Joe Abercrombie

I make no promises of course. Still working on the first draft and other things may get in the way. Then it's a rough draft that needs a lot of tidying up. But I think Autumn 2019 should be good for the first book. I then hope we'll be able to publish a book per year. Doubt it makes sense to go any faster than that. But I'd very much like to go no slower. Again, other things may get in the way. We shall see...

The great thing about legal agreements is they're objective and concrete, with explicit terms the parties have agreed to and, potentially, some mechanism of enforcement. You're either in breach of the terms or you're not. The problem with implied agreements and moral obligations is they're totally subjective and the various parties to the non-existent agreement will have different ideas about what the terms are, if they exist at all. Just as a for instance, there are people who feel the ending to the first law trilogy isn't acceptable. 'Breaching a contract with the reader' is a phrase I've occasionally seen used. People sometimes consider it unfinished, in other words, even though I consider it finished and any obligation discharged. So who's right there? And what difference does it make? There are loads of good reasons for a writer to finish their series in a timely manner. And there are loads of good reasons for a writer to be as open and informative to readers as possible. I don't think there are really any writers who set out to pull the wool over peoples' eyes, to deliver books massively late or piss off their readers but, you know, shit does happen. Things go wrong. Writing isn't an exact science. You can't really force it. You could work hard for months and produce a mass of stuff you're not really happy with and need to junk. Then you could produce an amazing scene in half an hour. In the end I think both writers and readers would far rather have good books late than disappointing ones on time. A lot of the frustration derives from the simple fact that if you really like an author's books, no one else can produce them. You just have to wait for that author to be ready. It's great if they're communicative on the way, and if their behaviour falls short for you, you're free to be pissed off or to never buy anything of theirs if you like, but moral obligations and implied agreements? I just don't see why it's necessary to think about it that way.

Goddamn implied agreements. Not worth the paper they aren't printed on.

Yuck, no. Hadn't seen it when I wrote Best Served Cold. Point Blank was the filmic influence, by way of Count of Monte Cristo, Duchess of Malfi, and the career of Sir John Hawkwood.

Options tend to get presented as a massive deal but they're rarely life-changing amounts of money. It can happen, with a hot book and a lot of competition, but a book like that will often be raking it in anyway. Options are generally pretty exploratory - a fee paid by a production company so they can develop a project for 18 months or 3 years in the hope of getting it off the ground - but usually with a VERY low chance of anything coming together. A book might be optioned over and over for years and never be made. The vast majority of options will never make it to a first script, let alone beyond that. If it IS made there'll be a purchase price paid, usually on the first day of principle photography, which generally will be a much more significant amount of money. But even then the financial value to the author is often more in the publicity and additional book sales than it is necessarily in the direct fees paid. Though every case is a bit different...

Yeah, I could definitely tell you.

But what do I know?

I'd pronounce it with more of an Ay than an Ee, and more of a hard u as in book than an oo like you. Then the zzzzzzz.