Legacy of the Stone Harp

View the press release for the Darkling Fields of Arvon signing & book launch event at Franciscan University of Steubenville: Franciscan Alumnus Releases Epic Fantasy Novel.

Darkling Fields of Arvon will officially be released on Tuesday, April 27, at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Darkling Fields of Arvon is the second novel in the epic fantasy series, “The Legacy of the Stone Harp”, co-written by Franciscan alumnus Jim Anderson and Mark Sebanc.

Anderson and Sebanc will do a book signing outside the Franciscan University Bookstore at 12 p.m. They will also read from their work and answer questions at 7 p.m. in Egan Hall, Room 218. These events are open to the public. Please join us there!

Darkling Fields of Arvon will hit the shelves in bookstores across North America on May 4, 2010.

I finished a map of the Black Cape for Darkling Fields of Arvon today. It took a bit of time to get back into the head-space of mapping for the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise and am pleased with the result. Tomorrow I finish the map of Ahn Norvys for the book. The third map in Darkling Fields will be a reprint of the map of Arvon that appeared in The Stoneholding. I’ve included a few pictures of the mapping and of the “tools of the trade.”

I draw at an antique library table. Mapping for me in an interesting mix of ancient and modern technologies. At one point, I’m drawing with a steel nibbed pen that I dip in India ink, the next I’m tweaking images on the computer.

The tools I use for mapping. To the right is the start of the Black Cape map. Here I’ve just blocked out the frame and border.

Jim mapping the Black Cape for Darkling Fields of Arvon.

Here, I’m working on the mountains.

Get a sneak peek at the second book of the “Legacy of the Stone Harp” series, Darkling Fields of Arvon on the Baen Books website.

In September, immediately following the release of The Stoneholding, Mark Sebanc and Jim Anderson were interviewed by the “Regional Trader”, a newspaper based in Humboldt, Saskatchewan.  The article is a good overview of the work Mark and Jim have done together. View the PDF article here:  “Bruno-Based Writer Publishes Fantasy Novel”

I was born and raised in Toronto, at the high water mark of the baby boom, the eldest of five children. My parents were refugees from war-ravaged Europe, from the small country of Slovenia. Apparently I didn’t speak a word of English until I entered kindergarten at the tender age of five or six. I say “apparently” because I hardly remember the experience of first going to school from a unilingual home environment. It was such a seamless transition and occurred so early in my life that I all I remember is being at school and taking to the English language in a profound, visceral way, like a fish to water. I can’t recall the time when I did not love the shape and texture of words, their evocative power, on a deep level, with an inner, instinctive knowledge and appreciation. Of course, I quickly became an avid reader, although my reading was largely self-directed. The multi-coloured Andrew Lang fairy books were a key element in the nurturing of my imagination. I devoured them, as I did the Robin Hood and Arthurian legends as rendered by Howard Pyle. I found any sort of history or historical fiction dealing with pre-modern times, especially the middle ages, to be hauntingly evocative. Then, when I was a teenager, the richness and depth of The Lord of the Rings utterly transformed the landscape of my imagination. Steeped in what he called “northernness”, charged with a stirring, archetypal power, Tolkien’s world touched a deep emotional chord and caused the first stirrings of a desire to sub-create. (more…)

We apologize to our readers for our threadbare musings over the last couple of months. Actually, “threadbare” is a self-servingly charitable way to describe it. “Woefully non-existent” might be more accurate. Both of us have been caught up in the many exciting and oftentimes daunting toils of life and work. The biggest event for us as writers was the re-publication of The Stoneholding by Baen Books on September 8^th, with distribution throughout North America by Simon and Schuster. It’s thrilling to think that the book is now available from one end of the continent to the other and even overseas, in bookstores big and small, benefiting from a marketing arrangement that we could only dream of in our self-publishing days. Jim has done two well-attended signings in Saskatoon, while I’m in the middle of arranging a couple of signings in Ottawa and probably Toronto. We’ll keep you posted on days and times.

In early August Jim and I attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal. It was a great opportunity to get to know Jim Minz, our editor at Baen, better. He’s a great guy and very astute as an editor. Seems to know everybody under the sun in the science fiction and fantasy publishing community. We feel unbelievably blest to be working with him. He had a box of early release copies of the new edition of The Stoneholding sent up from New York. Unfortunately, they got held up in shipment. But better late than never. Jim and I were excited to actually touch and feel the published book for the first time. On one of the days of the convention, the three of us had the privilege of eating lunch with Robert Sawyer and his wife, Carolyn Clink. Rob was most encouraging and supportive, a fount of practical advice for two newly fledged Canadian writers.

At the end of October, Jim and I are off to San Jose, California, for the World Fantasy Convention. While we’re there, we’ll be doing a signing at the renowned Borderlands Books in nearby San Francisco. In the meantime, we’re forging ahead with the third volume of the Legacy of the Stone Harp and also working on a study guide that would allow The Stoneholding to be used more readily in schools.

I’ve often thought of writing as not unlike competitive figure skating. There’s the wonderful exuberance of the freestyle part of the competition, where the creative, artistic abilities of the skater are paramount. The audience is held breathless by a superior performance. Then there is the other part of the contest, the part that calls for skating figure routines–dull, prosaic exercises that only the initiated can appreciate and that often bear little correlation with the engaging brilliance of a gifted skater. The business side of writing is a bit like skating figures. Mystery novelist John Desjarlais has an excellent blog, where he talks about things like writing press releases. He also has an interesting discussion of the five things he wishes someone had told him about publishing.

The author John C. Wright has started an on-line journal to discuss the craft of the writer. I found his first post very helpful, if a bit of a kick-in-the-pants!. I should post these Ten Commandments (beside the others!) on my wall where I can refer to them often, and remind myself to stick to the work of writing with perseverance and passion.

I append the first of his Ten Commandments here:

“1. In order to be a writer, you must write.”

And so it begins… For the rest, visit Wright’s Writing Corner: John C. Wright’s Insights On Writing.

Preview the first several chapters of The Stoneholding on the Baen Books Webscription site. Click here:

The Stoneholding by James G. Anderson & Mark Sebanc – Baen Books.