New Year, New Contract, New Series

2012 is upon us, and I hope that it has started well for you. I also hope that you found time to reflect on God’s abundant grace this Christmas season, that amid the exchanging of lesser gifts you took time to remember greatest gift of all.

For me, one of the best gifts of the New Year is the gift of a new start. After wrapping up The Binding of the Blade in 2008 with All My Holy Mountain, I’ve worked on a variety of projects (chronicled elsewhere on this blog). Now, I have an opportunity to see one of those projects into print, as I’ve just signed a three book contract with AMG to publish a new fantasy series.

I am excited to be working with AMG, which has become in the last decade one of the few Christian publishers to really commit to supporting the fantasy genre. I first heard of AMG when I was at ICRS in Denver in 2005 to attend the Christy Award Banquet for Beyond the Summerland (which alas, I didn’t win) and support the release of The Bringer of Storms. AMG was a few booths down, and Bryan Davis was there signing for one of his books in the Dragons in our Midst series.

In the intervening years, various publishers have dabbled with fantasy, but AMG has really expanded their commitment to the genre, adding several other fantasy writers, notably my good friend Wayne Thomas Batson. It was really through talking to Wayne about his experience with AMG that convinced me it was the right move for me to approach them about my new series.

So here I am, in a New Year, with a new contract, ready to invest in delivering a new series. I don’t know if my working title for the series will be its actual title, but I call the series The Wandering. My contract is for three books, as I mentioned above, but I actually envision the story as two trilogies, or six books total. Whether or not The Wandering ends up being one series, comprised of two distinct but related three book arcs, or whether The Wandering ends up being just the first trilogy and the second trilogy gets another name, well, that’s a question for another day.

I’m anticipating that the most common question I’ll get is ‘when will the first book be out?’ So, I’ll get in first and say I have no idea. The first book is written and I’ve just sent it to AMG, but these things take some time. I’d guess that it might be out either at Christmas time in 2012, or perhaps Spring of 2013, but that is just a guess.

The first book of the series is the book I’ve referred to elsewhere on this site as ‘TDR.’ And, as some of my readers had some fun trying to guess what TDR stood for, I’ll just say now that you’ll have to come back and read my next post in a week or two, because in that post, I’m going to tell you what TDR stood for…

11 thoughts on “New Year, New Contract, New Series

  • Whoohoo!!! Yes!!
    That’s so exciting! I can’t wait to get a copy of the first book (but of course, I’ll have to 😉 ).
    I wish you all the best and most blessed in your New Year, L.B.! I’m looking forward to seeing what news and posts come up.

    Oh, one question…does the picture with the desert have much to do with anything, or is that just an aesthetic visual for “wandering”? 🙂

  • Actually, my first question was “What is this series about?” Can you give us some sort of description- even just a single sentence? Sorta like a teaser trailer?

    Maybe the D in TDR stands for desert…

  • Yes, “What is the series about” is also a great question, but I’m not going to give you a teaser trailer. I’m actually thinking that I’m going to plan out a series of blogs during 2012 where I introduce key people and places and more from the world where the story takes place. I’ll obviously avoid giving away crucial details about ‘what happens,’ but I hope to whet some appetites. I’ve been waiting a long time to finally be able to talk about this with people who enjoyed BOTB & have wondered what was next.

  • Oooh, a blog series sounds great. That’s better than just a simple description.

    I’ll be waiting eagerly.

  • Even without details, all I can say is . . . .
    YAY!!!!
    I shall hereby start driving my sisters nuts with my eager anticipation. 🙂
    Congratulations!

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