I've been a lurker for a long while here... kinda dropped out of regular gaming when I moved out of London (though I did get seduced into World of Warcraft, argh...) but still sorta of follow things despite getting utterly confused about all the mass of source materials, HQ/HW, new RQ etc...
Just wanted to say that I write full-time for a living: mostly journalism, but also non-fiction books. It's not an easy life, at least not my brand of it (following neo-Nazis for six years, now following inside Islamic movements and inner city London gangs for another) so I for one am very interested to see what comes out of the Friends of Glorantha thing. Whilst I 'do' real life writings, I also enjoy reading fiction and intelligent fantasy. In fact, I also review books for The Express here in the UK, as well as occasionally interview authors for papers like The Australian, The Irish Times, the Globe & Mail in Canada, The South China Morning Post in HK etc. So I understand very well about both sides of the coin, the pain in writing, and the difficulty and vagaries of selling - particularly when there is no marketing budget for most books! (think: 120,000 titles published every year in the UK alone, how do you know most of them even exist, espec when readerships are falling, and women form the majority of all readers today...)
Btw, my agent represents several fantasy and sci-fi authors (Michael Moorcock, Stephen Baxter, John Clute, James Barclay, Storm Constantine, Joe Abercrombie and others) and it's not always an easy genre to shift tons of copies. It's mostly, I understand, cult audiences. I know the agent said he'd love to have a China Mieville-type on board, but again those are very hard to find (ditto Iain M Banks). He said something along the lines of he doesn't know how agents starting up business now make money off of fiction. The money seems to be in non-fiction and tie-ups to TV programmes, celebrity biogs etc (as an example, he also handles Ewan McGregor, Ricky Gervais and Paul McKenna the hypnosis guy's books). I think he did the Daniella Westbrook 'auto'-biog ;-) lol.
Hmm, so what am I trying to say.. not sure.. just to wish Rick and friends bon chance, and if you need my personal or professional inputs from 15+ years of writing/editing, drop me a line.
cheers & happy questing,
Nick
--- Nick Ryan Author & Consultant Producer e: nick_at_... w: www.nickryan.net ___________________________________________________________ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
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