A few little bits of King’s Man business . . .
Posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
As some of you might have noticed, the hardback version of King’s Man has been unavailable from Amazon since before Christmas. For several weeks now, I have been ranting and raving and sending acidic emails trying to get Amazon to list the hardback so that people can buy it. Can’t tell you how frustrating that has been. But a phone call from my publisher yesterday has completely soothed me: it’s not that Amazon are refusing to stock King’s Man in hardback. It’s that they have sold out, and the publisher doesn’t have any more printed copies either. I had thought that not very many people had wanted the book and it turns out that its scarcity is a result of its popularity. I’m well chuffed, I can tell you.
But if you do want a hardback copy of King’s Man, you probably won’t share my delight. I can suggest two things: either you email me – I still have half a dozen copies of the hardback in my garage and I can send you a signed one (for a reasonable price, plus p&p) or you can click on “paperback” on the Amazon page and get one of the trade paperback versions of the book. These are bigger than normal paperbacks but contain the same story. So there you are.
Talking of paperbacks . . . I now have the definitive date for the mass-market paperback release of King’s Man. This is the normal size one that will be, hopefully, in all the supermarkets from July 5th onwards. And the hardback version of Warlord will come out a couple of weeks later on July 19th. And I might as well tell all my American readers that King’s Man is coming out in the US in November – the 3rd, I think.
Here is the cover of the US version which they sent me yesterday; I’d love to hear what you all think:
Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Justin Bieber to star in 100 billion-dollar movie of Robin Hood
Posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2012
OK, you got me. That is an outrageous lie. I was thinking the other day about a seminar I went to a few years ago when I worked at The Times when they were telling us how to write headlines for online articles and, basically, they said you should always put the names of stars in the title (and large sums of money). That way, claimed the experts, when people are browsing the net they will be attracted to your site by the double-whammy glamour of celebs and buckets of cash. Sorry, low trick, I know. But there is some justification in running these guys’ names in the headline: I quite often get asked who should play Robin Hood and Alan Dale if they ever (you never know, fingers crossed!) make a movie of one of my books.
It’s quite a tough one, actually. Who should be the heroes of the Outlaw Chronicles? I like Johnny Depp enormously, and Jude Law seems like a nice chap, too (I met him briefly before Christmas) and he’s a first-class actor. I don’t really know much about Justin Bieber, except that he’s insanely popular with the young ‘uns, although he seems a bit thick; actually, as dumb as a lump of cheddar – sorry, Beliebers, but there it is!
So who should it be? Who do you think should play Alan? And who would be a convincingly ruthless Robin Hood? Email me and let me know!
Other news
King’s Man will shortly be available as an Audio book, hooray! – and while the hardback is listed as unavailable on Amazon (some sort of glitch that they can’t seem to fix) I have copies of the book at home which I will sign, wrap-up and send to you at a very reasonable price, if you really want one. Contact me if you want a copy, and we’ll make some suitable arrangement.
Some bits of news for you
Posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2012
It’s going to be a rather eventful year for me, I think.
I’ve just heard that King’s Man is being published in the USA on 13 November 2012 – which seems like a long way in the future but I expect the time will pass quickly. Back in good old Blighty, King’s Man is coming out in paperback in July and the same month Warlord will be published in hardback. So three of my books are coming out in English in a year.
Added to that, the German version of Holy Warrior is due to come out in March 2012, and the Spanish version of King’s Man will also be published in that month.
In other domestic news, my wife is expecting our second child in mid-February.
That’s all for now. I’ll post more updates as I get them.
The paperback version of King’s Man
Posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
My publisher has just sent me this new cover for the paperback of King’s Man (Book 3 of the Outlaw Chronicles), which is coming out in July this year. I think it is brilliant – love to hear what you all think . . .
So here it is, Merry Christmas . . .
Posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011
Well, that’s it for me this year; I’m closing down Angus Donald Productions and calling it Christmas. Hooray!
It’s been a great year: Outlaw and Holy Warrior came out in the US, here in the UK we published King’s Man in hardback (the paperback comes out next summer) and I’ve finished the first draft of Warlord. Over the summer, I visited six medieval festivals, meeting hundreds of readers and having a whole lot of fun dressed up as a monk. I instituted the Golden Arrow scheme in the autumn, awarding GAs to people who help promote the books and I even managed to organise the sending out of two parcels of books to the British troops in Afghanistan. So, all in all, 2011 has been a cracking year – and now I’m going to put my feet up, have a mince pie and spend some quality time with my family.
And, just while I think of it, here is a little blog I wrote for an American website this week, which you might find mildly interesting (Americans don’t have Boxing Day, apparently). Enjoy! And I’ll be blogging again at the beginning of January! Have a very merry Christmas and I wish all my readers joy, love and success in 2012.
BOXING DAY
By Angus Donald
Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even . . .
“Good King Wenceslas” is one of my favourite carols; I belt it out in a freezing English country church, my breath pluming before my face, almost every Christmas. And yet, while I’ve been singing it for forty years now, today, when I began doing research for this blog, I realised something about the old carol that had never occurred to me before: “Good King Wenceslas” is not so much about Christmas but about Boxing Day.
Boxing Day is the term used in the United Kingdom for the day after Christmas Day – the 26th of December, a public holiday. It is celebrated in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in many former British colonies around the world but not, as far as I know, in America. Its origins are disputed – some speak of church alms boxes in medieval times which were opened by the priest and the coins within distributed to the poor at this time – but most probably the etymology of Boxing Day lie in the old feudal tradition that the lord of the manor should give gifts to his servants on this day. A “box” was a gift given by a superior to an inferior. In the 19th century, the rich who lived in grand houses would allow their servants to have the day off on the 26th of December (after they had cooked, served and cleared up the great Christmas Day feast) in order to visit their families, and the workers would be given “Christmas boxes” containing gifts of money or food to take to their less well-off relatives. Indeed, Victorian department stores sold ready-made parcels for employers to buy and give their servants.
The tradition lives on in some 21st century companies in the form of a Christmas bonus, and in the still-extant custom in Britain of giving tradesmen who regularly visit the house – such as the milkman, the postman, the “binmen” (rubbish-disposal people) or the paper-boy – a small cash gift on Boxing Day as a thank-you for the year’s work.
In modern Britain, Boxing Day, an official holiday enjoyed by everyone in the country, is marked by a number of important sporting contests: football (you would say soccer) matches, horse racing events, and even fox hunting meets – although pursuing foxes has been illegal in Britain since 2004 and the hounds now follow a running man dragging a scented bag. Nevertheless, the sight of all those hearty riders on glossy horses, marvelously bold in their scarlet coats, sipping hot mulled wine and calling out to old friends before the hunt begins, always gives me the warm feeling that I have slipped a couple of hundred years into the past.
In my family, Boxing Day is the day of the Big Walk: after gorging on Christmas Day on roast turkey, cranberry sauce, hot gravy, roast potatoes and vegetables, and Christmas pudding with brandy butter and cheese and nuts and chocolate (not all on the same plate, I hasten to add) everybody feels like taking a bit of exercise the day afterwards and so we stir ourselves on the morning of Boxing Day, wrap up warmly and walk for ten miles or so around the frosty (sometimes snowy) Kentish countryside – before collapsing in front of the TV, and gorging again on a late lunch of cold turkey, cranberry sauce, glazed ham, cold potatoes, cheese, chocolate . . .
For many people in the UK, Boxing Day is a shopping holiday, much like the day after Thanksgiving in the USA. Shops often offer huge discounts on normally expensive household products in the sales which begin on Boxing Day, and Britons turn out in their millions to snap up bargains. In 2009, 12 million UK residents attended the post-Christmas sales – which is twenty per cent of the total population! The queues stretch around the block as people patiently wait for the stores to open; and when they do pandemonium ensues. Injuries sustained in the stampede are not uncommon.
But it would be a shame if, in the commercially-minded 21st century, we forgot that Boxing Day was originally a day on which those who have plenty give to those who are in need; we should remember that Boxing Day it is also Saint Stephen’s day – the Feast of Stephen mentioned in my favourite carol. Wenceslaus – who was in fact a 10th century Duke of Bohemia – ventured out on the Feast of Stephen to give a poor, man food and wine and winter fuel; personifying the true spirit of Boxing Day.
“Therefore Christian men be sure, wealth or rank possessing, ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.”