Previous Post ROBIN HOOD: FREEDOM'S OUTLAW My third Robin Hood novel's now out in the shops and online, available in old-fashioned dead tree format and in some flashy new electronic wizardry that'll never replace the horse. I liked this book. It's the third in my Robin Hood series. I only intended to do one Robin Hood book, but the story kind of proliferated (as my stories often do) and there were three logical pretty-much self-contained parts, so a trilogy it was. Fortunately the publisher was alright with this and stood up like a gentleman to the ordeal of additional editions. I like each part of a three-volume series to stand alone, so no previous experience is required to read this one. There's a sample bit of the story, the best self-contained piece I could find from early in the book, available here. There's more relevant material, including samples from the other volumes and maps that were too difficult to publish on my Robin Hood Homepage I thought this would be the end of my involvement with the Sherwood outlaws, but the publisher asked me to provide some promotional short tie-in stories to offer to magazines. I did one such story for Pulp Spirit #14, available as .pdf file Robin Hood and the Slavers of Whitby, and I scripted the short Robin Hood comic story in All-Star Pulp Tales #2. They wanted more, but the next short story I did, "Robin Hood and the Maiden of the Tower", proliferated into a novella (that is, it turned out to be half the length of a novel). It's going to occupy the entirity of the issue of the magazine it will appear in; it might go out as a special edition. The publisher (of the Hood trilogy, not the magazine) suggested that these stories, plus a bit of additional material from me, might be collected into a fourth edition, or a compilation hardback. I agreed to write a couple more short stories so as to make up a complete follow-up volume. Unfortunately the next short story, "Robin Hood and the Black Monk" also turned into a novella. I've not yet written my final planned tale, "The Death of Robin Hood", but I worry for its brevity. I haven't heard back yet from my stunned publisher what he wants to do about this. That won't make the trilogy a quadrology however. The events of the three volumes now on sale all take place over one summer and have direct links. The rest of the stories happen over the rest of Robin's career as we see what becomes of the outlaw and his cast. There's a definite distance. Anyway, should people want to track down my novels, including the newly released Hood book and the newly Kindled volumes 2 and 3, you can go to: Robin Hood: King of Sherwood http://www.amazon.com/dp/1934935654 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BB40O1O Robin Hood: Arrow of Justice http://www.amazon.com/dp/1613420277 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com//dp/B00E22ONG4 Robin Hood: Freedom's Outlaw http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615852947 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E0UVUPU Blackthorn: Dynasty of Mars http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615676545 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/p/B008NYCVLQ Amazon reviews would also be helpful. Five-star reviews are like gold dust there. In other literary news, I recieved my author's copies of THE SPIDER: EXTREME JUSTICE this week. This is the first time any of my work has appeared in hardback and I must admit the package was very nice. I could use more of my work going out in that format, I really could. And GRAND CENTRAL NOIR did well for charity. At one point it peaked at #10 on the Amazon detective anthologies sales chart, which is pretty good out of 450,000 offerings. I'm told a four figure cheque will be heading off to the homeless/poverty charity "God's Love We Care", hopefully with more to follow. This is turning into a pretty hectic year for me, publishing-wise. I joked before that I might have an average of one book a month out in 2013, but if you count a comic and a magazine story or two then I might actually do it! A couple of weeks ago a different publisher contacted me to pitch me publishing a book of non-fiction articles. This was a bit of a surprise, but I agreed to repackage a bunch of things I've already done plus some new material. The aim is to publish in November. I've had text pieces before in Assembled and Assembled 2, books about the Avengers (and I turned in my stuff for Assembled 3 about five years back now) but this is the first time an entire volume of my ramblings will go out in print. There's one exception to the non-fiction bit, though. One of the articles is called "On Heroines" and it talks about fictional treatment of romantic partners of the principal character. This was early on in my assembling the compilation when I was worried there wouldn't be a big enough word count, so after that section I tossed in a short piece of fiction that humourosly addressed the same topic. It's a story called "Rescue Me" that I first posted here on the Parodyverse board about a decade ago. Now the finished word count has overshot (again) by about 8,000 words and that story, being fiction in a non-fiction volume, is probably first on the cutting list, but if it somehow survives then I think that will be the first story originating from this board to actually end up in a published book (not the first characters, though; those would be Scott's vampire children, I think). It's a strange world. IW I.A. Watson's Publications "Robin Hood: Freedom's Outlaw" ISBN: 0-615852-94-7 ISBN 13: 978-0-615852-94-2 Release date: 18th July 2013 Produced by Airship 27 EDITED IN POST-SCRIPT: I just got the first (5 star) Amazon review for ROBIN HOOD: FREEDOM'S OUTLAW It concludes: "A highly recommended book from a highly recommended series. The characterisation is, as previously described, top-quality; the plot is inventive and believable; and the mythic quality of the subject matter is respected and understood. If you liked the previous volumes then you will also like this, if you have not read the previous volumes then congratulations on having just discovered not just one but three excellent reads" Couldn't really ask for better than that.

Robin Hood 1,2,3 and Blackthorn: Dynasty of Mars are on their way. I will be tracking you down to sign them sometime. I always like to request authors to sign a book if I am able. I once bought a Jeffrey Archer book just to ask him to sign it because he was there (looking rather glum and bored in Brisbane airport). I will also post a review on Amazon once I have read them.

Amazon is annoying. It kept telling me i was eligible for free shipping - but at the end I wasn't because; not living in the Sates. Stupid Amazon. Shipping ended up almost as much as the overall cost of the books themselves for the slow "cheap" option.

I have been wanting to finish RH: King of Sherwood since reading the first chapters a while ago when you first posted it, so am very much looking forward to my early Christmas present. Oh I also got the Blackthorn one due to the spiffy cover. And because I figure I've already read half - let's read the other half in real book form.

Anyway - yay me!

Al B.