Last week I sat in for an awesome hour at the Galley Table podcast discussing fantasy tropes and how to tromp them. At the table with me that night were Zach Ricks, Jeff Hite, Scott Roche, and Doc Coleman. The Galley Table is a production of Flying Island Press.
I gave a long, rambling and thoroughly enjoyable interview last week to Geek Out with Mainframe and the first part of that interview is now available on his podcast. We discussed the book, the TES podcast, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. Please check it out. Part one is up and part two should be out later in the week.
GOWM 23 – Interview with Paulette Jaxton – Part 1
GOWM 24 – Interview with Paulette Jaxton – Part 2
Today I have a guest blog post over at AllisonDDuncan.com. It’s about finding artwork for your book or podcast and goes through the steps I took to have custom art created for the Empress Sword podcast website.
Allison’s blog is currently running a series of guest blogs on the topic of self publication. So if you’re thinking about publishing your own book, or you just want to know what other authors are up to, you should really check it out. She has another series entitled So You Want to be a Blogger, does spot-on media reviews, and comments on geek life in general.
Allison just started an associated podcast called Blogs Aloud and the first episode is out now featuring published author and Associate Editor of Zenith Press, Scott Pearson.
It’s nearly two months early, but The Empress Sword is now available in both print and ebook formats. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are now offering the trade paperback edition for sale and Amazon has the Kindle version up already as well. Other eBook formats will be coming along soon.
Here’s what some very nice people have been saying about The Empress Sword:
“The Empress Sword is a wonderfully vivid tale with a most intriguing twist. Just the right mix of light humor and quirky characters that kept the pages turning and left me wanting more… What a delightful tale!”
– Chris A. Jackson, author of Scimitar Moon,
2009 ForeWord Book of the Year Gold Medal Winner
“The Empress Sword carries the reader on an unexpected journey full of excitement, mystery, and new perspectives.”
– Christiana Ellis, award winning writer and podcaster
“The Empress Sword is a charming tale of dragons and magic, of trust and betrayal, of bravery and vulnerability. Paulette Jaxton’s crisp vision and poignant story telling conspire to take the reader along as a young prince learns that all is not exactly what it seems. Highly recommended.”
– Nathan Lowell, creator of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper
“With The Empress Sword, Paulette Jaxton follows in the footsteps of great story-tellers by delivering a fabulous tale in a fantasy world we all remember from out childhood. A giant dragon, a thirteen-year-old prince and a quest for a magical item – classic fantasy so far. But there is more: strong girls and independent women as well as characters that do not fit into standard black and white categories of this genre and force the listeners to re-consider their first impressions or completely change perspectives in the course of the book. All in all it is a fast paced ride for younger and older listeners.”
– Alexander HTN, iTunes reviewer
“Paulette Jaxton has written an intriguing story with a classic fantasy background. I’m not normally a fan of the swords and sorcery type stories, but the turns this story takes are unexpected, and certainly drive the character development. Seeing the changes that Prince Aster goes through with his search for the sword, it causes a reader to think about his or her own identity.”
– sjg1978, iTunes reviewer
“Far from the usual fare in fantasy fiction, The Empress Sword shakes things up and invites us to re-examine standard archetypes from a new perspective. Ms. Jaxton not only spins a fine yarn, she does so with both authority and accessibility, using the fantasy genre to express complex ideas in clear, engaging language. Throughout the novel, the author resists the temptation to resort to clichés, except as a precursor to breaking them. Instead, she focuses on the internal challenges of a lead character faced with extraordinary circumstances. The fantasy… [provide] a vehicle in which the author explores a variety of human issues, sometimes with surprising clarity. Insightful, intelligent, and playful, Ms. Jaxton takes us on a pleasant, if unorthodox, journey through the world of The Empress Sword.”
– Heather Hibbs, iTunes reviewer
“Jaxton leads you easily into a story of magic, growing up and consequences. The Empress Sword takes the well-known young prince slays dragon story and tips it upside down and inside out in the most delightful ways.”
– Philippa Ballantine, author of Geist and Spectyr
Today is my father’s birthday. He would be ninety four today, however he passed on back in 1978. He’s been gone a long time, but I still miss him dearly. Today I miss him all the more because I think he would be very proud of what I’m about to tell you.
The Empress Sword is my first novel. I worked very hard on it, I’m quite proud of it, but I never let myself loose sight of it being a first novel. I put it out as a podcast so that people would hear it, react to it, and hopefully enjoy it. Behind the scenes I went through the process of submitting it to agents and publishers, dealing with the rejections, making new drafts based on the feedback, and still never really expecting to get more out of it than a learning experience.
So it is with some amazement and much delight that I announce the signing of a contract with Dragon Moon Press to have The Empress Sword published as a trade paperback and ebook. The current plan is to release TES on Memorial Day weekend 2011 and hold the launch party at Balticon 45. As with the publication of any book, that date may change as the editing and publication process move along.
I’ll be sure to keep you all informed about what’s coming up. I’m trying my best to get the last few episodes of the podcast and podiobook out to you as soon as possible. Please be patient, I’m sure you’re going to enjoy the finish.
Thank you all for the support and love you have shown for The Empress Sword. Trust me, it had a lot to do with making this announcement a reality.
Today’s Sunday Capital features an article by staff writer Theresa Winslow about podcast novels. The article stems from an interview Ms. Winslow conducted with Brand Gamblin and I last weekend about our podcast novels, Tumbler and The Empress Sword. The print version contains a couple of different pictures, but if you want to read the full text of the article you can find at HometownAnnapolis.com.
The podcast feed for The Empress Sword launched on January 15th, 2010. That was the same day Brand Gamblin and I held a public reading of our novels in Annapolis, Maryland. Brand read from his novel Tumbler and the evening was a great success.
You can find The Empress Sword on iTunes or link directly to the RSS Feed. The first episode dropped on Friday and today I put in a recording of the live reading. Subscribe today so you won’t miss a thing!
It’s taken me a couple of days to get my thoughts straight on this. It was a huge shock to get an IM on Wednesday morning telling me that fellow podcast author and friend Tee Morris’s wife Natalie had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly the night before. Hearing about the death of a friend is never easy, but somehow this hit me harder even than that. This was like a death in the family.
We’re all born into a family and if we’re lucky we end up liking a few of them, but they always still matter to us. Throughout our lives we also build a second family. Made up from friends who for one reason or another come to mean more to us than mere friends. Tee Morris is such a friend to me. An accomplished author of both fiction and non-fiction, Tee practically invented the podcast novel. If it wasn’t for his encouragement and seemingly endless enthusiasm I wouldn’t be about to launch my own podcast novel.
Through gatherings I came to know Natalie and also Tee’s darling little girl affectionately known as Sonic Boom. They’re three good people, three people I like, three people I care about, three people I love and now they’re only two.
I grew up in a family rooted in southern Virginia and West Virginia. When there’s a death in that part of the country the community rallies around the family. I remember when my grandmother died there was a constant stream of people I’d never seen before bringing unimaginable amounts of food into the house. They would almost never leave without doing the dishes, making the beds or offering to do some chore or other.
These days my chosen family is scattered to the four winds. No one I feel truly close to lives physically closer than an hour’s drive away. Most live in other states or worse on other continents. It’s hard to imagine us all showing up at Tee’s door with dishes of food, but there’s something else we can do.
Philippa Ballantine, an award winning author who lives in New Zealand, has set up a Chip-In fund for Tee and his daughter. It’s amazing how quickly this fund has grown, but Tee’s a popular and respected guy. And his need right now is great. Please consider a contribution to this fund, you can do so by clicking the widget below. The money will go directly to Tee to help cover funeral expenses and help him start a new life as a single father.
Thank you, Tee, and bless you brother.
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As you may have noticed the blog has been moved to my website and PauletteJaxton.com has gotten a face lift. I hope you all like the new face, please feel free to let me know what you think. There are more changes in the works, such as an uber-feed that will let you get episodes from all my podcast from one place, and I’ll be announcing those here as they become available.
In other exciting news EmpressSword.com has also undergone a face lift and is almost ready for the podcast start date on January 15th, 2010. Please go over and have a look. I’ll be primping and preening the site with all sorts of fun things between now and the launch, so come back often to see what I’ve been up to.
And speaking of The Empress Sword launch date, I’ve just arranged to do a reading from the book at Zü Coffee in Annapolis, Maryland on the night of the launch. I’ll be joined by Brand Gamblin who will read from his podiobook Tumbler. It all starts at 6:30 PM on January 15th, 2010 and I wouldn’t be surprised if a pub-crawl somehow followed.
Now, what was I saying about not taking so long between posts? Oh yes, that I was making no promises. Sorry it’s been another month and a half, but there really hasn’t been much to report on. Like everyone else, it seems, I’ve been having my share of the sniffles and day jobs demands. Enough so that not much has been happening on the writing or podcasting fronts. I’m still gearing up for The Empress Sword Podcast to drop in January.
The website is up and I’m getting it ready bit by bit. I’m still getting audio from the actors and they are doing some wonderful work. I’m sure you will all be as excited as I am to hear the podcast version of the story. The podiobook version is edited and will drop at the same time in it’s entirety.
I’m still working on moving this blog over to PauletteJaxton.com and launch a revamped website there. You can probably look for that sometime in January as well.
Responses from the agents I queried have been filtering back. Only one agent, so far, has asked to look at more of the book. Ultimately she decided not to make an offer, but she did give me some useful criticism that I appreciate very much. This is a long drawn out process and it’s not over yet. After all, This is only the first round!
Hopefully I’ll be posting again soon, but just in case I don’t get something else up before the end of the year please have a wonderful holiday season. Be safe, be well and be happy!
