Kevin Harkness

One of my talented ex-students, Fiona Tang, is exhibiting her incredible (and often gigantic) art work in April.  I have one of her ravens (a small one!) and love it.  Anyone who is interested in animal art, charcoal work, or really impressive images should check this out.

If only she drew demons!

Sorry to report that City of Sand will not be published in the foreseeable future due to a disagreement about the book with my publisher.  Unfortunately, we have radically different ideas about plotting and POV.

My plan is to finish the series and find alternative venues for presenting it.

Apologies.

After much wobbling, City of Sand has toddled off to my publisher for judgement.  I apologize to those of you who waited so long for this day, but this was a difficult book to write.  One reason was the need to expand my imaginary world to atlas-like proportions.  The other had to do with character arcs, which I’ll leave for the reader to discover.

Excuses aside, I’m starting on the next two books, tentatively titled Cities of Shadows and Plots and Cities of Ice and Blood.  I hope I’ll finish these quickly, but that’s what I said last time so . . .

I only recently discovered that City of Masks is nominated for an award in the YA novel category at a site called the e-Festival of Words.  I confess that I’ve never run across this organization before, but power to them for organizing and running it–and many thanks for the nomination!

If you want to vote for City of Masks, or any other of the nominees, go to this url: http://bardsandsages.com/efestivalofwords/2016/07/01/vote-for-the-2016-winners-here/

Also, 134 pages done on City of Sand.  I’m almost certain that 100 of those pages will survive revising and editing.  Almost.

The first three-day Creative Ink Convention is over, and it was brilliant.  I hung out with fellow Tyche writer Pat Flewwelling and met Galen Dara, the amazingly talented artist of my book covers and interior drawings.

Three panels this time around: humour, creating new worlds, and writing about the future.  I think they went well, and the audience didn’t fall asleep, which is always a bonus.  As an observer, the highlight might have been seeing a master and student from the Academy Duello in Vancouver whack at each other with various pieces of ironmongery.

I do recommend going to conventions, even for introverted writers like myself.  You get information you can use and meet people you can celebrate and whine with.  For example, this convention had editing sessions, pitch your story to a publisher sessions, and how to get an agent panels.

Congratulations to the ever-energetic Sandra Wickham for creating this con and running it so well.

Galen Dara, after a presentation of her artistic process (note: I was not part of the process).