Plans for Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse

Once in a while I get an email from a reader asking me all kinds of things about future plans for the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse-series. Yesterday someone asked me if the books would be bundled in omnibuses. So, for anybody who’s curious, what follows are my plans as I now see them.

Omnibuses

Yes, I plan to release the books in omnibuses… eventually.

Omnibus 1, The Invisible Chains, will contain Bonds of Hate, Bonds of Fear and Bonds of Blood.

Omnibus 2, The Invisible Hands, will contain Gambit, Castling and Mate.

For those who didn’t know yet, Mate is the title of the book I’m writing right now. I expect to have it finished by September 2013.

Illustrated Editions

Just a pet project of mine. I’d like to publish illustrated editions of the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse-books. I’m thinking about one or two illustrations per chapter. My father has a lot of old books, inherited from his father, that have them. Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain…

I’m rather partial to the drawings of Gustave Doré . This is one Doré made for Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the Kings.

I also like Art Nouveau or Jugendstil drawings. I haven’t decided yet.

The only problem is finding an artist that will (and can) make them at a reasonable price. If you know someone — or are one — please, contact me.

Print Books

Seriously thinking about it.

The Invisible… ?

Will there be a third trilogy? I’m certainly not excluding the possibility, but for the moment I have no immediate plans for yet another doorstopper.

I’m toying with writing several novella-length stories, set in the world of Anaxantis.

Some would tell more about certain characters.

Others would follow characters who have left the main story line. Whatever happened to Lee-Lack Scarminckle after the destruction of the lair of the Renuvian Plain Robbers? What became of  Gerri and Warri, the grandsons of the Baron of Damydas?

Others still would relate events that happened parallel to the main action. In Castling, Chapter 14, there is this little paragraph:

Lorcko and Timishi had left Lorseth Harbor at the beginning of January. In an attempt to avoid the Ximerionian coastal patrols they had decided to navigate around the Ronicerian Isles. The second week after their departure the pilot had died of a sudden and short illness. By then they had lost their way amidst the dozens of little islands of the pirate infested Ronicerian Isles. Between Mukthar inexperience with navigation, attacks by pirates that repeatedly forced them to seek refuge for weeks on end in some bay, a minor sea battle in which they had lost one of their four vessels and an epidemic of dysentery that once again drove them to land, it had taken them almost half a year to clear the islands.

Lorcko and Timishi fighting pirates? Like to know what that was all about? Okay. One day I will tell you.

I also plan to write a few stories, set in Ximerion’s past. E.g. the story of how the counts of Ormidon became High Kings of Ximerion.

And that’s it?

Eh… no. I have some rough story lines for at least two contemporary novellas. And I’d like to write some more short stories about the Spencer-boys from Just Don’t Mess With Us.

Last but not least, I plan a bona fide historical novel about the tragic fate of an almost forgotten prince who, together with a loyal friend, in vain tried to recover his inheritance. Though I’m drawn to this project, I don’t know when I will be able to write it. I’d have to do an awful lot of research to do the story, and history, justice.

As someone — I forget his name — would say: a plan that can’t be changed isn’t a good plan. The above is how I see things now.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and if there are things you’re particularly enthusiastic about. Or not. For now however, I’m going to concentrate exclusively on finishing Mate, the final volume of The Invisible Hands.

Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it?