Happy New Year
I am heartily glad to see the back of 2007, which will surely rank as one of my least favourite years of all time. At least, I hope so. Nevertheless, it is over and not to be repeated, thank God. And now it is on to 2008 and all that it has in store. I'm expecting good things. One of which is a visit to what has become the premier literary event in the British calendar: the Edinburgh Book Fair. For the first time, I've been invited to attend the EBF as a guest author/participant. It's a genuine honour and I feel genuinely honoured to be asked. I don't have all the details yet, but I'll post them as and when I get more information. In the meantime, here's wishing you a Great 2008!
Patience Rewarded !
The broken link supplying the vital email bridge between author and reader has been fixed! Why not try it out? As always, feel free to write me about anything at anytime. (A note posted to steve(at)stephenlawhead.com will reach me as well.) I look forward to hearing from you.
On other fronts: I just heard from my editor at HarperCollins that they're planning to re-release the entire Pendragon Cycle in a new edition with new covers sometime in the next year. I'll pass along more info as it comes in. Also, Hood has been nominated for Book of the Year by the city of Leicester (pronounced Lester)
which hosts an annual ceremonial award dinner for lucky authors. The
competition is pretty steep,but I figure we're in with a chance..
Patience will be rewarded . . ..
Technology moves on, and after nine years with the old webhost, this website is undergoing a transfer to a new webhost which will allow me to update quicker and easier than ever before. There are some teething problems, however, and so I ask for your patience as we get the bugs worked out. My hope is that it will become more reader-friendly, too, as we're anticipating adding a mailing list and a contest page very soon. Keep watching this space! In the meantime, if you'd like to drop me a note you can use this email address: feedback(at)stephenlawhead.com to reach me.
Tuck begins. . . .
With Scarlet well and truly released, I've turned my attention to book 3, Tuck, at last. It's early days yet, but already the story has taken an unexpected turn. I always like it when that happens -- even though it usually means a whole lot more work! I'll keep you posted.
Scarlet arrives!
The FedEx man just delivered my first copy of the US edition of King Raven II: Scarlet. It looks great. They'll be in the bookstores in a week or two. Don't know about the UK release -- that might be a little later. First copies of the DRAGON KING books were also in the box. They're being re-released in the US along with Scarlet. Those are the first fiction books I wrote (early '80s): unemployed, pregnant wife, wolf at door. Now they're in yet another edition. Who knew?
Off to the Greenbelt festival on Saturday to sign books and enjoy some good weather, at last.
Scarlet is now completely edited, proofed, and off to the printers. September pub date anticipated, right on schedule. Tuck is next.
Starting to get interested in facebook -- especially since hearing that there is a 'Stephen Lawhead is the greatest author of the 21st century' group. Ah, shucks. Really, it's too much. I don't know what to say...
Back in England, and contemplating the final KING RAVEN volume: Tuck. Work delayed due to what turned out to be a lengthy illness -- now over, I hope (no cards, thanks), but as always Oxford is evocative and a good environment for any writer. I can twist my ankle on the same paving stones that tripped up Sayers, Lewis, and Tolkein -- not to mention Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey -- which can't help but put one in a creative mood.
Anyone who has had the experience of waiting way, way too long to send a thank-you note to Auntie Dot for that birthday gift card -- so long it's now embarrassing to do so -- can appreciate my chagrin at promising, at one point, weekly updates to this web site and then keeping it more or less static since the autumn. I do apologise.
A year-plus sabbatical in the Pacific Northwest is now coming to an end, and I am moving back to Britain, where I have lived off-and-on since the mid-eighties. The past months have been difficult in ways that I could not have foreseen, and might explain later. For now, though, a word from the late, great Oswald Chambers, that is interesting to contemplate when you live on a beach, as I do: 'It's no sin to be shallow. The ocean has a shore.'
Hood is well and truly launched! And the print media have picked up on the 'Robin in Wales' aspect and spun it in order to create a mild controversy. I'd been doing some phone interviews for radio and print, and one of these was for the UK paper, Wales on Sunday. Well, the piece seems to have been picked up by all sorts of publications who have run with it -- without bothering to check any of the facts at all. The article is full of errors and false assertions --and even misspellings -- but it is now running all over the world! I've tracked it to India and China so far. If you want to read it, here's a link to a large London newspaper.
Long live the controversy!
I've spent the summer on an island in the Puget Sound. Having lived my whole life as far away from the ocean as possible (Nebraska...Oxford...Austria...) this has been quite a learning experience. Kayaking, feasting on Dungeness crab that I pulled in myself, flying kites with bald eagles soaring overhead, collecting sea glass on the beach... It's been a tough few months.
Hood was published in September in the US and UK. I've been visiting bookstores in the Pacific Northwest to promote the book, and will go to London, Cardiff, and Nottingham in October. Nottingham might end up being hostile territory, but I suppose that if you put Robin Hood in Wales, as I've done, you have to be prepared to defend that decision.
In the midst of all this, I'm trying to finish up Scarlet, the second book in the King Raven series.
