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The Paul Kearney Thread: Monarchies of God,Sea Beggars,The Macht etc.


AncalagonTheBlack

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Previous thread.

 

Brief bio: Paul Kearney is a Northern Irish fantasy author.Kearney was born in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, in 1967 and studied Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Old Norse at Oxford University before spending several years in both the U.S. and Denmark before returning to Northern Ireland. He currently lives and writes in County Down.

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Bibliography

  • The Way to Babylon (1992)
  • A Different Kingdom (1993)
  • Riding the Unicorn (1994)
  • Primeval: The Lost Island (2008)
  • The Wolf in the Attic (2016)

The Monarchies of God

  1. Hawkwood's Voyage (1995)
  2. The Heretic Kings (1996)
  3. The Iron Wars (1999)
  4. The Second Empire (2000)
  5. Ships from the West (2002)
  • Hawkwood and the Kings (2010, the first volume of omnibus edition)[5]
  • Century of the Soldier (2010, the second volume of an omnibus edition)[6]

The Sea Beggars

  1. The Mark of Ran (2004)
  2. This Forsaken Earth (2006)
  3. Storm of the Dead (unpublished)

The series was dropped by the original publisher after the second book was published. In 2011 the series was picked up by Solaris, who were due to publish the completed series as an omnibus in 2012.[7] However, due to the US publishers never releasing the rights for the final book, Solaris were unable to publish any of them.

The Macht

  1. The Ten Thousand (2008)
  2. Corvus (2010)[8]
  3. Kings of Morning (2012)[9]

Warhammer 40.000:

  • "Broken Blood",[10] short story in Death & Dishonour (2010)
  • "The Last Detail",[11] short story in Legends of the Space Marines (2010)
  • Umbra Summus, novel, was to be released in May 2015 but currently on hold due to legal issues[12]

 

Kearney is a favourite of mine.I've read all of his works except the standalones.I hope to rectify this soon by reading his brand new one, The Wolf in the Attic , especially after Wert's gushing praise.:)

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The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney is absolutely fucking fantastic. It reminded me of Ocean at the End of the Lane (which would have probably won the Hugo if Gaiman hadn't pulled it) but is about ten times better. The chances of anything else being released this year to match it is exceedingly unlikely (and I include TWoW and The Great Ordeal in that). Mayyyybe the new Priest.

 

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Yeah, it's Bantam US who are still selling The Mark of Ran and This Forsaken Earth in the States. Apparently Kearney asked them to give up the rights so Solaris can publish the entire series including the third volume, Storm of the Dead, and they said no. It was then suggested they publish Storm of the Dead in the US themselves and they said no. They also won't allow Storm of the Dead to be published by itself by another publisher. And no-one's ever gotten Bantam to explain why. If the series isn't selling well enough to justify them releasing the third book, why won't they release the rights? And if it is, why don't they want the final book to complete the story?

Utterly, utterly baffling.

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As someone who hasn't read Kearney previously and so hasn't been following along closely this may be a dumb question, but: I recall that Solaris delayed The Wolf in the Attic significantly, and that the reason given was that they felt that they had a big thing on their hands with this novel, and that they wanted to prepare a big marketing push and try to do as well as possible by it. So, ... um, ... what's the deal with that? Because, apart from Wert's excellent review [and the arc that made it possible, which I understand is no longer usual], I've encountered very little online material meant to remind people that the book's coming out and that it's good, excerpts and interviews and the like. It seems to be in danger of slipping back under the radar, as has often happened to Kearney's stuff. So where's that there marketing push? Where's the momentum? Am I simply looking in the wrong places? Or has Solaris not quite done what they implied they would do here?

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If ever there has been an author whose work has been mistreated by publishers, it's Kearney. 

The ongoing absurdity with the Sea Beggars being completed is ridiculous. How long do the rights reside with Bantam? It's been well over a decade since the first book was published. 

The Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus debacle with Black Library/Games Workshop is absurd as well. The eBook version of Umbra Sumus was "leaked" onto the net a while back, and from all accounts it is very, very good (for Warhammer 40,000 tie in fiction). 

It's very frustrating, because he is a great author and deserves more recognition. 

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50 minutes ago, Maester Llama said:

As someone who hasn't read Kearney previously and so hasn't been following along closely this may be a dumb question, but: I recall that Solaris delayed The Wolf in the Attic significantly, and that the reason given was that they felt that they had a big thing on their hands with this novel, and that they wanted to prepare a big marketing push and try to do as well as possible by it. So, ... um, ... what's the deal with that? Because, apart from Wert's excellent review [and the arc that made it possible, which I understand is no longer usual], I've encountered very little online material meant to remind people that the book's coming out and that it's good, excerpts and interviews and the like. It seems to be in danger of slipping back under the radar, as has often happened to Kearney's stuff. So where's that there marketing push? Where's the momentum? Am I simply looking in the wrong places? Or has Solaris not quite done what they implied they would do here?

Here ya go ;):

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Paul has been celebrating The Wolf in the Attic with blogs at the likes of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist and SF Bulletin, where he's talking about using historical figures in fiction, not to mention an interview over at Rising Shadow.

There have been plenty of glowing reviews, too:

 

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The ongoing absurdity with the Sea Beggars being completed is ridiculous. How long do the rights reside with Bantam? It's been well over a decade since the first book was published. 

Bantam has to let the books go out of print and x number of years later, the rights rever to Paul. Bantam has kept the books in print in the States. That's what's so absurd about the situation. The books doing well know to stay in print for 12 years but not to publish the last volume? It's baffling.

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The Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus debacle with Black Library/Games Workshop is absurd as well. The eBook version of Umbra Sumus was "leaked" onto the net a while back, and from all accounts it is very, very good (for Warhammer 40,000 tie in fiction). 

Umbra Sumus is supposed to be relaunched with a different series title, but when and if that's happening is unknown. GW have been making seriously irrational decisions for a while now, so who knows?

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I have seen unsubstantiated musings on Warhammer 40k forums that there is still ongoing negotiation with Sherrilyn Kenyon on use of the Dark Hunters title, but that seems to be purely speculation. 

Supposedly all of the physical copies of Umbra Sumus were pulped, but a few pop up here and there online once in a while. A very rare collector's item right now!

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7 hours ago, Triskan said:

Does an author have no legal recourse in a situation like that?  Couldn't they argue that they're out serious money and that the publisher should publish or sell the rights?  I get that people sign their souls over to some extent, but I guess I thought it was only...to some extent.

He could change his name to an unprouncable sign.  BUT from what I read that didn't actually help Prince much.

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I read the Hawkwood series a long time ago and I really liked it, although there were some parts that could have used some editing.  It sounds like the omnibus reworked some of the areas that needed reworking.

 

I haven't gotten around to the third Macht book.  They were a bit dreary and didn't spark my interest as much.

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Bantam US has the rights to publish the Sea-Beggars series and no-one else can do it until they give up the rights or they stop printing copies of Books 1 and 2 and the rights revert to Paul a certain amount of time (typically 5-10 years) later. So there is nothing to be done until Bantam US stop acting like dicks.

Paul is of course free to write completely unrelated books for other publishers, as he's been doing.

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Just started The Wolf in the Attic, which is absolutely wonderful so far. It has a sort of Neil Gaiman Ocean at the End of the Lane feel to it, and I'm enjoying the way it's been written (I'll spoiler tag this but it's not exactly Spoiling anything

It's very choppy/jumpy, with lots of new paragraphs starting off a new train of thought. I'm assuming this is intentional because this is how she is quite frequently described.

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On May 18, 2016 at 9:53 AM, Werthead said:

Bantam US has the rights to publish the Sea-Beggars series and no-one else can do it until they give up the rights or they stop printing copies of Books 1 and 2 and the rights revert to Paul a certain amount of time (typically 5-10 years) later. So there is nothing to be done until Bantam US stop acting like dicks.

Paul is of course free to write completely unrelated books for other publishers, as he's been doing.

Adam, 

I get that.  Yes, Bantam is being unreasonable, but I just didn't know if there were legal side roads he could walk down and get the works out there via fanfic.  I could have sworn there were examples of this happening with authors who couldn't work through contract issues.  Can't remember where I read that, but I know it's happened.  

 

It's a pipe dream, I know.  Just spitballing here. 

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2 minutes ago, peterbound said:

Adam, 

I get that.  Yes, Bantam is being unreasonable, but I just didn't know if there were legal side roads he could walk down and get the works out there via fanfic.  I could have sworn there were examples of this happening with authors who couldn't work through contract issues.  Can't remember where I read that, but I know it's happened.  

 

It's a pipe dream, I know.  Just spitballing here. 

It was the author of the Vampire Diaries book series. She got booted from her own book series and replaced with ghost writers. She decided to self publish Vampire Diaries fan fiction on Amazon to continue her version of the series.

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