Another Billboard Soul
by rsbakker
Definitions of the Week:
Honesty. (1) Something to be fondly avoided in serious conversations. (2) One of two options people resort to only when their imaginations fail them and the silence becomes unbearable. The other is pretending to be distracted by something on TV.
Philosophy. (1) A kind of semantic manure, either heaped upon beautiful flowers until they die, or spread liberally across ideological weeds. (2) A rash developed by certain thoughts of weak constitution, insuring they will be incessantly scratched.
Conservatism. (1) The urge to hold one’s testicles while asleep. (Not to be confused with Fascism, the urge to seize the testicles of others). (2) The tendency to confuse good luck for hard work, and beneficiaries for benefactors. (3) The ability of language to defeat reason.
Liberalism. (1) The tendency to sleep without underwear. (2) The ability of reason to fuck everything up.
Socialism. The reason Scandinavians are healthier, wealthier, and better in bed. See, Truth. Related terms, Boredom, American Literacy–the Decline of.
Mathias Clasen, who organized my recent lecture series in Denmark, sent me The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, and I’ve been thinking in definitions instead of aphorisms ever since. The thing is brilliant–tyrannically so. I imagine once I begin working on the epigrams for The Unholy Consult I will revert back to type.
I should be working on copy-edits for The White-Luck Warrior by now, but there seems to be some problem in the bureaucratic pipeline. I sometimes have trouble deciding precisely where I fit into the sanitation flowchart. Am I the toilet, or the waste treatment plant? It flatters me to think I’m a terminus of some kind. I mean, who wants to be a sewer…
Speaking of which, Disciple of the Dog is still doing nothing sales-wise in Canada and the UK, at least on Amazon. Having that ridiculous PW review posted at the top probably doesn’t help. Even still, a number of positive reviews have popped up across the web. If anything, they remind me of the kind of guarded praise The Darkness that Comes Before received when it first hit the blogosphere. The biggest beef seems to be the way the story ends: where I thought I was doing something spare and Chandleresque, many seem to think I was too hasty.
Another lesson learned. Here’s hoping that Disciple has a chance to profit from it.
For a couple of weeks now I’ve been exchanging emails regarding Disciple, cynicism, and murder with Jim Sallis for the Mulholland Books website, a conversation which should go up anytime now. My wife and I had an absolute riot with Jim (along with George Martin) in Spain a couple of years back. Aside from being one of the most funny, interesting people I’ve ever met, he’s an award-winning SF and crime fiction novelist. One of his more recent novels, Drive, is about to become a major Hollywood production.
Maybe that will goose things, earn a few more reviews.
Either way, the time has come for me to reconsider my options, career-wise. For the first time in years I find myself without a backlog of projects. Unnerving. After The Unholy Consult is done, I could very well be done, at least as a full-time writer. My literary Grand Armee is over halfway to Moscow, the supply lines are growing ever more tenuous, and a long, hard, economic winter has begun. The Second Apocalypse is proving to be a gamble of Napoleonic proportions.
There’s no cause to fear for the completion of the series. There’s no turning back now. The question is one of how long it will take to finish without the luxury of time.
A luxury that you all have afforded… If only there were more of you!
Book trailers, brah. That’s what you need, book trailers.
I thought you had more Second Apocalypse books planned after Unholy Consult. Is the future not looking too bright for them sales-wise, or it is just that writing them alone is not a full-time writing job?
You could always try writing a horror novel. You do have a talent for writing some visceral scenes.
Ah, scratch what I said. For some reason, my eyes glazed over the last part, where you explained that.
I suppose it’s off to teach at the local community college, then?
Damn dude, talk about fucking the meat! Guess i should have had my friends buy copys not read mine. I read somewhere that Ericson kicked open the ball room door for you.Unless he slammed the damn door and nailed you up next to Seswatha. WRITE BROTHER WRITE!!!!!!! your the Fucking best……….
Well R. Scott Bakker good luck with the career change after the Unholy Consult is done but rest assured that I will be purchasing all books with R. Scott or Scott in the title…assuming the book is actually written by you and not someone else with the same name
Its a pity trash like Twilight makes millions while your’re books, for all there artful prose and quality have medicore sales, maybe you need write more cheesy vampire romance to appeal to teen girls.
Ah well there’s always the future many great artists were unaprecaited in their time ( not that thats much consolation).
Love the definitions bit, funny stuff.
I’ve been searching for your newest books in Hong Kong for ages but no luck…Will definitely get all of your newer work when I’m back in Canada and hope that I can encourage enough people to read your stuff to keep you writing. It would be a damn shame to lose your writing…first Heroes, now this…people just don’t know quality when they see it.
A luxury that you all have afforded… If only there were more of you!
Your too kind, as I stole all my copies *long, blank stare*
I don’t know if it’s relevant, but here in Australia I’ve tried to order Disciple of the Dog and the orders just not showing up. You might be facing some distribution chain problems as well.
Also, on honesty, isn’t it a funny word to say or speak in ones mind – atleast to me it has this zealot twinge that, in your definition, says it’s wrong for it to be absent. What is that defintion for honesty without that twinge? Has no punchline.
Funny, I just remembered to check on the progress of the Aspect Emperor series, when this blog post popped up. Really though, I am quite disheartened that the books haven’t gotten more interest and that sales are not going so well. It’s a fantastic series — a kind of dark fusion of the Crusades and Lord of the Rings, with parallels and commentaries on both. You need an illustrated guide to the Three Seas and its people! The three-seas.com site might also need some clean-up and more up-to-date oomph, but I do hope Kellhus gets his comeuppance, and that Achamian saves the day.
For what it’s worth, how many people talk about writing a book but never do? You’ve published SIX, with a seventh on the way, and hopefully on the way to an eighth. Hold your head high.
Yes, you’ve mentioned before that there would be one or two books after THE UNHOLY CONSULT to finish off the series. Would these be written part-time (assuming you make that unfortunate switch) or will the series indeed be concluded (and not just in a “not enough people are buying these” way) after CONSULT?
I just finished DISCIPLE. I enjoyed the book, but had some reservations. I appreciated your attempts to make it more accessible. However I think you may have cut it back too close to the bone. I agree with Pat (of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist) that it could have used more meat. Specifically (and without getting into spoilers for those left to read it) the ending was hard for me to swallow in terms of believability, because we had not spent enough time in the town soaking up the various attitudes of the different groups. What there was of that was great stuff, I just wanted more. That’s not the same as being UNABLE to believe the ending, mind you. It’s just that given a very brief bit of Disciple soaking things up, I needed more. Maybe another 75 pages worth of total content would have made the plot go down smoother. I greatly enjoyed Disciple himself, though. And for the record, I’d buy a second one, as well as anything at all set in the Three Seas. Hell, I’d buy anything you wrote. Fact is, you’re my favorite author out there. I hope sales look up. Looking forward to THE WHITE LUCK WARRIOR!
Well I’m sad to hear that writing doesn’t seem to be paying you well enough to get by. That sucks, esp. since you’re good at it, and you’ve got lots of people who enjoy your work.
My wife and I have read all of your books except Disciple — the only reason we haven’t read THAT yet is that we have to wait until after the holiday season to afford to buy ourselves a present this year…you know how it is. But it’s at the top of the list, and we’re very much looking forward.
By the way, I’m very impressed with The Judging Eye — your writing has grown more focused and intense, and I was really blown away in general by the book. I re-read the first trilogy in preparation for reading it, and I plan to re-read JE before I read White Luck Warrior next April.
I hope you can finish this series, because it’s so enjoyable and so good on so many levels. It was fun to re-read the first trilogy, after reading Neuropath & looking into the issues you raised explicitly there. However I can see that the book biz is a hard way to go, so I wish you the best either way, and if you can finish the series, (or write any other books, for that matter) be assured that I will buy them, read them, and enjoy them!
Don’t stop writing. It would be a big mistake. I understand if you need to get a “day job”, but there is tremendous promise in what you are trying to do and that includes Apocalypse AND Disciple.
I will continue to rant about your books to anyone that will listen.
I, too, pledge to continue the ranting…
Don’t give up. You keep writing them and I know I’ll keep reading them (and even buying them!). The Prince of Nothing books are amazing and I’m telling anyone who will listen. I haven’t started the Aspect-Emperor yet, but I’m about to. I’m sure those are amazing too.