I look forward to meeting any of you who can come, and feel great sadness that I only took those two years of highschool French. Zut alors!

(Click to enlarge. Credit: Richard Jones.)

As we shared previously (see the November post about the leak below), the working image for the cover of The Black Prism came out a few months back. Now, I am pleased to release the final cover art for The Black Prism.

Releasing new covers is, quite honestly, tricky. From a business standpoint, you want people who enjoyed the Night Angel books but can’t even remember my name to be able to identify that these new books are Brent Weeks books. At the same time, you want to let people know that this is a new series, that the feel of these books is new and different, and basically (if you’re Orbit) appeal to the greatest audience possible. This is made harder if every Tom, Dick, and Harry now has a cover with a hooded man with a sword. (Orbit appears to have started a small trend with my last covers.) What I really appreciate about Orbit is that they didn’t settle with a “good enough” cover. The last cover looked good, in my opinion. It communicated that this was  a Brent Weeks book; and it was visually striking, but it just wasn’t quite perfect for these books. I understood the decision, and focused on making The Black Prism the best book I could.

Then Orbit did this. Very gutsy, very different, very cutting edge. Is it a bit of a gamble? Yes. Do I appreciate that? Absolutely.

Lauren Panepinto is a genius. More about Orbit’s cover launch of The Black Prism here. With non-spoiler-y back cover blurb!

But Brent, I thought you already have an audiobook.

Yeah, I do. But GraphicAudio does something different. GraphicAudio performs books with actors and sound effects and a sound track. The books ARE abridged: say if I wrote “It was raining,” instead of hearing someone narrate those words, you’d hear the sound of rain. In my mind, abridging or adapting is a creative work in itself. For example, remember that Leonardo DiCaprio movie “Romeo + Juliet“? A bit different than Shakespeare probably imagined the action–and yet totally cool in its own way.   That’s how I feel about adaptations. GraphicAudio will bring its own vision to this book. And I, for one, am eager to see what they’ve come up with.

One geeky bonus: If you want to know how _I_ pronounce everything, this should be the authoritative source. As an author, I try to make my made up words look different on the page–among other considerations, of course–but I don’t care too much how you pronounce them. Take Vi. Pronounce it Vie, or pronounce it Vee. Your call. You might even think one is cool, and the other sucks. Naturally, I’d like you to choose the one you think is cool. To me, this is part of the co-creation of a world that happens between a reader and an author. I’m just an architect, folks. You get to pick out the drapes yourself.

A graphic audiobook has different demands, so I was delighted when the director called me up and went through a list of names and places and recorded how to say every single one of them. We had a great chat. He even asked my opinion on some of his creative ideas for music, accents, and the whole nine yards. This doesn’t always happen–once he buys the rights from my corporate overlords, he can do WHATEVER he wants with those rights. That’s how it works. So I appreciate the level of craftsmanship and passion he showed. It makes me eager to see the result. If you want to get a taste of what it’s like, they’ve posted THIS SAMPLE which is the first nine minutes/the first chapter of the book. Go ahead, you can go listen.

A quick update after the close of the Worldbuilders 2009 fundraiser for Heifer International: donations totaling $128,866!! Way to go people!

A big thanks to Pat Rothfuss and his assistant Valerie for organizing and packaging all the prizes (and for having the awesome idea in the first place).  Glad to be a part.

Did I ever say that the internet age has weirded publishing? (Apologies to Bill Watterson.) I’m suddenly posting things on the internet about a book I Haven’t Even Finished Writing. I had a publication date before I had a delivery date. Things get out before they’re finalized. Amazon posts the book blurb that I made up Before I Wrote the Book. So…uh, the blurb on Mad Hatter’s page and on Amazon is all wrong. And spoileriffic. Not anyone’s fault. Orbit asked me what the book was about–you know, before the bought the book–and I told them as well as I knew at the time, including spoilers.

Strangely, I like to finish writing the book before I write the back cover blurb–then I know silly little details like What The Characters’ Names Are.

But hey, I’m just The Man, tryin’ to keep you down, Internet. (See, this is why I can’t begrudge free snark.)

And no, I’m not sure why I’m capitalizing random words. Pending German release, perhaps?

Anyway, here it is, in higher definition than you can find it anywhere else! If you can’t do it first, do it better, right?(click if you can handle the awesomeness)

Did I mention I’m taking cold medicine right now? I think posting on the internet while taking cold medicine probably isn’t covered in my contract–but it will be next time.

Some things about this cover MAY change. But that will have to wait for another post. What do you think?

Channeling the predictive powers of the most famous groundhog in the world, will Brent see his shadow? (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)  Will he finish writing Black Prism on time, or will there be six more weeks of writing?! Nevertheless, the two multi-author book signings will be great (although Brent gets nervous about signing his name and talking at the same time).

Thanks to Jude Feldman and Peter Honigstock for organizing the events!

On a side note that has nothing to do with groundhogs, have you seen The Night Angel Trilogy boxed set? It’s in stores now and we’re pretty excited about it. That line at the top still warms our hearts!

The Night Angel Trilogy

Click to see this goodness.

Between my belabored French and Google Translate, it looks like Le Choix des Ombres is being released in France this month, August. Again, Prix Imaginales winner Frederic Perrin has done a marvelous job with the cover art. Thank you, Frederic and Bragelonne!

The “and finally” in the title here isn’t because I’m being snarky–no, really! It’s because I had quite a number of emails from people asking when I would publish in Spanish–which I appreciate, but I don’t really publish anything. A publisher has to come to an author first and say that they want to publish your book in language X. Like it seems happens a lot in publishing, we had no interest, followed by no interest, followed by a sudden flurry of interest from numerous corners all at once.

I love Italy.