Thanks to everyone who shot The Light of Burning Shadows ebook up the Amazon charts

May 24, 2014

The ebook is back to its regular price, but then nothing lasts forever. Not quite sure what I’m up to this weekend. I’m waiting on the copy edited manuscript of Of Bone And Thunder which I should receive any day now. That’s always a bit of heart stopper as the ms (at least in my case) is often festooned with Post-Its filled with queries. Of course, that’s old school. These days it’s more likely to be an electronic file with all those text balloons. Either way, it’s how a lot of small but important details get fixed. A good copy editor does a lot more than simply fix grammar. They’ll notice if a character’s eye color has changed or if you repeated a phrase just a chapter ago. They might even question distance traveled over the time taken, where the sun should be in the sky, and the ambient temperature. Copy editing is a largely unsung but vital role in the making of a book and something that traditional publishing does very well.

Of Bone And Thunder hits another milestone on the way to publication

May 01, 2014

Woot Woot! Just sent the revised manuscript back to my editor! And I actually hit the deadline (we’re all surprised I have to say this was the most enjoyable revising experience I’ve had to date. Every cut I made felt right and every addition flowed smoothly into place. I just might be getting the hang of this.

For those interested in some of the specs, the book now clocks in at around 165,000 words so it’s still a brick, but a leaner and meaner one. I estimate that I cut around 25,000 words and added 15,000 new ones. There was a lot of discussion about race and terms in the book and the use of a particularly derogatory word. In the end, raw and ugly won out because that best reflected the truth of things.

Big thanks to my editor, Ed Schlesinger, my agent, Don Maass, and my first readers Mike Evans, Deb Christerson, Robert Evans and Shelly Shapiro with additional input from Barbara Evans, Chris Schluep and Bill Takes. They made the novel better, and I am better for it.

Cheers!

Chris

First little teaser about Of Bone And Thunder

March 31, 2014

Amazon now have some copy up on their site on Of Bone And Thunder. I have to say, they summarized the book nicely:

Apocalypse Now meets The Lord of the Rings in a bold new fantasy from the acclaimed author of the Iron Elves trilogy, filled with “heroic action that keeps fans coming back” (Publishers Weekly).

Channeling the turbulent period of the Vietnam War and its ruthless pitting of ideologies, cultures, generations, and races against each other, military historian and acclaimed fantasy writer Chris Evans takes a daring new approach to the traditional world of sword and sorcery by thrusting it into a maelstrom of racial animus, drug use, rebellion, and a growing war that seems at once unwinnable and with no end in sight. In this thrilling epic, right and wrong, country and honor, freedom and sacrifice are all put to the ultimate test in the heart of a dark, bloody, otherworldly jungle.

In this strange, new world deep among the shadows under a triple-canopy jungle and plagued by dangers real and imagined, soldiers strive to fulfill a mission they don’t understand and are ill-equipped to carry out. And high above them, the heavy rush of wings slashing through the humid air herald a coming wave of death and destruction, and just possibly, salvation.