NEWS: MY BACKLIST IS SOON TO BE AVAILABLE AGAIN!

           REMEMBER HER?

Yes, it's Blaze, the woman with an attitude... 

...and a very large sword.

 The three books of THE ISLES of GLORY will be legitimately available again through Hachette's  ORION  SF GATEWAY  and you will be able to buy them via the usual eBook sellers, from 21st December, worldwide.                                  You can already pre-order!
See a review here:
Fantasy Book Review

Here's what The Romantic Times USA had to say:

Rich world building will capture the reader’s interest. With a forceful heroine who is mature and experienced, Larke crafts a fantastic tale that moves beyond a typical coming-of-age fantasy. Fans of Lois McMaster Bujold and Mercedes Lackey’s strong heroines will relish Blaze’s adventures. 

Also available will be  HAVENSTAR (see below) 

HAVENSTAR
the story of a mapmaker's daughter  
caught up in a world that shifts and changes from moment to moment, a world where changes can be fatal...

Here's what Pauline's Fantasy Reviews says about it.

Here's a review from Tsana's Reads

IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ & ENJOYED THESE BOOKS, how about giving them to friends as Christmas presents?

NEWS UPDATE

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN ASKING...

My four first published books (two of which were shortlisted for the Aurealis Award Best Fantasy Novel of the year) will soon be available again as eBooks.They are being re-issued by SFGateway (the arm of Orion that publishes the Masterworks Classics).

So look out for:

HAVENSTAR

THE AWARE

GILFEATHER

THE TAINTED

with new covers, available from the usual ebook sellers worldwide.

And in other news, look out for our son-in-law's wonderful new film, which has already played to enthusiastic audiences at the film festivals of Telluride and Toronto! I believe the release date in November. Starring Annette Bening, Jamie Bell. See here:

FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL 

And just for the heck of it, here's a photo. We went for a bit of a holiday up north to Jurien Bay. And this is just one stretch of the endless miles of deserted beaches. Is it any wonder why I wasn't terribly impressed with Malibu? 

A WRITER'S PROBLEM: HOW TO GET RID OF THE BORING BITS...

I am recycling some old posts which may be of interest to new writers struggling with writing problems...

The Problem:

How do you write the boring bits between the interesting bits?

In other words, how do you breathe the magic on to the page to keep your readers awake, even when you aren't writing the really exciting action bits?

Personally, I find that writing the exciting parts of the story - the adventures, or the emotionally charged character confrontations - is the easy task. What is tough is to get the hero in the door to start with, or to get the army to the battlefield, or to get the heroine up and dressed in the morning, or get the travellers from place A to place B.

Take the travelling. In a mainstream novel set in Megacity, no problem. You can say "She caught the train." It's somewhat harder in a fantasy. She walked. Um, she walked six days. (Reader is immediately thinking: what did she eat, was it safe to walk, where did she sleep, etc, etc, and they expect answers.)

But what if the answers are unimportant and have no bearing on your overall story arc? How do you get her from point A to B? How do you get the hero in the door?

1. Sometimes the answer might be simple. You use a trick:

e.g. the end of a chapter

Your hero goes to bed in his room at the inn at the end of chapter 10. At the beginning of Chapter 11 you have him knocking on the door of the villain's house for the great confrontation scene. Voilà, you have avoided all that tiresome business of getting up, getting dressed, having breakfast etc, all of which is irrelevant to the story arc.

e.g. the division of your book into parts.

At the end of Part One, you have your king declaring to his councillors that they are going to march to war on neighbouring kingdom. Part Two opens with the king's army besieging the walled city of the neighbouring king. None of that tiresome business of how you raise an army, supply it, arm it, march across the border...

e.g. the section break (seen in the book as a blank line or sometimes an asterisk or equivalent.)

Seen in the typed text as --TEXT BREAK HERE--

You write a scene where Mary is trying to decide which of her numerous dresses she is going to put on for the ball. You insert a text break, and then continue on to show Mary as she sweeps into the ballroom clad in her older married sister's bright red gown, to the horror of the conservative dames. And you, the writer, have avoided the details of how she pinched her sister's dress out of her closet.

Mostly, though, the problem of tiresome, irrelevant but important details is more difficult to solve.

2. Use a sentence or two rather than a paragraph of explanation. Gloss over the unnecessary details by the way you structure your sentence(s).

Problem: Your travellers, led by Jokum, have just arrived in a town. They are very hungry and very dusty. The reason they are there is to hunt out the local mage for help, only to discover that he has been arrested for treason. It is unlikely they would visit the mage ravenous and dirty, but you don't want to dwell on how they eat and wash up - it is unimportant. You want to get to the exciting bit. However, if you don't say something, your readers won't find your story believable. So keep it succinct - explain but don't bury your reader in detail.

Solution:
e.g.
After a meal and a wash at the first inn inside the city walls, they asked the way to the street of Mages. Ten minutes later, Jokum was knocking at Hokus's door.
or
After stopping at the town pump for directions and to wash away the worst of their travel dust, they bought a loaf of fresh bread. By the time they reached the house of Mage Hokus, there wasn't even a crumb remaining.

You may be able to think of even better ways to reduce the information down to a snappy minimum.
I am recycling some old posts

3. Spice up the boring in-between-bits with interesting world-building or character info.

(Remember, if it tells you something important about the world or the character, or if it pushes the story forward, then your info becomes important and interesting.)

For example - the army preparations might be boring - or they might not, if they include arguments between the king and his advisers or sons or brothers, or if they include the oddities of your world. For example, how do you feed your fighting dragons? How do you get your mages to the battlefield if they can't cross water without losing power? Can you use magic or dragons or something else fascinating to supply your army with food?

4. Use dialogue to give the info.

It's a lot easier to make something interesting if it is delivered in speech.
Here's some info in text form:
By the time they reached Emitiville, the horses were thin and losing condition, so Tom bought some oats.
Spiced up with dialogue:
"Tom, did get any oats for the horses? If they lose any more condition, I reckon I'll have to put another hole in my saddle girth."
"Yeah, don't worry. I bought some cheap, from the ostler's wife. Only a shilling and a kiss. Well, a bit more than a kiss." He grinned.
"What? You seduced the ostler's wife?"

5. Condense specific info into a general paragraph

Here's a section of text from "The Last Stormlord." It covers six days of walking by the protagonist down a tunnel that supplies water to a city from the hills. He has just entered the tunnel and lit a lamp.

Now he could see what he was doing, he used the walkway built along the side. When he was tired or hungry, he stopped. He slept fitfully at intervals, stretched out on the walkway in the smothering dark with the lamp extinguished. When he awoke it was always into panic at the utter blackness, and the panic remained until his fumbling with flint, striker and tinder produced enough of a flame to light the lamp or a candle.

The next paragraph deals with him arriving at his destination. So those four sentences are all there is to cover six days - and (I hope) conjure up a bit of how it felt. The above paragraph gives all the necessary information (except perhaps the problem of waste disposal!!) without being boring. The waste disposal? Yes, I do deal with that too - it is one of the first questions the indignant water reeves ask him when they catch him at the city end of the tunnel. (Want to know more? Buy the book!)

6. Getting the hero out of the room by diverting the attention of the reader to something else. 

You have to get our teenage protagonist from, let's say, the kitchen (where he's just had an unsettling conversation with this mother about his elder brother), to the letter depository a mile away, because he wants to send an important message (that the reader already knows about) on the next coach out of town.

One way to do it is to ignore the uninteresting method and deal with the interesting thoughts he has. Let's call him Jaydon.

He slammed out of the kitchen in a temper and, on his way across town to the letter depository, dwelt lovingly on numerous impractical plans to wreak revenge on that sneaky, mean-spirited liar of a brother of his. That bastard! How could George have behaved like that and upset his mother so - so callously?

By the time Jaydon arrived at the depository, the scowl on his face made the man behind the counter take a step backwards.

I'll guarantee your reader won't notice that you didn't bother to tell them HOW he got across town. Did he walk? Take a coach? Ride?
Who cares? It wasn't important. What he was thinking, though, was. And it was much more interesting.

________________________

Remember: Don't worry too much in your first draft about what is boring and what is not. Get your story down first. Then start attacking the details. In your rewrites, aim to have NO boring bits. The above were just suggestions of some ways to do this. Look for other ways writers deal with the same problem. Learn by reading!

And your general aim should be:

Cut out the unnecessary;

aim to make the necessary

interesting.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS

IN AUSTRALIA...

PRINT VERSIONS

Should be available off the shelf at specialty bookstores --

like Stefan's Books, or White Dwarf in Perth. Galaxy in Sydney.

For other bookstores, you may have to order them in. Just go up to the counter with the name of the book and if you're really on the ball, the Australian ISBN.

THE ISLES OF GLORY TRILOGY
THE AWARE       9780732276508
GILFEATHER     9780732276515
THE TAINTED    9780732276522

THE MIRAGE MAKERS TRILOGY
THE HEART OF THE MIRAGE        9780732281984
THE SHADOW OF TYR                     9780732281991
THE SONG OF THE SHIVER BARRENS  9780732282004

THE WATERGIVERS TRILOGY
THE LAST STORMLORD     9780732289294
STORMLORD RISING          9780732289300
STORMLORD'S EXILE         9780732289317

All the above books are also now print on demand from 

Harper Collins Voyager.

The stand-alone fantasy novel

HAVENSTAR
published by Triconderoga publications and can be bought online as a hardback or paperback -- try indiebooksonline

My last trilogy, THE FORSAKEN LANDS is published in Australia and worldwide by Hachette ORBIT, and if you can't find it on the shelves in your local bookstore, ask them to get it in for you. (The Lascar's Dagger, Dagger's Path and The Fall of the Dagger.)

IN AUSTRALIA...

eBOOKS

Available online with the exception of
HAVENSTAR and THE ISLES OF GLORY trilogy.
This is about to change (in August)
Watch this space.

____________________________________________________

OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD....

The Mirage Makers trilogy, the The Stormlord (Watergivers) trilogy and the The Forsaken Lands trilogy are all published by Orbit and can be requested through your local book store if you can't find them on the shelves.

The Isles of Glory trilogy is much harder to find. You could order it through an Australian bookstore.

Havenstar and The Isles of Glory trilogy 

will become available as ebooks again in August. 

Watch this space.

________________________________________

ONE HAPPY CON-GOER WITH A TINDUCK

PHOTO BY ART DIGGLE

In this case, the Tin Duck is actually a very elegant swan.

And for those who don't know, the Tin Duck is the colloquial name for the Western Australian award given to the Best Long Work (i.e. book) of the year in the field of speculative fiction, in this case that was published in 2016.

My thanks to everyone -- it is truly an honour to receive an award because people cared enough to vote for the book!

The prize-winning book in question?  
THE FALL OF THE DAGGER.

Hey, this is me!!

FROM THE AUREALIS AWARDS SITE:

Welcoming the hosts of the Aurealis Awards ceremony!

We’re very pleased to announce that the 2016 Aurealis Awards ceremony taking place in Perth this Friday night will be hosted by the wonderful team of much feted WA local author Glenda Larke and debut novelist (yes, really!) and East Coast ring-in Cat Sparks!

Glenda Larke was the winner of the inaugural Sara Douglass Series Award last year for her Watergivers series, and is a multi-awards nominated author for her books, the most recent of these being the final book of the Forsaken Lands trilogy. Cat Sparks has earned awards over the years for her artwork, editing, publishing and short story writing, and her debut novel, Lotus Blue, has just been released to the world.
Join us at the Aurealis Awards ceremony this Friday night to see this dynamic duo in action!

WHEN: 7.45pm for 8pm start, Friday 14 April, 2017
WHERE: Metro Hotel Perth, 61 Canning Highway, South Perth, WA, 6151

More Details here:

https://aurealisawards.org/2017/04/11/welcoming-the-hosts-of-the-aurealis-awards-ceremony/

THE FALL OF THE DAGGER Shortlisted Again...

THE FALL OF THE DAGGER

last book of The Forsaken Lands Trilogy...

               Shortlisted for...

Best Australian Fantasy Novel, (Aurealis Awards 2016). A judged award.

Best Long Work of Western Australian SF, 
(Tin Duck Awards 2016). A voted award.

Winners announced over Easter weekend.

AUREALIS AWARDS SHORT-LISTING!

 
Very, very chuffed to have my latest novel (The Fall of the Dagger) short-listed for the Aurealis Awards  (Best Fantasy Novel).

That means that every time I have had a book eligible, I've had a short-listing... 10 times it must be now? 

I love the way the SF community in Australia does so much for authors, volunteering their time and effort -- and perhaps money in lost earnings -- just to say, "We love that you folk write, and we love what you write, and we'll take the time to show you..."

 Many, many thanks to everyone. 

And yes, like every book of the The Stormlord Trilogy which ultimately won the Sara Douglass Series Award, all three of the FORSAKEN LANDS trilogy have been shortlisted for the Aurealis.

Have YOU read it yet?

Congratulations to all the
short-listed authors. And to readers: choose any of them to entertain you. They are all talented Australians.