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Prince of Thorns has been on the shelves for 15 years! The book is now older than Jorg himself is in the book 😮 Worldwide Prince of Thorns has sold over 1,000,000 copies... and the UK paperback has reached at least 32 printings. I'll take the chance to say thanks - thank you to my readers (and my publishers) for letting me spend the past 15 years writing stories, and more than that - living in…
Since my old website went kaput, I'll repost this short story here. I wrote it 22 years ago (2004) shortly after my disabled daughter, Celyn was born, 2000 words - a five minute read. Or listen to the audio book (ten minutes). You can review/rate it on Goodreads . During the Dance Dad stopped drinking the day my sister was born. He called her his angel, and the booze didn't take him back until she…
The Bookshop Book has a cover - another magnificent work by Tom Roberts ! Here are some stages that Tom posted: The style suggests a link to The library trilogy, and indeed there is one, but it's by way of a passing association, rather than an intimate affair. Readers who've not read any of those books, or any of my books at all, should feel safe to jump into this standalone tale without thinking…
300 contestants are being narrowed to 10 finalists for the 11th time! Finalists for SPFBO 11 The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off finalists are listed and and are being scored on this page. The process of selection is documented here . The champion will be declared on or before December 30th 2026. click on any score on the table for the associated review Scores for the finalists: The Matrix!…
This is my new author page! Here I am at 60: Mark Lawrence is the author of 19 novels spanning 6 and a bit trilogies. With the latest, Daughter of Crows, released in 2026. He has sold nearly 4 million books in over 25 languages. He was born in Illinois to British parents. After gaining a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College London, he worked on a variety of research projects in the UK and the US…
The title says it all really. If you were after the paperback - go for it! This is what they think of the book on Amazon! And as a bonus for scrolling down ... here are some pretty sprayed edge examples of the last 2 books... Join my Patreon. Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter. #Prizes #FreeContent
It's 3 weeks until the book hits the shelves. Waterstones sold out of their 1,000 signed copies, so I really need to actually sign them. Which is why I took a quick trip to CPI at their facility in Ebbsfleet just outside London. A vast number of books are printed here - including those of many very famous authors. There's heavy security because some of these novels are in great demand and it's…
This is day 33 of my youngest child being in hospital. On day 21 the consultant took us into a side room and said, "Tell me about Celyn. What does she like doing? What are her days like?" Celyn 15 years ago. This is code for 'how hard should we try to save her?'. It's a quality of life question. Celyn is severely disabled. She was born that way. Starved of oxygen in the womb. Fucked over before…
Next month you'll be able to get a copy in exchange for nothing more than money. I've started mailing signed and dedicated copies to folks on tier 4 & 5 of my Patreon . The 1000s signed editions from Waterstones are sold out. There may be special edition/s in the pipeline but it is not my place to make such announcements. Join my Patreon. Join my 3-emails-a-year mailing list.
This is the allocation of SPFBO 11 books to blogs. Visit the homepage for all the background. Visit the finalist page for phase 2 - follow to see who's going to be champion. There will be some swapping & replacement for a few days as conflicts with bloggers and with the rules are identified. But first, some traditional stats/demographics: The male/female ratio was essentially equal last year -…
Just to minimise the number of people taken by surprise: As has long been advertised on the official SPFBO page, this year's SPFBO is opening its doors in January rather than May. The Champions' League gave us the opportunity to align the SPFBO year with the calendar year. You'll find the entry form linked on the home page on January 3rd. Best of luck to everyone trying to enter. Join my Patreon.…
At 15, this blog is now older than Prince Jorg Ancrath for the majority of my debut novel! Although I spent 23 years as a research scientist I never spent longer than 10 years at any one job, so I guess that makes “authoring” my longest employment. Anyway, onto the traditional accounting: 2025 turned out to be a pretty challenging year! Celyn went into hospital 4 or 5 times this year, which is…
I thought I'd close out 2025 with a helpful info-graphic. As a side note ... 2025 sounds like the space-age future to me. I used to watch a TV show called Space 1999. And now we're putting the first half of the 2020s into the rear view mirror 😮 Anyway, follow these simple steps to fame and fortune! Join my Patreon. Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter. #Prizes #FreeContent
I do this every year, so you can step back for more than a decade should you so choose. Here's the link to 2024 . Hooray! I have beaten my yearly record (since records began around 2011) with 18 books read - which is one more than my record set last year! It's true - I did read a bunch of short older SFF books. And the record breaking book 18 ... I haven't finished yet, but I'm sure I will before…
I often speculate on mortality - it might be a writer's curse, or just 'my thing', but I can't walk through a graveyard without thinking about the people beneath the ground, the lives reduced to dates and a "Beloved". The grave that inspired a scene in King of Thorns. (photo: Chris Meadows) It's a subject that people come to dwell upon as they grow old, but it's one that I've always thought about.…
The fantasy iceberg is world, history, character. The greatest proponent of it is JRR Tolkien. He gave us a one fat book (in three volumes) that over three hundred million of us lost ourselves in. Middle-earth felt big, it felt old, the characters felt as if they extended beyond the pages, had lives before we met them, personal histories that fit intimately and intricately into the world and…
I'm not sure who this might interest, but there are always a few people who ask the sorts of questions that are partly answered in the diagram below. These are sales from Voyager (UK + New Zealand + Australia) and Ace (US + Canada), plus whatever either of them can sell around the world in English. I'm published in nearly 30 languages, but the majority of my sales are in English and are shown…
So, I have a number of social media platforms where I've built up a significant following over the past 14 years as an author. The question is: how useful are they for getting the word out? Yesterday I spammed the cover reveal for my next book, Daughter of Crows , over all my platforms. I know that they all bury any post with a link these days - they want you looking at Twitter/Facebook/Threads…
Tom Roberts is adding incredible detail to the rough I showed you earlier this month! And the finished thing on an ARC! And the map (also by Tom Roberts)! Join my Patreon. Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #Prizes #FreeContent
I posted earlier this year that I was confident I'd passed the 3 million mark in global sales. I made a call back to these posts: Back in 2014 I posted about selling my first half million books . And at the start of 2016 I blogged to remark that I'd sold my first million . & this graphic Now I can say that I don't need to make the numbers up with the sales from those countries where my works have…
Although excellent in its own right, this is merely Tom Roberts' rough for the cover. The finished article will be along the same lines but different and considerably more detailed. The book (starting a considerably darker trilogy than my previous one) is out in April Pre-order for the win! UK US Join my Patreon. Join my 3-emails-a-year mailing list.
I've noticed that, if people come to a particular page of this blog following a link, there is a truly terrible level of discovery for the rest of the blog... Witness: 24,822 visits to my most recent two blog posts in the past 24 hours and ... 55 visits to my 3rd most recent. The two were linked on social media and got traction. The hits on the third indicate that perhaps a third of a percent of…
Before you look at the results make sure to do the test! So, before I get to the numbers and reveals I'll reiterate a few things: i) I hate that AI can do this. ii) These authors write books - typically long series - so flash fiction is not their forte. iii) Flash fiction is where AI does best - it starts to fall apart as the required work gets longer. Some have questioned "why flash fiction"...…
So ... is AI writing any good? Two years ago I asked the same question and pitted 4 good authors against ChatGPT 4 in a flash fiction head-to-head. You can check out the contest here . The headline of the conclusion I posted then ran thusly: " Given that these pieces were written by authors with thousands of sales (two self-published, two with traditional publishing deals as well), and that many…
The pricing of books is a vexed and complicated subject - emotions meets economics head on with often bruising results. There are variables on all sides of this equation. From the author’s side: Is the book being published by the author or by a traditional publisher? If the latter then the author has no say in the pricing. If the author is self-publishing, are they depending on the income to pay…