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Posts Tagged ‘l5r’

Happy book day to me!

After a covid-induced delay (not mine; there was an outbreak at the warehouse, and I hope everyone involved has recovered), The Game of 100 Candles is out now! It’s the return of the Legend of the Five Rings-set, Japanese-inspired, queer romance-tinged supernatural mystery series, now with clan politics added into the mix!

The Game of 100 Candles by Marie Brennan

The demon-vanquishing samurai, Asako Sekken and Agasha no Isao Ryotora, are summoned to Winter Court. Their exploits with the Spirit Realms have taken a toll on the pair and the cut and thrust of Rokugani politics proves challenging. After being urged to share their tales of adventure, the Winter Court guests begin to fall into a deep sleep from which they cannot wake. Fearing foul play, the Phoenix demand retribution, but Sekken and Ryotora uncover the hand of a supernatural trickster seeking entry to the mortal realm. The path to victory will risk their lives and the strange bond between them. But they must succeed, lest something awful escape into Rokugan.

It is available in print, ebook, and audiobook from a variety of fine retailers. And as we speak, I am 2/3 of the way through writing the third and final book of the series!

More adventures in L5R!

And this time around I mean literal adventures!

Well, one adventure, anyway. A while back I was contacted by the Edge Studios, the company now handling the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, asking if I’d like to create a pre-written scenario for the game that would pick up and run with a strand of the plot that was planned for the official storyline, but which never happened due to that storyline getting wrapped up earlier than intended.

So of course I said yes. Then I had to figure out how to make an RPG adventure out of a premise that amounts to “a bunch of religious figures get together to Do Politics,” heh. Also, it was my first time attempting to do something like this: I’d written microsettings for Tiny d6 several times before this, but those pack fluff text, a proposed setting, and several adventure hooks into 1500 words. This time around they wanted more like 15,000 words, all developing a single plot in a well-established world.

But in all honesty, I’m super pleased with how it turned out. Because there are no pre-generated characters and no way for me to know what types of people the players would bring to the game, I couldn’t just make it all be about theology and such (which probably would have been of limited interest anyway); I had to figure out structures that would let players engage usefully with the plot via a wide variety of skills. There’s a section where PCs can influence the religious conclave via anything from meditation to calligraphy to a sparring match to their ability to hold their booze! The necessity of providing that flexibility was actually a good thing, because it meant figuring out multiple types of conflict, which gave the adventure as a whole a much wider dynamic range.

Imperfect Land is out now, if you happen to be interested in the L5R RPG. I’ve gotten some good early reactions already, but of course the real question will be what happens when the rubber of what I wrote meets the road of people actually playing it. I hope they have fun!

And as long as I’m here announcing L5R-related news, I should add that I’ve officially sold a third and final novel in my series to Aconyte Books: The Market of 100 Fortunes, which will be out some time in early 2024, about a year after The Game of 100 Candles. First, though, I gotta write it . . .

Return to Rokugan!

I have a whole pile of projects right now that I am either not permitted to discuss (as in, there’s an NDA and everything) or superstitious about discussing until they reach a firmer milestone. In one particular instance, this means I have not only drafted an entire novel but sent it to my editor, gotten comments in return, and sent back the revised manuscript, all without being able to say a word about what I was working on.

But as of today’s official announcement, that FINALLY changes!

The Game of 100 Candles by Marie Brennan

The Game of 100 Candles is, as the title suggests, a sequel to The Night Parade of 100 Demons. It takes Ryōtora and Sekken to Phoenix Clan lands, and from the rural wilds of the mountains to the heart of a powerful provincial court — where more supernatural matters are afoot . . .

This will be out in February of next year!

THE NIGHT PARADE OF 100 DEMONS is out . . . yesterday!

Yeesh! Having two novels out in two weeks is not good for my brain: yesterday I was running around announcing the publication of The Night Parade of 100 Demons everywhere but, apparently, here.

cover art for The Night Parade of 100 Demons by Marie Brennan

But the good news is, it is still out today! And for quite some time to come, but of course if you’re interested in it, I suggest buying it soon. (Er, if you’re in North America or reading it in ebook. Due to covid messing with distribution, the paperback won’t be available via UK channels until April 15th.) This is, as the cover shows, a Legend of the Five Rings novel, but if you’re not familiar with the game, don’t let that put you off: the novels Aconyte is publishing are very much designed to be read by anybody. If you would be interested in a book from me that’s set in Japanese history and chock full of folkloric creatures, characters protecting their secrets, an investigation into some mysterious disturbances, and a queer romance, then this will be up your alley; just swap in “country based on historical Japan” and you’re good to go.

And SEMI-RELATED — I will be appearing on The Story Hour tonight! My plan is to read “As Tight as Any Knot,” the Rook and Rose short story I had out in Beneath Ceaseless Skies last month.

All the news that’s fit to link

First up: Book View Cafe is having a sale! From now through the end of the year, it’s half off on all our titles (with a $3.99 minimum purchase).

And speaking of sales, Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers is offering all of its on-demand courses for $5 each, also through the end of the year. (This is the venue through which I’ve taught “Writing Fight Scenes” a few times, and for which I intend to do an on-demand version, though it won’t be ready until next year.)

And speaking of teaching! On January 30th I will be doing a workshop on public readings through the Dream Foundry — register at that link. Attendance is free, though they gratefully accept donations to help defray the cost of paying their instructors.

And speaking of me being online! Because I’ve got The Mask of Mirrors coming out on January 19th and The Night Parade of 100 Demons coming out on February 2nd, it is Interview Season Ahoy around here. Alyc and I were interviewed about the former at Litcast of Doom, and I did one about the latter at Court Games (web link, Apple link, Spotify link).

And speaking of The Mask of Mirrors! Alyc and I have two cool events planned for January, which I’m giving you a heads-up for ahead of time: first, on book launch day (i.e. the 19th), at 7 p.m. Pacific we’ll be doing a live-streamed event at Mysterious Galaxy with Christopher Paolini. There will be signed books available! (Though it may take a while to get them to you, given the vagaries of shipping right now.) And we’re also doing an Orbit Live event on the 21st at 6 p.m. Pacific, this one with our fellow Orbiteer Andrea Stewart (author of The Bone Shard Daughter).

There will be more to come, I’m sure; in fact, we’ve already recorded several other podcasts that just aren’t up yet. But in the meanwhile, this should keep you busy!

For your Halloween delectation

Aconyte Books, publishers of The Night Parade of 100 Demons, have put together a free sampler for you with chapters from five of their recent or upcoming novels — mine included! Do not be unduly alarmed (or later disappointed) by the title “Terrifying Halloween Tales;” I am in there by dint of my novel concerning rather a lot of supernatural creatures of a malicious sort, not because it’s anything you’d call horror. But if you want a sneak peek at the story (or at any of the others), here’s your chance!

Where I’ve been for the last two months

At home, obviously — like a truly staggering percentage of the planet’s population. But it’s been near-total radio silence around here, apart from links to the weekly Patreon posts, so I figure I should update.

The good news is, the silence has not been due to any sort of illness with me or mine. Instead . . . you know all those people posting about the stuff they’ve finally gotten done around the house or the new bread-baking hobby they’ve picked up? That is not me. Through a confluence of factors (some of which were my fault, some of which weren’t), I got behind on drafting Night Parade — which meant that circa early March, I had to put my head down and start charging ahead at speeds nearly unprecedented in my writing career in order to get it done by deadline. (The only comparable instance even in the running was during my senior year of college, after I turned in my thesis and then a novel fell out of my head in about seven weeks.) We’re talking working at at least 150% my normal pace for weeks on end, with no days off anywhere in there. Oh, and partway through that time I had to drop it for five days so I could copy-edit a 214K-word novel, which is about 200% my normal pace for a task of that kind.

Yyyyyeah. It’s been a busy time around here.

The good news is, Night Parade is done and turned in on time (a day ahead, even!), The Mask of Mirrors is copy-edited, and Tachyon gave me until early May to handle the proofs for Driftwood, because I think the Look of Utter Panic I got when those were sent to me a couple of weeks ago was visible even in email. And we’re all healthy here.

We’ve been weathering lockdown fairly well. I work from home anyway, and so does my husband more days than not; my sister (who lives with us) does not, but she used to, so on a domestic level this is a familiar routine. The big changes for me are that I can’t go to the dojo, and I can’t have in-person gaming. Both of which I miss rather acutely, but I’m not among the people who have had to figure out how to do their job from home while also wrangling kids doing distance learning, etc. We’ve figured out how to make online gaming work about as well as it can — the trick is to reboot our Discord video call every 40 minutes or so, as soon as it starts to get choppy — and over the winter I purchased a folding exercise bike that’s put about 500 miles on the odometer in the last two months, as all three members of our household have been making use of it. I’ve also been doing a lot of online teaching, fitting the already-existing theme of 2020 being the year I teach a lot more than I have lately. I did four of Clarion West’s free one-hour workshops, on a variety of worldbuilding themes, and there’s a plan in progress for a six-hour workshop in the near future — that being another thing that got delayed until early May so my brains wouldn’t liquify and pour out my nose. And I’m working for the Kelly Yang Project, teaching creative writing to a kid in Hong Kong.

Free time? What’s that?

In all seriousness, I have also been giving myself a break with some entertainment. Not a whole lot of reading, simply because my brain’s reaction to text on a page is NO NO MAKE IT GO AWAY, but TV shows, video games, and (most unexpectedly) opera, because the Met has been making one opera available for free every night for weeks now. Maybe look for some posts on those in the upcoming days, as I regenerate my ability to word.

Right now, though, I’m doing my best to take a break.

Beware the Night Parade!

Hey, remember when I wrote a novella for Legend of the Five Rings?

Now I’m writing a novel for them. 😀

To my great surprise, despite the abundant evidence that some of the past writers for L5R had read extensively in Japanese culture and folklore, nobody seems to have ever done anything with the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. So when I was told that Asmodee, the parent company for L5R, was starting up a fiction imprint for (among other things) game-related titles, and that they were interested in having me write a novel for them, my mind gravitated more or less instantly toward this concept. (Me? Make a beeline for the folklore thing? Strange.)

This is actually what I’m drafting right now, so it’s nice to be able to talk about it! The book is currently slated to come out in January of next year, so you won’t have to wait too long . . .