This Is Awesome...

Oh, and my publishers would like me to include the Amazon link so you can pre-order this wonderful, wonderful book. Now, normally I hate linking to ANYTHING that has to do with selling my own books... and this is no exception...

(oh, and I also have no idea how these words ended up in the middle of the page like this, but hey...)

This is the link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingdom-Wicked-Skuldugery-Pleasant-Book/dp/0007480229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337938025&sr=8-1

Whether you use it or not is up to you.

PS

The colour for this one is shiny GOLD.

PPS

I think now is the time to applaud one Mister Tom Percival.

Aimless...

Hello there,

It is I, your humble Golden God, here to brighten up your day with another one of my electrifying entries into this accursed Blog-thing. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to write about, however. Ever since I finished the book I've been kind of... aimless.

Not ENTIRELY aimless, of course. I did have things to do once I'd finished- other bits and pieces of writing to finish off. But I've finished those now, and so I'm back to being a little bit lost as to what to do.

I've been visiting a few schools- which is something I don't get to do a whole lot of anymore during my official tours. When you're a writer starting off, school events are ALL you do, because you need to reach as many people as possible and get them interested in your books. But once you reach a certain level of awesomeness, visiting individual schools is not really the best use of your limited time. So bigger school events are planned, where multiple schools come to a theatre or hall, and a lot more public signings are scheduled. By this stage, it's all about meeting the readers, and making it easier for the readers to meet you.

But throughout the year I tend to visit schools in and around Dublin, organised by teachers or librarians or parents. It's all about "this person knows that person who knows my cousin's friend", and that's how they get in touch. I can't do an awful lot of these smaller school visits, because I don't have the time, but for some reason I've been visiting a school a week for the past month or two. Which is, I admit, NOT the best use of my time when I have deadlines as tight as my deadlines have been. But hey.

So, the week before last I was at a school in Lusk. Last week I was at a school in Swords. And this afternoon I was at a school in Sutton. Next week I'll be at a school somewhere in Cork and then- THEN- I'll stop. No more. I need a break. I've got my Australia/NZ tour in August, my Ireland/UK tour in September, and before all that I think I have to pop over to LA for a bit. I need a BREAK! I need to do normal things! I need to stop signing autographs!

Ah, the life of a tortured artist...

Oh, and before I go, something you MAY be interested in. This Friday I will be posting again. Why, you ask? What could I possibly have to post mere days after THIS wonderful entry?

Oh not much. I don't expect there to be much writing involved, actually. Just a single image, perhaps. A single, solitary image appearing on the accursed Blog, sometime on Friday... What could it be? Something to do with the new book? Some kind of image to do with the new book?

It's a mystery, that's what it is. I guess you'll just have to check the Blog on Friday to find out.

UP

Bwahahahahahahahaha!

Mmmmm Violence...

Glory be, glory be, it's done. Finished. Done and dusted. Over. Practically. Almost.

The edits are all done. I have the weekend to go over KOTW one more time and then we send it to the copyeditor. The copyeditor basically makes sure I haven't made any huge mistakes, and corrects all the little ones before it's too late. She'll tweak and suggest and cut and replace, and then she'll send the manuscript back to me and I'll make my final adjustments, and that'll be it. Boom. Over.

Right now, the book clocks in at 134,729 words. Considering that Death Bringer was marginally over 118,000 words, that's quite a substantial increase. Golly gee, it's gonna be a big book! We're going to have to reduce the font size again to cram as many words onto the page as possible, but our font size is typically big anyway, so at least we have room to play with.

This is the first book where I've had serious discussions with my editor about the level of violence. (Well, I say serious... he was TRYING to be serious and I was making jokes, but you know...)

It's a weird thing, to write a series, because the readers get older as the books are released. Valkyrie gets older, the situations she finds herself in become more grown-up, and the themes get darker and darker as the end approaches. What all this means is that occasionally I fall into the trap of assuming that the Skulduggery readership is able to handle whatever I throw at them. And for the most part, they are.

But there will ALWAYS be new readers. There will ALWAYS be a nine year old who picks up the books for the first time and reads them in a few weeks. And it's unfair to expect that nine year old to be able to deal with content that is more suited to teenagers and adults. So where does that leave me?

In a weird place, that's where. On one hand, I've NEVER viewed this series as strictly children's books, and that view just keeps getting stronger and stronger as Valkyrie gets older. But on the other hand, I have a responsibility to the younger readers to not give them anything they can't handle.

And all of this makes me ever-so-thankful that we have such a thing as editors. I wrote this book in two and a half months of sheer WORK. There was no time to doubt myself and no time for second guesses. Whatever I put down on the page stayed on the page. When you have a more relaxed timetable you can afford to wonder about what you've just written but when the deadline is rushing towards you like a screaming train you just WRITE. With that in mind, I'm not surprised at all that I went too far in some areas. And it was so much FUN.

The battle still isn't over, by the way. Nick, my editor, still thinks I could be a little less bloodthirsty, while I think I'm just bloodthirsty enough. Some serious things happen in this book, and I reckon I needed to be as brutal and uncompromising as possible in order to achieve what I needed to achieve. But we have another week or so of him trying to be serious and me making jokes before I have to make the final decision.

And now a picture!