best month and two anecdotes
The Lord has been good to me, and I’d like to thank you all, because May 2016 was my best month so far for book sales.
This was because FROSTBORN, my self-published “traditional fantasy” series about knights and orcs and elves and battle, is still going strong.
In commemoration of that, I’d like to share two anecdotes from the days when I still dealt with traditional publishers.
Anecdote one:
A really long time ago, when DEMONSOULED was originally published, a reviewer let me know that in no uncertain terms that traditional fantasy was dead. No one, he said, wanted to read books about knights and elves and orcs and battles any longer. No, the publishers wanted subtle fantasy about surly, morally compromised antiheroes. Ambiguous fantasy, with no clear lines between good and evil, that was what the publishers wanted, and traditional fantasy was hopelessly unfashionable and out-of-date.
Anecdote two:
A long, long time ago, I submitted the book that would become THE BLACK PALADIN and THE TOMB OF BALIGANT to a publisher. Sixteen months later, I heard back with a standard form rejection letter, with a single personalized note:
“Sometimes I wish Dungeons & Dragons had never been invented.”
I don’t think they liked it. 🙂
###
Now, many years later, I am very grateful to you all for helping me to prove them wrong. 🙂
-JM
Congrats, and thanks for writing those “other” series (ghosts and cloak games) .
Thanks! And my pleasure. 🙂
Thank you for writing traditional fantasy. I have enjoyed every single one of your books! Grey fantasy with morally ambiguous heroes and heroines doing dark deeds has its place, but reading too much of it invariably leads to depression. 🙂
One needs to read about strong protagonists who face and conquer their obstacles and stand for the right thing! I just finished reading Memories of Ash, #2 in the Sunbolt chronicles (by Intisar Khanani ) and Hitomi, the main character is superlative – as a budding mage, she has a very well-developed sense of morality and she will not sacrifice the same at the altar of convenience. And as the book points out, sometimes, this works out better in the long run, as she makes strong allies where she would have otherwise made enemies.
Thanks! I shall have to check out that series.
Pingback: Bought Jonathan Moeller, bought James Elrick | James M. Elrick
I disagree with the editors. I believe that there is still a desire for moral clarity in fantasy. The enduring popularity of Star wars is a rather easy example of this.