Quick Hits: GRRM, Rothfuss, Abraham, Scholes, STAR TREK

Locus has published its publication list from now until next summer, revealing some interesting information:

Expect the new Dunk and Egg story in 2013.

George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois's anthology Dangerous Women, including the fourth Dunk and Egg Song of Ice and Fire prequel novella, is now listed for release in May 2013. Amazon Germany is reporting that the book collecting all four Dunk 'n' Egg novellas into one volume will come out in May 2014. Whilst we have to take that with a grain of salt, that does tie in with the new story having a 12-month exclusivity contract before it can be reprinted anywhere else.

The same list confirms that the third Dagger and Coin novel by Daniel Abraham will be called The Tyrant's Law and that both it and Ken Scholes's long-awaited Requiem will be out in June 2013.

Meanwhile, Pat Rothfuss has sold a new fantasy trilogy to DAW Books. Despite speculation that this might be the rumoured sequel series to The Kingkiller Chronicle, there are also hints that this might be an urban fantasy trilogy consisting of notably shorter novels by Rothfuss's normal standards. He may also have already written (or partially written) the first book, meaning we might see it before The Doors of Stone (the final Kingkiller book). Hopefully Rothfuss will clear this up on his blog soon.

Finally, the new Star Trek movie allegedly has a title. It's Star Trek Into Darkness. Without a colon, which is apparently a deliberately stylistic choice. Hmm. Not sure about that one.

New Daniel Abraham series on the way

With the publication of The Price of Spring, the final volume of Daniel Abraham's magnificent Long Price Quartet sequence (the most underrated fantasy series of modern times), due in just a few weeks, the author recently spoke on the Westeros.org forum about his planned new five-volume series, The Dagger and the Coin.

"Now It Can Be Told.

Bad news first: The new project didn't get picked up by Tor. That's a bummer, because I really liked working with those guys, and I'll miss them. But the economy's in the crapper, and apparently they're being very bottom-line conscious, and the Long Price books -- despite great reviews and all -- didn't move as many copies as they had hoped. I'm not happy about it, but I respect that it's business.

Good news next: My agent shopped the new proposal around, and we got a fair amount of interest from other publishers, with the upshot that Orbit (my UK publisher) bought world rights to the new series in what the trade papers are calling "a good deal." One thing I thought was particularly interesting: there's a clause in it that dock's a fair percentage of my advance if I don't turn the books in on time. So just be aware that the guys at Orbit have got all y'all's back.

But the new project -- The Dagger and the Coin -- starts up next year. It's a very different project from the Long Price books. I'm not using the same jump between books I did with Long Price. The magic system's totally different (and I love the hell out of it). The pace is faster. I'm very conscious of the influences I'm cultivating going into it -- Walter Tevis, Alexandre Dumas, Tolkien, J. Michael Straczynski, Joss Whedon, GRRM, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Dorothy Dunnett, Tim Parks -- and I'm trying to take the things that I love about each one of them and make a stew out of it. It's set right at the friction point between the medieval period and the renaissance, so we've got knights and kings, but we also have merchant houses and finance. There's some magic of the understated magic. There's political intrigue. There's a girl who was raised as the ward of a Medici-style bank, there's a high nobleman who's gotten himself and his family in over his head, there's an emotionally scarred mercenary captain straight out of Dumas.

The point of it all is to make a book that reads to me now the way that the Belgariad did when I was 16. I'm going to be swimming in everything I think is cool for the next year. I'm *really* looking forward to it."

Exciting news. The Price of Spring is published on 21 July in the USA and in the UK, along with An Autumn War, as part of Seasons of War, the second Long Price omnibus from Orbit on 3 September.