Limited-Edition Elder Empire Prints!

9/4/2018

For this week only (today through Friday), you can order prints of the new Elder Empire art from the artist: Micah Epstein!

Each print is individually signed and numbered by the artist, so you know you're getting something special!

These prints are only available from noon today to noon on Saturday (EST), so get them while you can and support this awesome artist!

Order now, or be forever cursed by the ghost of artwork past!

-Will

27 Comments

Scholar Warrior

9/4/2018 12:18:54 pm

awesome, love this artist.

@Will do you have plans to redo the TG covers? Great artist and would be very good for those as well.

Will link

9/12/2018 11:01:55 am

I will be redoing the Traveler's Gate covers, but I'm not sure if I'll be using Micah for those or not. He's obviously an excellent artist, but I hired him specifically because I thought his style would be perfect for Elder Empire.

Jordan

9/4/2018 01:11:29 pm

These are awesome! Got the Of Killers and King’s one.

DesperateFan

9/4/2018 01:13:15 pm

Full set or bust!

Austin

9/4/2018 04:43:22 pm

Ey I get my first paycheck from my new job on Friday. Perfect timing.

Kurt

9/4/2018 07:55:27 pm

I would buy them if YOU had signed them, not the artist.

Will link

9/12/2018 11:03:03 am

We had talked about doing a limited run that we both signed, but that kind of fell apart.

I'll be selling poster versions of these on my site after the actual books are released, and I might do a signed run of those!

Willson

9/5/2018 05:07:12 pm

Will! I took a creative writing class as an elective at my university. I thought it would be fun but NOBODY THERE READS ANY SCIENCE FICTION OR FANTASY.

They're all, "Oooh, you should check out this novel called "Moby Dick" or "Heart of Darkness".

Yeah, I read those for high school English as well. There okay... but there's plenty of more entertaining fiction out there that deals with the same topics. It's just the author is still alive to receive royalties from those books so nobody buys them. I guess these people wait for the author to die before buying their books because who wants to support an author when you can support a publishing company that hasn't touched the book in 30 years?

And all their short stories suck ass. No plot, half adjectives, half unfocused overly descriptive narration, and all completely pointless. One girl went on for thirty minutes about a conversation she had with her friend while watching the sunset.

I DON'T WANT AN EIGHT PAGE DESCRIPTION OF LIGHTS AND COLORS IN THE SKY, I KNOW WHAT A SUNSET IS. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS SUNSET? OH, NOTHING. IT WAS JUST A NORMAL SUNSET THAT HAPPENED WHILE YOU WAITED FOR THE GOD-DAMNED TRAIN.

At least in my technical scientific writing class the other students get to the point eventually.

Honestly there hasn't even been any talk about plot or story structure or characters or even writing a compelling story. The instructor just keeps saying "Paint a scene for me."

This isn't what I signed up for! I don't want to dance through meadows and throw gobs of purple paint all over my prose. I wanted to write a novel and upload it to Amazon someday god-dammit.

I'd rather read machine-translated web fictions with a plot and consistent characters than pages upon pages of meaningless drivel that these people keep trying to inflate beyond all proportions to swell their own egos about their own gaudy writing.

Maybe later in the semester the instructor will take charge and start making people start writing stuff that makes sense, but it seems to just be a general creative writing class and half the class considers themselves poets. Which in this case seems to be a half-hearted excuse for purple prose that doesn't even rhyme.

I'm so ticked, and I'm afraid if I write the kind of thing that I like to read, would be something more like Cradle, I'll get laughed out of the class because it isn't gaudy and has characters that weren't raped 17 times and expressing their angst by cutting themselves in the alley behind a Cosco. I roll my eyes at the things they consider deep. WHAT'S WRONG WITH FIGHTING GIANT SEA MONSTERS!? Heck, isn't that what Moby Dick is about? The book you jerk off every ten minutes?

"No... no.... Moby Dick is an allegory for mental illness and for... blah blah blah." There was a whale, and a captain who really wanted to kill the whale. How is that so different from a magic swordsman gnome who wants to defeat the evil buffalo sorcerer!? No literary meaning my ASS!

IHateItIHateItIHateIt. I shall now express my mental state 'creatively'.

YARGRAAAAAAANALYAAAFLOOGEN MUURGURENILOOOT MAAAAAAAARGOOOOOT'SSS HETAL POOOOOFFFFPH

I'm so mad dude. It's like academia has a completely different definition of what writing a book is.

Diego

9/6/2018 08:34:02 am

I think creative writing is about, trying to make a scene unique enough to stick out while being pretty and descriptive in a way a reader can understand it. Or at least that is what it should be. From what you're saying it seems to be poetry class.

Willson

9/6/2018 08:46:22 am

Yeah Idk why I posted this everywhere. Please Ignore lol.

April

9/6/2018 06:36:29 pm

Thanks for the diversion. That had both my husband and myself cracking up. If your fiction is anything like this I would love to read it.

Willson

9/8/2018 04:29:07 pm

Basically what I'm saying here Will is that I need you to come to my university and take over my creative writing class, then have everyone write a Travelers gate knock off for the semesters work.

Shower me with your wisdom will so that I can transform myself into a version of you that isn't quite as good at writing.

Will link

9/12/2018 11:01:03 am

I actually taught an introductory Creative Writing class for a year at the University of Central Florida. I enjoyed it, and I have no doubt that I could do a much better job now.

But, uh, that would require me to stop writing. Soooo....

Willson

9/9/2018 06:27:07 pm

Ignore that really long post I made Will!

My friends introduced me to something they called "Mexican Champagne" (It was tequila) and I drank very deeply from it. For some reason I turn very whiny when drunk and some of came out on your blog of all places, probably because I read a post you made complaining about academia a few years ago and hoped to grab a sympathetic ear.

Love your books Will! I'll try not to drunkenly post things on your blog in the future!

Will link

9/12/2018 10:43:01 am

No, you're good. I agree with you. I'm about to respond to your drunken ramblings now.

Will link

9/12/2018 10:57:34 am

>It's like academia has a completely different definition of what writing a book is.

That's been my experience too.

I am...very passionate about this topic, to the degree that I don't feel super comfortable talking about it in much depth lest I go off on a long rant. Suffice it to say that, in my experience, college does not train you to write a book that sells and that a large number of people want to read. It trains you to write an academic literary novel that examines the human condition and no one buys.

Tbh, if that's what you want to write, more power to you! If you'd like to write a story about cutting yourself behind a Costco because that story is more powerful to you, great!

But to me (and I suspect to you), these genre stories are MORE powerful because they engage me in the story. I'm not interested in reading about a character's youth in the house next to the orange grove and how their uncle's gambling habit affected their romantic relationships. That's not engaging to me.

However, I completed my MFA in Creative Writing, including my thesis: a series of literary short stories that examined a dysfunctional Georgia family over several generations. I hated it, and I hated writing it. When I could stop writing literary fiction and move on to writing fantasy, I felt like I had been let out of jail.

Now that I've said all that, let me also give you my caveat: though they are training you to write a specific genre (literary fiction) that is not very popular or marketable, many of the writing techniques you learn in college are universal. I learned a ton through my classes...primarily because writing workshops force you to finish stories according to a deadline and to dissect others' work, and to both give and receive feedback. Those are all vital skills for any author in any genre.

I came out of my Master's with a much greater understanding of my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, even though I rejected a lot of their answers for how to fix my weaknesses. (Their answers involved me spending lots and lots of time in each story building character instead of advancing the plot.)

There's nothing wrong with painting a scene or learning vivid imagery and strong characterization. Those are all vital skills for writing anything, and I'm still developing in those areas.

But you should know that your professor probably DOES have a different goal and a different set of values. I like ours better.

P.S. Don't get down on your classmates for writing bad stories, though. All stories in an introductory workshop are bad. To paraphrase Jake the Dog: sucking at something is the first step to being kinda good at something.

Willson

9/13/2018 05:47:49 pm

Thanks for responding Will!

I'll try to keep an open mind and learn what I can. I wanted to get a taste of the more novel-centric elements of writing when I could. My major is in scientific technical writing, and while you learn to write logically and concisely in scientific technical writing there is no plot and very limited characters. I guess I was just really excited to be taking a creative writing class now that I am a senior and finally have room in my schedule and was very disappointed that we weren't talking at all about the things I've been trying to learn on my own.

I'll have to just keep reading those books on characters and narrative in my free time, publishing on RoyalRoad until I'm finally good enough to publish to Amazon.

Thanks Will!

And don't worry about me mocking the other kids in the class. Sure, their stuff isn't my thing, but ever since my creative writing club dissolved last year I do need to find friends who write. Making fun of them would not be conducive to this effort.

Walter

9/5/2018 11:18:48 pm

😁 I finally came around and started of Sea and Shadow, and I love it! Possibly more than cradle! Chapter 5 and I might not be sleeping tonight- wooh!

Fernando

9/6/2018 04:54:18 pm

EE master race. There are dozens of us! DOZENS!

Sam

9/6/2018 09:20:07 pm

I read the sample chapter when it first came out and was going to buy it but I knew if I bought it I'd end up reading it and then having to wait for the end of the series. Better to restrain myself and wait for news that the last book is going to be published sometime in the next three months or so to read it. When Will say's he's three months away from publishing OKAK I'll buy all four of the other books.

manty05

9/7/2018 03:32:59 am

Hey
Will will you order next Traveler series covers also from Micah Epstein.

Will link

9/12/2018 10:44:41 am

Maybe! I will be re-covering the original Traveler's Gate books first, but I'm not sure if I'll continue with Micah or go with a different artist. I really like his style for Elder Empire, and of course he's an excellent artist, but I'm not sure if he's the best fit for Traveler's Gate.

Specifically, he tends to do character-focused portraits, and if I get my way I'd rather the TG covers highlight the Territories rather than the main characters.

Undercover Harem novelist

9/13/2018 05:51:13 pm

Plus he's suuuuper expensive relative to the Pakistani's I usually hire. He quoted me $4.5k for a cover I ended up getting done for $425

9/8/2018 03:30:57 pm

Will,

Do you have a time table on the release of the following books on Audible? The first one's narrator went over well and I'm hooked.

Will link

9/12/2018 10:45:00 am

We're expecting Soulsmith to be out by Halloween!

Walter

9/10/2018 01:11:28 am

Why don’t people and things leave remnants in EE and travelers gate? It all seems like a connection to the way, and I’m trying to figure out where the elders play into it all vs the Abidan, but I have been wondering why there’re no remnants.

Will link

9/12/2018 10:45:29 am

Remnants are a consequence of the Cradle energy system, not a function of the Way, so they're tied to Cradle and are not universal.

In which we ramble on.
And by we, I mean me.