Seems to be a bit de rigueur at the minute for people tell you what they’ve been up in an end of year announcement, and there isn’t a bandwagon I won’t jump on so here we go. Also, I haven’t posted on this blog since *checks notes* June last year, so we’re probably overdue…
February saw the release of Engines of Empire! It even sealed a Kirkus Starred review, which I’m led to believe is pretty prestigious. Sales have been… okay. According to my publisher author portal it’s done just over 10k across all formats, which I don’t think is bad, but it’s also not lighting up the charts. A lot of that could be due to the lack of a UK publisher, but I’m still holding out for a heroic commissioning editor to ride in on their chariot and save the day. Nevertheless, book two – Engines of Chaos – is written, edited and ready to go in April next year, so hopefully that will persuade reticent readers to jump on board.
Despite also having rather disappointing initial sales, my historical fiction novel, Oath Bound, managed to get itself longlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. It didn’t get shortlisted, and with the competition it was up against I knew it had no chance of winning, but it was encouraging nonetheless. Oath Bound was my first foray into histfic, and to make the final 12 for a prize like that (chosen by librarians no less, from just under 130 entrants) was real validation that I can make a go of the genre.
It’s sequel, Shield Breaker, also came out this year, also to the sound of crickets. Richard Cullen is a new name in the genre and it might take time to build up a following. However, in conjunction with the publisher, we ran a promo at the start of October, and gave away a lot of free ebooks. Since then, sales have actually been quite steady (according to my author central figures). Let’s hope by the time book three hits the shelves more people will want to jump on board.
Since I haven’t managed to hit any bestseller lists (again – it’s an occupational hazard I’m afraid) I took on some narrative design work in March to keep the lights on, which has seen me busy for most of the year. Kaidan is a samurai inspired transmedia brand, dripping with cosmic horror. Along with writer Steve Savile, we’ve produced some novellas, and mine should be available next year.
Recently, I also had the rights to the Steelhaven trilogy reverted back to me. I’ve relaunched the ebooks independently, and I’m currently trying to sort audiobooks for Herald of the Storm and The Shattered Crown. Will I be writing more in the series? Well, I always intended to, so I guess we’ll just have to see how well the relaunch goes when I smash the FB and AMS advertising next year.
And speaking of next year… I obviously still have two novels to produce to complete the Age of Uprising and Wolf of Kings series. Due to these commitments I’ll be stepping away from the contract work and concentrating fully on the writing of Engines of War and Winter Warrior. That’ll take me up to July next year, and luckily I have enough in the war chest to keep a roof over my head until then. Beyond that…
Quite frankly, I have no idea. There are very popular authors who’ve recently announced they’re having to take deals with smaller publishers, or that they’re leaving the writing game behind altogether. And these are authors with much-lauded novels out there. It’s tough in the industry at the moment, advances and royalties are being squeezed, particularly in the trad industry (unless you’re already a celebrity household name), and more authors are turning to indy. I’ll certainly be flexing those indy muscles and testing the waters, but there could also be more to come from my current publishers – I just don’t know yet.
I’ll end by saying a massive thanks to anyone who’s read and reviewed any of my books over this year. Particular thanks to booktuber Elliot Brooks who single handedly did more to spread the word about Engines of Empire than anyone. Hope you all have a cracking festive period and next year brings you a little closer to whatever it is you’re chasing.
Oh hello there, it’s been a while. Two and a half years to be exact, but who’s counting? What have I been up to during that time? Well, thanks for asking. You might want to strap in, because this is a bit of a rollercoaster…
So back in the middle of 2016 I got myself a job writing in the computer game industry. I’d already secured a 3-novel deal with Titan Books for the War of the Archons trilogy, but unfortunately those mid-list advances don’t cut it as far as paying the rent goes, so I needed a steady income. And I got one. Packed everything up, moved to Cambridge in a 6-room shared house with a bunch of 20-somethings (which at 42 was a serious adjustment), and started work in a brand new industry. I hadn’t worked for anyone else in an office environment for about 10 years but it was fun, the people were nice and the pay was (eventually) a welcome change to my usual state of penury. I even bought my own flat in a little market town just north of Cambridge and met the love of my life. Sweet! Everything was going well, so obviously I decided it was time to pull the rug right out from under my own feet…
As much as the work was rewarding, and being part of an expert team of game designers was a great way to make a living, it just wasn’t doing it for me. Creatively I was hamstrung by other people’s decisions and I just felt like a bit of a cog in a larger machine. I wanted autonomy. I was still writing my own series on the side, but it just wasn’t enough. Ideas for other projects were brewing, and I knew I would never have the time to see them through while in full-time employment. So what should I do?
Well, obviously I’d do the very thing everyone tells you NOT to do as a mid-list novelist: I handed in my notice, got a big loan to live off, and sold my flat for the equity! Risky? Certainly. Madness? Probably. But there comes a time in your career when you’ve just got to back yourself.
So how did that work out, Rich? Well, here’s my new Twitter banner to give you a bit of a clue:
With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight I made the right decision. But it was most certainly not that straight forward. There was a lot of nail biting and hair pulling along the way, and on several occasions I wondered if I’d made a big mistake. And, had things worked out differently, it most certainly would have been. However, I like to think you make your own luck. Show me someone who never took a risk, and I’ll show you someone who never achieved anything, right? Mmm… maybe.
I had a conversation with my agent at the end of 2018 about what project he thought I should pursue. I had two ideas – one was a sprawling epic fantasy, one was a tightly-paced historical adventure. During my time working for ‘the man’ I’d also done a lot of research into self-publishing, and was serious about pursuing it and seeing if it could work for me. However I still wanted the safety net of traditional publishing deal and the financial reassurance it might give me. Consequently I started writing the epic fantasy, since it’s the genre I’m most comfortable in, and would be the easiest to sell initially (or so I thought). I wrote the first 65,000 words of the MS, which was enough to pitch as a partial, and in March 2019 my agent submitted it to around 16 fantasy imprints in the US and UK. Then we waited.
I don’t think I have to tell anyone how nerve-wracking the submission process is, and if you haven’t been through it I’m sure you can imagine. Eventually a trickle of rejections start to come in and the initial enthusiasm and excitement turn to grim acceptance.
Meanwhile my partner and I moved to the North Norfolk coast for a while. I finished the last book in the War of the Archons trilogy, touted myself around for freelance work with mixed success (even applied for a full time job in Ireland), and began to seriously consider the notion that the fantasy novel was never going to sell. So what to do about it?
The answer was to self-publish. If I was to get no joy from trad publishing, I’d just have to go it alone. Everything I’d learned told me I needed to write a series, something that would appeal to a specific market, and historical fiction is one that’s apparently underserved. Perfect.
So I spent late 2019 researching and writing the novel that would eventually become Oath Bound, a rollicking action adventure set just after the Battle of Hastings, with the full intention of publishing it myself and writing more books in the series. Then… I lost my nerve. What if I invested all this time and money into self-publishing and it didn’t work? Even if it was successful, would it be enough to live on and pay off my burgeoning debt? Who knows? So after another brief chat with my agent we decided to also submit that novel to the vagaries of the publishing industry and see if we could get a bite. I didn’t hold out much hope – I was untested in the genre and I’d never really considered myself a historical fiction writer. Despite a keen interest in history, I’m far from a scholar on the subject and always thought writers like Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden must have an encyclopedic knowledge that I could never hope to match.
In the meantime, my partner had been offered a job in Leeds, my home town, so we moved up with a month’s notice and stayed with my mum for January and February of 2020. If I said this was a bit of a down-point, I’d be understating it. Things were tense, nerves were frayed, but eventually we managed to rent our own place in March, and things started to look up, if not financially. Then… you guessed it… Covid happened.
I don’t need to go into the details of this, everyone has battled this shit in their own way. During this crappy time I lost a couple of friends to non Covid-related things, and we bimbled along for a month or so. Then stuff started to happen…
In April I was approached by a couple of digital-first imprints with offers to publish Oath Bound. Due to there being no advances attached, and the fact I knew very little about the digital-first business model, I ended up turning them down. I was convinced that if there was no advance I may as well stick to my original plan of self-publishing. Then in May, 14 months after the original submission, Orbit US came knocking. They loved the epic fantasy partial, wanted to know how long it would take me to finish the first book, and would I like some money to do it.
Corks were popped. Breaths of relief were sighed. Words were written. Announcements were made: https://tinyurl.com/zrj3v34s
By October 2020 I’d submitted the completed first draft of what would be called Engines of Empire (and would eventually end up a stonking 190,000 words long) and then started to think about what to do with Oath Bound. I planned another two books and started writing the sequel while publishing the first book myself. Then the harsh realities of independent publishing began to dawn on me – the amount of work it would entail, the initial burden it would have financially to pay for covers, editing, marketing. I started to think that maybe I’d been a bit rash in turning down the previous offers I’d had for the series. Eventually I had a conversation with another writer about the whole thing, and he mentioned (completely unprompted) that he was surprised Aries Fiction hadn’t already made me an offer. My reply of, ‘Well… actually they have,’ made us both laugh.
A quick chat with my agent and we went back to Aries (albeit cap in hand) to ask if they’d still consider publishing the series. The indefatigable Holly Domney said yes, and the result… Oath Bound is currently available on Netgalley right bloomin now: http://netgal.ly/hV4zQ9
Obviously all this could easily have turned out to be a cautionary tale on what NOT to do to get a book deal or two. I’m certainly not advocating packing everything in and chasing your dreams. It’s been a period fraught with doubts and worries, but hopefully it’s paid off. And from August there’ll be a book from me every six months, so at least there’s something to look forward to.
Oath Bound is released on 5th August in ebook, and you can pre-order it here: rxe.me/PDLQX4
Engines of Empire comes out in February 2022. All the usual announcements closer to the times.
Stay safe, thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll get to enjoy some of my words over the next few years.
Feast your eyes on the ARC cover and blurb for my forthcoming novel, Hangman’s Gate, book two in the War of the Archons series. It’s out in June, and as you can clearly see there’s a theme as regards the style of the cover image.
If there’s any bloggers out there who’d like an advance copy for review, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and I’ll put you in touch with the relevant peeps.
2018 has been a very eventful year. It saw the release of A Demon in Silver, the first book in my new fantasy trilogy, War of the Archons (most recent review from The Tattooed Book Geek here). Book two, Hangman’s Gate, is written and will be release in June 2019. I’ll be going through the MS over the festive period one last time, before it goes to typeset early next year.
I also left my full-time job as a computer game writer in October to go back to life as a full-time author. Consequently, I’ll be getting busy in 2019 writing lots of stuff to hopefully sell in traditional, as well as self-published markets.
So, if you’re interested in what’s coming up, here’s a little rundown of what I plan to get my teeth into next year:
Traditional Publishing
As mentioned I have one novel coming out in 2019 and I’ll be writing the third in that trilogy during the first half of the year. There are also two new series I’ll be starting next year, in the hope that they’ll be picked up by traditional publishers. Obviously there’s no guarantee of that, as it’s a very competitive market and previous publication in no way guarantees future book deals. Nevertheless, I’ll be principally working on the following:
Spear of Malice: The third book in the War of the Archons trilogy. This is pretty much fully planned out, I just need to iron out some cracks in the plot before writing can begin.
Codename Nightstone: I wanted to write something epic. In fact not just epic but EEEPPPIIIICC! Consequently I’ve been working on the world-building and plot for this for about six months. I wanted it to be ready early next year and the WIP is around 25k words complete already. Plan is to finish around half of the MS for book one (which will be around 80k-90k words of the 180k word final MS) before pitching it via my agent.
Codename Seax: This will be a complete change of genre for me. I’ve been reading and enjoying a bit of historical fiction over the year and fancied dipping my toe in. Consequently I’ve planned a novel set in 11th Century England. Chapter synopsis is done and I’ve got quite a bit of research material to chew through before I can start, but I’m looking forward to firing into this one.
Self Publishing
I recently made a little foray into self-publishing after Solaris granted me the rights back to my 2011 novel, Kultus. To make it a worthwhile endeavor, I need to increase the volume of product I have available (not to go too much into the details, but for ROI after advertising, self-published authors generally need a large back catalogue) so that’s my plan for the latter half of 2019. Initially I’ll be working on two projects:
Codename Strykers: This will be my first proper collaboration. An old friend of mine recently released his first self-published novel, which I’m currently reading and loving. After a few conversations we decided to work on something together. This will be a military sci-fi series with a demonic twist. If all goes well the first book will be out towards the end of 2019.
Brood: If I’ve got any time left next year I’ll be continuing the tales of Thaddeus Blaklok which started in Kultus in 2011. Book two, Brood is currently in the works, but I’ve recently put it on the back burner. I’ve planned six books in the series to do his story justice, and the eBook of Kultus is currently available for 99p/99c. You can get a sampler with a comic and short story by signing up to the mailing list on my website here.
And that’s me for at least the next 12 months. Obviously this sounds like a lot, and plans are often changed depending on circumstances, but hey – aim for the stars you might hit the moon, and all that. So make sure you have a cracking Xmas, and I hope to be blogging a lot more next year with good news about book deals and publication.
This month’s SFX has given me a rip-roaring 4* review. I’ve been reviewed in its hallowed pages before but this is my best performance so far. Perhaps I’m actually getting better at this writing lark!
Doreen Sheridan over at the Frumious Consortium, who are hosting a blog on the 20th June, thought A Demon in Silver was “a thrilling, twisty trip through a brutal fantasy land,” and she was, “definitely on board to see where Mr Ford goes with this series next.” Full review here.
LynnDee Wathen at Booklist Online thought “the multitude of characters readers are introduced to—most of them unsavory—are worth investing in”. Full review here.
And finally if, like me, you’re not a huge fan of cat pictures on the internet then there may be something to change your mind. Dr. Liz Bourke (@hawkwing_lb on twitter) kindly posted this snap of her cat, lounging around with a good book (I’m assured that no animals were harmed in the taking of this photo).
There’s been a flurry of online activity after yesterday’s release of A Demon in Silver, and here’s what some lovely people had to say about it:
Ruth Wilson at the Bookbag gave me a glowing 5* review, saying, “This is going to be a fantastic series and I cannot wait for The Hangman’s Gate to be released”. Full review here.
Nicole Evans at Erlebnisse also seemed full of praise, saying, “A Demon in Silver was a joy to read and a book I easily consumed in large chunks, thanks mainly to the complex cast of characters and the evocative way it was detailed.” Full review here.
The second day of my blog tour continues with an exclusive excerpt available from RisingShadow.net here.
A Demon in Silver hits shelves on Tuesday in the UK and the US. To mark this momentous occasion I shall be spreading the word via all that is social media and embarking on my first ever blog tour! Below is a list of all the lovely peeps who have allowed me to spout words on their websites…
Hear All, See All, Say Nowt 