), or you could read it in a completely different order. The chronology only starts to matter with the main sequence of novels, namely The Born Sword and its sequels. If that sounds convoluted, then let me put it this way: jump in anywhere, so long as you read Novel One before Novel Two, and you should be fine.

Which raises the question: what are my plans for the Fourth World? I plan on wrapping the main story in three or four novels and calling it good. No fifty-book series for this guy. I’ve got a whole lot of ideas that I want to write about, and not all of them fit in the Fourth World. I have a clear direction for the series, and as you’ll begin to see once you start reading them, you’ll understand why the series cannot exceed four books.

Given that, I have developed an extreme fondness for stories that are novelette-length, and I plan on writing some more of them. Rather than having you wait in between novels, I will release a Fourth World story or a collection of stories as a teaser for what’s to come. I already have some plans, and I’ve already written most of a story from the next collection.

I have one last announcement. I have made Dark Tree available for free on Smashwords in all electronic formats, so that you can read it on your Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Sony eReader, Web browser, etc. If you’re interested, I’d love for you to check it out. If you know anybody who reads fantasy and is looking for something new, let them know that they can read it for free. If you’ve read it and have an opinion on it, writing a review goes a long way to helping me out, especially on Amazon. I’m not necessarily asking for unconditional praise, but more for your honest opinion (though I wouldn’t at all mind if honesty and praise coincide). Thank you if you’ve already gotten your copy, thanks again if you’ve already written a review, and thanks a million times more for being so supportive of what I’m doing. While I’m proud of what I’ve done, knowing that all of you support it as well really means a lot to me. Oh, and thanks for reading this really long blog post. *grins*

May the God of All Worlds bless you and find you worthy to fight at his side in the War beyond Time.

P.S. For those of you who haven’t seen my cover art, created by yours truly, here it is:

Yuck, There’s Thermodynamics in my Magic System

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The development of the magic system in the Fourth World came about naturally as I was telling the stories that took place there. While many out-of-the-ordinary processes in the world I created could technically qualify as magic, the part that most people would think of as magic (i.e., the powers that sorcerers would use to flamboyant effect) is something called binding. By using willpower, a sorcerer is able to bind a particular substance to a point of his choosing. For example, an ironbinder could create a focal point in the air which drew metal to it, very much as if that point became magnetic. Pretty simple and straightforward, right?

As it turns out… not so much.

In one of my stories in The Clans, a character has a magical object that has been heatbound, meaning that it has a permanent binding which allows it to draw heat out of its immediate environment, thus making them much cooler. As a plot device, it served its purpose well, and I thought it was kind of a cool concept, so I was proud when I handed it over to my beta readers. They liked the story, but one of them pointed something out to me that seemed to present a serious problem.

Left unchecked, the mere presence of this heatbound object would eventually destroy the entire world.

So much for simple and straightforward.

Thermodynamics formulaThis beta reader of mine is primarily a sci-fi reader, so he is very particular about the cause-effect relationships in a way that only an avid hard-SF reader can appreciate (although Brandon Sanderson and Brent Weeks are changing that, with their magic systems that act more like physics than hand-waving). So when he discovered how this object worked, his mind spun out all the implications of such a thing.

So what happens to all that heat that gets drawn into the object? Nothing; it just packed in there, so that the core becomes more and more superheated… and will every moment for all time. Therein lies the rub: heat gets continually drained from the world into what amounts to a black hole of thermal energy, never to be seen again, until there is no more heat left. The Fourth World eventually becomes nothing more than a giant snowball.

Of course, the easiest thing to do would be to just scrap the whole idea of the heatbound object. This character could very well perform his tasks with some other object that wouldn’t destroy the world, and the story would go on. Besides, I never set out to create the coolest magic system. I created the magic system to fit in with the world where my stories take place. If this one little idea ended up on the cutting room floor, I would still be true to my goals for the Fourth World stories and you, my dear readers, would never know the difference.

But where’s the fun in that?

So I’ve decided to challenge myself and come up with a solution. I’ve got a pretty solid idea of how to fix it, but I’m going to run it by my people first, just to make sure there’s nothing else I’ve overlooked. After that, it’s just a matter of inserting a paragraph or two and applying another layer of polish, and “It Beckons” will be in final form for the book. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have writing it.

Epic Fantasy: A Definition

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The question of what epic fantasy is often arises, yet despite that, few people attempt to define it, and fewer yet believe that the definition they come up with is adequate. For the most part, however, we all know an epic fantasy when we see it. Why is it so difficult to define what makes an epic fantasy an epic fantasy? Is there even any value in trying to come up with a definition?

I’ll answer the second question first. Though some may argue that defining epic fantasy is merely a semantic concern, I think that there is value in coming up with a definition, not because of anything to do with epic fantasy, but because of the human need to understand the world we live in. Art and literature are important to many, if not most, people, and being able to understand art can help us to understand life in general. Art can often give life meaning and understanding, and such things are among the most important requirements of a fulfilling existence.

So why is defining epic fantasy so difficult? I would argue that people have attempted not to define epic fantasy as such, but rather what they like about it. One person (usually a writer, since they are the ones who get asked to define epic fantasy the most) will say it has to do with the world, and another will say it has to do with the characters. As it almost always turns out, the first person likes (either to read or to write) epic fantasy with a focus on world building, whereas the second likes those with a focus on characters (of course, this is not a hard and fast rule, and may not even be the case generally, but it is something I have seen through observation). While these things and others may have much to do with epic fantasy, I do not believe that they are its defining characteristics.

Definition is largely comprised of two conceptual processes: integration and differentiation. In order to define anything, we must first determine to what class of things it belongs, and secondly determine how it is distinguished from all other things in that class.

The class in this case is, of course, fantasy, which is a genre that is in turn defined by its use of elements that are derived purely from imagination. If it includes dragons, magic, or places that have never existed and never will, then it is fantasy.

That’s the easy part. The definition for fantasy isn’t controversial in the slightest, at least not in the circles I run in. So we’ll leave that part alone and tackle that part that everybody disagrees about, and that is what distinguishes epic fantasy from other kinds of fantasy.

The key word here is epic. What distinguishes something epic from something that is not? A lot of answers have been given, but the size of the book or the length of the tale is among the more common. So is the size of the cast; the “cast of thousands” is something that is often considered to be a hallmark of epic fantasy. I think these things are common in epic fantasies, but are not really defining characteristics.

However, there is something about these attempts to define the epic that are important in discovering what makes a story epic. Both of them talk in terms of scope, but is it really scope in terms of geography or number of characters that defines epic fantasy? Or is it something else?

There are a number of stories that take place in only a handful, or even just one, location that qualify as epic fantasy, just as there are epics that follow only a couple of main characters, where the rest of the cast is mere window dressing or simply doesn’t exist at all. Yet there is something about these stories that still feels vast. I would argue that that smoky, vague something is a story’s scope of consequence.

In epic fantasy, lives are changed, kingdoms fall, and the rules of the universe are turned on their heads. The consequences of the actions taken by the main characters affect the lives of everyone that matters, and sometimes have consequences that reach far beyond that. If Frodo had traveled across the world without interacting with anyone along the way, only to travel to Mordor to borrow a cup of sugar, The Lord of the Rings would have been seen not as an epic fantasy, but rather as an epic failure. Frodo’s story matters because of how he and his friends change everything.

Another hallmark of epic fantasy is the clash between good and evil, and indeed, it is very prevalent, though an number of examples of epic fantasy can be found where this is not the case (A Song of Ice and Fire chief among them). But I think there is a very good reason why many of these stories feature this kind of conflict, and that is because when it all shakes out, the world is changed. Either good triumphs over evil, or evil triumphs over good. Everyone in that world has a stake in the outcome, and everyone’s lives will be changed whether they were featured in the story or not.

Contrast this to stories where a character or set of characters travel across the world but only fight monsters or gather loot in caves and dungeons. It doesn’t matter how many places they go or how many people they meet; their actions, in the big scheme of things, are meaningless. Now matter where their adventures take them, the world is still more or less the same. This kind of story fits in the category swords and sorcery, as distinct from epic fantasy, and it is distinct primarily because of its lack of scope of consequence.

Ever since the term epic fantasy was first coined, there has been a rough, ostensive definition of it, or else no one would have bothered to come up with it. Hopefully, what I have said here will either help clarify this concept, or at least promote more discussion on it. While I think scope of consequence captures the essential differentiator of epic fantasy, I am very interested in hearing what you have to say on the topic, since two of my favorite things are philosophy and fantasy. If you have anything to add, or if you want to dispute my definition and say it’s complete foolishness, please comment below. Thanks!

Update: What’s going on with Brandon?

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The website has been quiet for some time. I wanted to assure you it wasn’t because there was nothing to report; on the contrary, I’ve been doing a lot of writing, and The Clans is shaping up quite nicely. It is still on track for a release by the end of summer.

So how is The Clans coming? Here’s what I’ve written so far:

  • It Beckons
  • The Returner Comes
  • What Is Owed

And this is what still needs to be written:

  • The Star Falls, the Star Rises Again
  • The Introduction and Appendices

Introduction and appendices, you ask? You’re writing fiction. Whatever will you need those for?

A good question, and I have the rudiments of an answer: the intro and appendices will provide a dramatic framework for the stories, a la The Canterbury Tales or Dan Simmons’ Hyperion. Collectively, they will be their own story, and won’t be a strict frame story in the traditional sense, but they will function in a similar way. The scenes in the intro and appendices are set in a school, so I thought it appropriate to title them in a way that reflects that. But don’t worry; they won’t be info dumps. They will follow their own story, even if I do trickle a few tender, tasty morsels of lore along the way (grins).

Now, a collection of six short stories typically doesn’t make for a very long book. That’s true, but I only call the stories “short” for the sake of simplicity. Only one of them, “Wholeness,” falls within the word count of a short story as set forth by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, being under 7000 words. Three of the other stories are all novelettes, and the most recent story, “The Returner Comes,” actually falls into the novella category. The total word count so far is over 60,000, which is about the length of a novel. I want to assure you that you’ll be getting stories that are Epic. Expect raging war, wild romance, explosive magic, and the end of the world, not two-page character studies about people concerned about their belly button lint.

I have been writing for my shared blog, The Fictorian Era. If you haven’t been following it, now is your chance. Here are the links for the two most recent posts I’ve written:

Economy of Character

Why You Should Be Writing Short Stories

So, what’s in store for my personal website? More updates in the future, as well as posts about writing that have been kicking around in my noggin. There are some topics that I really want to explore in depth, so look for those in the coming weeks.

Of Theme and Magic

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I’ve had a major breakthrough.

When I set out to write The Clans, my goals were humble. I wanted to introduce you to the world of the novel I was working on, The Born Sword. I also wanted to build that world, to develop it in ways that I could use in the novel, and I do that best by writing about it. And finally, I wanted to perhaps share a ripping good yarn or two.

These six stories were to be bound together through the world in which they took place. That’s it. That’s all I wanted. If that’s all that had happened, I would have been utterly satisfied. But that’s not all that happened.

These stories were also bound by theme.

If you’ve read “Wholeness,” then you’ve probably surmised that its theme is integrity (or at least you should have; I basically tell you as much in the last three paragraphs). While I was writing the end of the as-yet-unnamed fourth story of the collection, I realized that I inadvertently borrowed not only the theme of “Wholeness,” but the very imagery used to depict it: the integrated man, a whole person.

At first, I was a bit annoyed with myself. After all, I pride myself on my originality, and if something’s been done before, I furiously try to avoid using it in my stories (unless it fits so well that it would be a crime to forego using it). Theme and imagery were no exceptions. I had every intention of rewriting that scene when the story was done.

But after a while, I began to wonder if I should leave that scene alone. It did fit the story. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all of my stories written so far touched on this theme of integrity, what it means to have it and what it means to betray it. So I decided to keep it, but I hadn’t yet realized why this was significant.

What is a theme, anyway? The best definition I’ve found is that a theme is the unifying idea of a story. One could say that the sum of a story’s parts, its identity, is the theme. If all of a story’s parts bound together demonstrate that theme, could one say that the story is truly unified, integrated… whole?

Now let’s talk about the magic system.

Magic, in the Fourth World (the world of The Clans and The Born Sword), primarily consists of the binding of essences. For example, a sorcerer can take the element of fire from his surroundings (limited by how much of it there is) and bind that fire into a focal point, which he can then manipulate. Or, he can steal the fire from the torch in your hand, turn it into a fireball, and then launch it back at you. This works for whatever “essence” that particular sorcerer can bind: light, metal, pain… anything. All he has to do is take the bits that are there and unify them into a whole.

Let me repeat that last phrase: unify them into a whole.

Did you notice how many times I used the word “bind” when talking about theme?

Yes, that’s right. I have integrated and bound the magic system and the theme, and that theme is integrity.

I am performing literary magic, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Just wait and see what I’m willing to do with it.

Writing is a tough gig, and sometimes a writer needs to be reminded of why he writes. Different people do it for different reasons. Some do it because they’re good at it, some because they can actually make money at it. Some do it because they don’t know how to do anything else. Some, though, do it for those moments of unfettered, unadulterated bliss when everything comes together.

Today, that last was me.