oday the cover art for Tad Williams’ new long-awaited novel set in the Osten Ard universe, The Heart of What Was Lost, has been revealed. The art features a witchwood sword with a white rose hilt. The foreground shows a snow-covered landscape, with ominous, dark mountains in the background. The novel is a sequel to the original, now-classic “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” series; the new book will be published in January 2017, followed closely by four additional Osten Ard novels, titled The Witchwood Crown (release date: April 2017), Empire of Grass, The Navigator’s Children, and The Shadow of Things to Come.
Williams describes the plot of The Heart of What Was Lost as: “[The novel] takes place in the half-year after the end of [To Green Angel Tower], and tells of the attempt by [Duke] Isgrimnur and a force largely made up of Rimmersgard soldiers to destroy the remaining Norns as they flee back to their homeland and their mountain. Of course, it gets a bit more complicated than that. It also answers some questions about what actually happened in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Green Angel Tower.”
The main characters in the new novel will be the returning Rimmersmen characters Isgrimnur and Sludig; Isgrimnur is the Duke of Rimmergard in “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn”, a point-of-view character. Sludig was his lieutenant, and a dynamic and important character in the original trilogy; it is he who accompanies Simon, Binabik and Qantaqa north from Naglimund Castle, skirting around the western and northern sides of Aldheorte Forest in their long, cold quest to retrieve the Great Sword Thorn from the “Rhymer’s Greate Tree”. He then travels south with Binabik and Qantaqa around the eastern edge of Aldheorte to the Stone of Farewell, where he becomes Prince Josua’s Man Friday, accompanying the prince south to Nabban and then back north to Hayholt Castle.
According to Williams’ announcement, The Heart of What Was Lost will continue almost directly from the ending of To Green Angel Tower, though it’s unclear what this exactly means for the story. The fall of Green Angel Tower happens one year before the ending of the classic series, as the Afterword, after Chapter 60, takes place one year after the fall of the tower.
The Heart of What Was Lost is now available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers worldwide.
egendary science fiction and fantasy writer Tad Williams, author of the “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn”, “Otherland”, “Shadowmarch” and “Bobby Dollar” speculative fiction series, has spent the last two years writing The Heart of What Was Lost and The Witchwood Crown, the first two of five new books set in the same universe as “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn”.
Williams is now releasing some early, provisional sketches that he created during the writing of The Witchwood Crown, which his wife and business partner Deborah Beale kindly shared with us, and which we are now sharing with all readers.
The first sketch is a map (right, clickable) of Sturmrspeik, the great mountain of ill repute inhabited by the Norns, embittered relatives of the immortal Sithi. Beneath the great mountain lies the ancient city of Nakkiga, home to Utuk’ku Seyt-Hamahka, Queen of the Norns and Eldest of all living beings in Osten Ard. Williams’ rough map shows the location of the mountain itself, with the great Nakkiga Gate guarding the pass. Around these landmarks are the white waste of the Himilfell Mountains, which stretch both eastward and westward from the area. The second map sketch (left, clickable) is also of Sturmrspeik and Nakkiga, showing the locations of several well-known Norn landmarks as well as some which are entirely new. The Queen’s throne room appeared in the classic series, and makes a reappearance in the new map. Among the new landmarks are a Black Garden and a White Garden, as well as a subterranean lake, and an area marked as Great Processional. A bridge over the moat connects Nakkiga’s tunnels with the Queen’s Bridge.
We have more maps and diagrams, and will share more soon.
Speculative fiction writer Tad Williams has sold over 30 million copies of his books, which have been translated into more than 25 languages. His first epic fantasy trilogy, “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn”, became an international bestselling series beloved by millions. And now Tad Williams returns to the world of “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” with a new sequel series called “The Last King of Osten Ard”, a series which seems likely to catapult him back once more onto the bestseller lists.
We talked with Williams shortly after he and his wife and business partner Deborah Beale announced that he had just completed the rough draft of the first book in the new series, The Witchwood Crown. In this exclusive interview, we asked Williams some questions about his world-building, plans for book tours, what it’s like to return to a world he hasn’t been to in ages, and his plans to continue to write “Bobby Dollar” books in between Osten Ard novels. Below is Part One of the interview. Further portions of the interview will be published later this week.
OstenArd.com: Thanks, Tad, for agreeing to do this interview! You have stated that you are writing the new Osten Ard novels at the same time as Bobby Dollar stories. Even though they are very different stories, do you ever find yourself confusing the characters’ voices? Or are they just too different for that to happen?
Tad Williams: One of the nicest things about Bobby Dollar is that I tell it in the first person. Once I start writing that voice, it comes pretty naturally (in part because he talks more than a bit like me.) Most of TLK is third-person past tense (there are some epistolary sections in first-person present) so it’s actually quite different. Not to mention that BD is modern in style of speech, so it’s like turning off the tape-delay. When I’m writing fantasy, especially pre-industrial fantasy, I have to find a proper tone and vocabulary to go with the story. But with TLK, I just have to come up with something that feels appropriate to what I used in the first books.
Cover of part 1 of the Japanese edition of The Dragonbone Chair, one of more than 25 translations of the book.
OA.com: You have a devoted fan base who would love to meet you. Does your publisher plan a major book tour before/during/after the launch of The Witchwood Crown, and if so, where might you go? Are there markets that you absolutely know you’ll have to visit?
Tad: I hope so, and I would love to do it. Publishers haven’t been touring writers as much because of a) the loss of profitability in brick-and-mortar publishing and the 2006-present economic ructions. But I hope this is enough of an event to warrant my American publishers touring me again. As far as other countries, that’s always catch as catch can, although I’m pretty sure my German publishers will tour me.
OA.com: Both Christopher Paolini and George R. R. Martin have acknowledged that you inspired them to write their own series. Are there plans afoot to ask them to provide a blurb for The Witchwood Crown?
Tad: Christopher would probably do it, no problem. It’s always hard to get George to do stuff like that just because there’s so many demands on his time. He’s like me times a thousand, probably, in terms of how many things he can pay attention to out of however many are seeking his attention.
Map of Osten Ard, showing the more than a dozen nations which make up the continent.
OA.com: In The Dragonbone Chair, you built a massive world with more than 100 cities, towns and villages spread out over a continent. Then you created languages, cultures, and peoples to fill those places. As you added more books, Osten Ard grew further. Are you planning to do any exploring of areas outside the old maps? The “blank areas at the edges of the maps”? If so, how will that mesh with the existing infrastructure and the old maps?
Tad: There will definitely be some expansion of what we know about O. Ard., but I’ve got plenty of stuff from the originals to elucidate and expand upon without going beyond the Nascadu desert or the northern Trollfells or Nornfells. However, we will learn a bit more about the -conceptual- map of the world, and also see some places we never saw in the first books, that’s for sure.
OA.com: During the events of MS&T, readers got to explore the realm, visiting everything from steaming jungles to frozen tundra (LOTS of frozen tundra!). Any plans to revisit areas of Osten Ard which didn’t get much attention in the classic series? Nascadu? The Hyrkalands? The Westerling Islands? Harcha and Naraxi? Ijsgard? The Lost Garden?
Tad: We’re going to see a LOT of the Nornfells and Nakkiga. We’re also going to see a lot of Aldheorte and the Thrithings and Nabban. As far as other, previously unvisited places, I’m not sure — that will depend on where the second volume and the beginning of the third takes some characters whose steps I haven’t completely mapped yet. (By the way, the amusingly stupid spellchecker on this email keeps trying to change “the Thrithings” to “the Thrashings”.) And we will learn and hear more about the Lost Garden as well — a LOT about the early history of the Norns and Sithi, both in Osten Ard and before. So while I can’t say we’re going to visit the Lost Garden — it is lost, after all — we’re definitely going to learn and hear more about it.
Deborah Beale, wife and business partner of Tad Williams, has revealed a few new details on Twitter about Williams’ progress writing The Witchwood Crown, the first novel in the sequel to Williams’ classic “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” series, “The Last King of Osten Ard”. The Witchwood Crown will be followed by Empire of Grass and The Navigator’s Children.
Beale tweeted several of Williams’ comments about the manuscript:
I’ve about 70pp to go to finish first draft which will then grow again in revision…
The finished thing will come in at about 1000 to 1100 pp. about 330 words per page
I’ll know much better what I’ve got when I sit down to read it before rewrite
I’ll probably release chapter titles in the next few weeks #TheWitchwoodCrown
During the writing of The Witchwood Crown, Williams has kept fans up to date regularly on page counts and some plot elements, including character lists and settings. The last update, in mid-December, mentioned that almost 800 pages had been written at that point, so about 200 to 300 pages have been written over the holidays. Williams is making rapid progress on the writing of the novel, which is expected to be published in Spring 2016.
Last month Tad Williams interviewed Steven Erikson (“Malazan Book of the Fallen”) at Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park, California. Williams asked Erikson what led him to writing fantasy, what authors inspired him, and why Fantasy readers like big, thick books. They also talked about Stephen R. Donaldson’s early works, including Lord Foul’s Bane.
Below is the first part of the recorded interview:
More parts of the interview, along with musings about the Dothraki language constructed for Game of Thones, can be found at IvyNettle’s “Letters and Leaves” blog.
This is the story of my love for Tad Williams. And of why I will buy every book he releases, forever, and tell people why they should read his books, and generally act like a Tad Williams televangelist. And of why being human is the best possible thing you can be as an author.
Waaay, way back, in the 90s, I worked in bookstore. (Shocker, I know.) It was an odd sort of place, an Italian-owned chain called Rizzoli’s. We mostly sold expensive coffee table books of art and architecture, and did a surprisingly brisk trade in the Italian newspapers Corriera della Sera and La Repubblica too. Fiction was relegated to a back corner of the store. Genre fiction? Forget about it. I was an assistant manager for a while, running the Music Department, huddled in a small balcony area in the back of the store. I sold a lot of classical and jazz and European pop music. There was no American rock or pop in stock. We weren’t that kind of place. The store was located on the fourth floor of the Water Tower Place, a high end shopping mall on Michigan Avenue [more…]
Tad Williams’ latest novel, The Dirty Streets of Heaven, is set in a fictionalized version of the Bay Area, specifically the area between San Francisco and San Jose.
A few Tad Williams fans (Cyan, Ylvs, Jeremy, and Firs) gathered in early April 2013 to visit the sites Tad wrote about in his new book.
5 Page Mill Square is a fictionalized version of 5 Palo Alto Square (at Page Mill Road). While the 44+ story building doesn’t actually exist, a 10-story building is there.
The lobby at 5 Palo Alto Square/Page Mill Square
The Compasses at the Alhambra, where Bobby and his co-workers hang out.
The bar.
The Compasses from the rear. Note the gated parking lot, similar to the description in the text.
The Oasis, blueprint for The Waterhole, another of Bobby’s hangouts.
Bit late for that sign…
The Hall of Justice, where Bobby defends clients.
It’s easy to imagine Shoreline Amphitheater as it’s depicted in the book: an abandoned Shoreline Amusement Park.
Closed at this time.
Could this lake be the inspiration for the swimming hole?
University Avenue, near Stanford.
More soon…
Cyan and Ylvs being attacked by the ghallu. They barely escaped with their lives!
