Epic gay fantasy: The Lords of Harbendane

This novel should carry a warning: do not start reading when you get home from work at 7:00pm, even if the book is sitting on your doorstep ... because you're going to look like a zombie tomorrow, after having read till four in the a.m. to finish!

There's a certain "something" we've all come to expect from a Keegan novel. I'm still not entirely sure what it is but I should think scientific research could quantify it. Whatever it is, The Lords of Harbendane has it by the truckload. This one is Keegan pure and simple, with qualities that remind you of Fortunes of War and The Swordsman, Nocturne and Dangerous Moonlight. What qualities? Truth. Passion. Intelligence. Vision. Lyricism. And the "A-list" quality of a writer who's been on top of this game for two decades.

Picture this: it's a dark, dirty night, bucketing down, muddy, cold. The quintessential tall, dark, handsome warrior (he's a knockout -- trust me) is on a mission, and when he gets waylaid in a nasty little town, and aided by one of the most enigmatic and irresistible of Keegan's heroes, well, the story explodes from a chance event to the fantasy-scenario equivalent of world war three.

"Tall, dark and smoldering" is Rogan Dahl, who's been a prince, a hostage, a soldier, a cavalry colonel. "Drop dead gorgeous" is Tristan Carlin, who's been a peasant, a warrior, a scribe, and a wedlocked husband. Life is a rocky road for each of these guys; put them together, and you get a inferno waiting to go up --

And Keegan is going to make you wait! Everything you can imagine (and a bunch of plot twists you absolutely can't!) gets between these two guys, and when they finally get it together it's as exhausting for the reader as for the characters. And Mel Keegan manages to do this while staying on "this side of the line" that divides Legitimate Fiction from erotica. Harbendane will stand your hair on end -- at the same time as being absolutely legit.

The backstory is huge. It spans centuries of history and generations of the Halloran family. The Hallorans are Rogan's adoptive clan. He was sent to them as a hostage when he was a small child (in the traditional sense of the word "hostage," which meant the guarantee of someone's good behaviour). The Hallorans are the clan at the head of the great kingdom of Harbendane -- and as the story opens, Harbendane is up for grabs. They're beleaguered, surrounded by enemies on three sides, with nowhere to run and no one to turn to. They're fighting at capacity in the north, and when the ambitious, murderous chief from the next neighboring "superpower" in this land takes them on, they're hanging by a thread. The freedom of a whole people depends on tactics, strategy, and the willingness to take outrageous risks.

And that's the backstory, the scenario, not the plot! Against this monster backdrop, Mel Keegan's story is about individuals, how their lives are being twisted by duty, how their dreams and desires are being wrenched away, how they're still struggling to make something of themselves, how they all interact as they play their parts in a strategy that just might keep Harbendane out of the hands of its enemies.

I can't say much about the details of those personal stories, because I'm in plot spoilers instantly, and most readers absolutely hate to be told, "Tristan's real problem is..." and "Rogan's plan is..." I can tell you that the book is written with a great lyricism, imagery that comes to life, characters you're going to love, others you're going to hate. Obviously I adored Rogan and Tristan. (It's huge fun "casting the parts" as if Harbendane were a movie. I play this game with almost every book I read. Adds to the fun.) But I also loved Damiel and Morgan Halloran, which is a bit unusual for me. I don't usually "identify" very strongly with the female characters. These two are just amazing -- particularly Morgan ... the character blew me away.

The book is thrilling in many places, intriguing in others ... and keep the Kleekex handy, because there's a couple of places where you might need them. Fair warning: one of the major characters gets killed. (NOT Rogan or Tristan; but MK will make you care a lot about most of these characters, and one of them at least doesn't make it through to the end.)

Does the book have a downside? If it does, I didn't find it. The cover art is the best DreamCraft has ever done. Jade must have been absolutely inspired. (You get used to digital "art" ... but this is a painting, the way books used to have real artwork covers years ago. You feel kind of spoiled at the luxury.) The production values are very high throughout, and CreateSpace does a fantastic job with the paperbacks.

You can get it from Amazon.com in paperback. The Kindle version should be available by the weekend (it's been stuck in "publishing" for days now, and an email was just sent to technical support to get it "unstuck"). You can order the Mobipocket format for your Kindle, smartphone, Blackberry, Palm Pilot, and many other devices. It's available as a PDF for your iLiad, Palm, PC and Mac. And if you're reading on an iPhone, get the Kindle for iPhone applet. A hardcover version is being planned, and will be available from Lulu -- it'll make a great Chrissy pressie when the silly season comes back around.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars, and a gold sticker added on for excellence of presentation: the cover is amazing.



PC/Mac ebook:
$9.95 -- and identical in every way to the paperback.298pp. (Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)

Screenreader ebook:
US$9.95 -- properly formatted, complete with cover art and map; over 430pp.(Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)

and,
BUY THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE FROM MOBIPOCKET

Read more...

Author Interview: Talking with Mel Keegan

First, let me apologise across the board … I’ve been buried in work. Blogging has had to be back burnerized and nobody is more aggravated by this than myself because for a week I’ve wanted to review The Lords of Harbendane and Legends! It’s incredibly annoying just not having the time to do this. I also want to review a couple of old favourites and some new ones, including Josh Lanyon’s The Ghost Swore Yellow Socks. Yet here I am strapped for time.

I did get the chance to talk to Mel Keegan a few days ago and since I’ve been promising a ten-minute interview, here it is. Hopefully I can get sometime over the coming long weekend (Adelaide Cup Day … big horse racing carnival) and will be able to get some reviews done then.


AG: How was the launch of Lords of Harbendane?

MK: Interesting! Successful, given the circumstances. The reading community isn’t as “socially secure” as it used to be a few years ago, and books have become more expensive. So has postage! When I began with DreamCraft, we could mail a book around the world for A$8 (about US$6). Now, it costs $16.04 (A$25.46) to mail the same book from Amazon to the South Pacific region. Has this killed local sales? Yes. Does this impact significantly on overall sales? Of course it does! However, if you remember that readers everywhere are struggling to cover their domestic expenses, it’s actually tremendously flattering when these same people pay what I, personally, consider an outrageous amount for a book. It’s US$22.50 for Harbendane at Amazon. That’s not a lot of money in Aussie terms, for a brand-new paperback, but in the States it’s way over the top. Also utterly unavoidable for a book of these dimensions.

AG: Prices are rising everywhere. I read on your blog that in a few years Amazon is expected to have taken control of the ebook market with Kindle and will start to hike the cost of ebooks…

MK: It’s been mooted, but on thinking it over I honestly doubt it’ll ever happen. I mean, they can charge US$30 (A$47.60) for an ebook novel which is, frankly, no more than a bunch of electrons, pixels, what have you … but no law says readers have to pay so much! Also, with POD publishing trending the way it is, the self-same book that would be wearing a $30 pricetag in the Amazon Kindle store would still be costing $10 via the author’s website. What kind of idiot would pay $30 for something you can get for $10? All they have to do is Google the author’s name and/or the title of the book, find the website and download the identical goods from Payloadz or whatever.

AG: I guess Amazon will find this out the hard way. You were angry and outspoken the other day on your blog also about the fact the Kindle Store is out of bounds to “foreign writers” …

MK: I was steaming mad at the time. In fact, I still am, on behalf of “foreign” writers everywhere. We don’t call ourselves foreign! Aussies and Kiwis and South Africans and so forth think of folks from North American as being foreign! But, whatever your perspective on geography, you get to a critical threshold in the Kindle publishing process where they ask you for your American mailing address and American phone number. This automatically shuts out 90% of the world’s literary voices -- which would be fair enough, if Amazon.com was not infamous for dumping cheap goods into the world marketplace! As I said on the post where I talked in depth about this, to make it halfway decent and acceptable, the conduit has to run in both directions. I might still be able to sneak into the Kindle Store by getting access to a proxy address, via family in the US. But ... it's the principle of the thing.

AG: Any chance of Amazon Kindle changing its way of working, do you think?

MK: Maybe. Kindle is very new, and everything needs a shakedown, but so far the development process has taken years and they’re still US-centric. Also, the second incarnation of the Kindle gadget it out, and they’re already in trouble with it. It works just fine -- in fact, it works to well. Apparently, the gadget has a text-to-voice feature which effectively turns every ebook into an audiobook … and it turns out the Kindle’s human voice algorithms are pretty good. Mellifluous and accurate in intonation. This is really rubbing the billion-dollar audiobook industry the wrong way.

AG: So Amazon isn’t out of the woods with Kindle yet. And let’s face it, writers -- like yourself and others I know personally! -- are always out there looking for alternatives.

MK: And finding them. I stumbled into the Mobipocket Store yesterday and found myself made as welcome as I was unwelcome (as a "foreigner") at the Kindle Store. Mobi is a very different kettle of fish. It’s not the hardware that's proprietorial, it’s the way the ebook files are registered … yeah, sure, I know, we’re getting into the area of DRM [digital rights management] here, which is a huge, swampy zone. But improvements are being made, and Mobi is far better in this region than other formats like the protected PDFs -- those are a nightmare, from what I hear. Also, Mobi works on Kindle … and you can get a free download of the Mobi reader for most platforms, and then you can go ahead and download your purchase multiple times -- for your desktop, laptop, netbook, screen reader, whatever. I’m interested … very.

AG: You’re also going to Smashwords soon, aren’t you? I have a couple of readers who’re into the iPhone thing, and they’re waiting for the phone versions of some of your titles. Any info?

MK: We tried the upload to Smashwords yesterday, but they were having server issues. If not for this, two or three books would already have been there! We’ll be trying again later today. Cross your fingers for us.

AG: Hey, consider them crossed. Which titles are going to Smashwords first?

MK: Fortunes of War, The Lords of Harbendane and Dangerous Moonlight.

AG: How soon can we expect The Swordsman and the NARC series to be ready for the iPhones?

MK: April or May … sooner than that if sales are really good. It takes about 2-4 hours to convert a single book over from the DTP files from DreamCraft to the stripped files needed to make the conversion to multiple ebook platforms effective. Being a working stiff with three blogs and some remote semblance of a private life, I can only do one or maybe two per week. Bear with me.

AG: They say patience is a virtue! How’s critical response to Harbendane?

MK: So far, so good. I’ve only had reader response so far, but it’s all in the five-star bracket. I’ve sent it to Rainbow Reviews, and am optimistic that it’ll be well received there too. I’ll be sending out several more review copies in March and April. So ... any idea when you’re going to get around to a review on this blog of yours? Hint, hint. Not to apply any pressure, you understand…

AG: aarrrgghh! As soon as I can get some free time from work.

MK: Tell me about it. Finding time to blog is difficult… finding additional time to promote the blogs is even more so, which is a principal problem with Legends. I’m having a hard time catching people’s attention! I’d hoped the “viral marketing” concept would have worked: word of mouth. People tell people who tell people that there’s a FREE MEL KEEGAN NOVEL out there. Free for the download, and so on. This didn’t happen, and since I can’t access search engine traffic, promotion for Legends is a question of applying to directories … and being rejected by more of them than will give Legends a listing.

Art by Jade, from LEGENDS: A digital novel by Mel Keegan ... are you missing the fun?!

AG: That’s bizarre. Why can’t you use the search engines?

MK: Think about it! Google or Yahoo, whatever, picks up on keywords. Say my characters are drinking wine during the m/m seduction scene. Google would very likely send visitors to the page, who’d been searching on wine, or goblets. Or silk bedsheets. Or scented candles. They land on a page where two guys are getting it on; someone gets a shock and complains -- big trouble.

AG: Oh … yeah. Right. Duh. That could get confusing for the engines and a bit nasty if the wrong people (maybe kids???) got into pages where they absolutely shouldn’t be.

MK: Exactly. So right now, here’s Keegan’s Master Plan regarding the Legends Project. The story breaks down into five major “books,” and I’ll complete the first. The site can sit up there at Blogger, looking gorgeous (and it does!), while I figure out how to promote it without paying megabucks for adverting. Meanwhile, I’ll be finishing Hellgate. By the end of the year, Legends will either be attracting readers … or not. If it’s not, the site will come down and I’ll go on and finish the whole project for issue via Mobi, Smashwords, Payloads, Amazon, whatever. The whole thing was an experiment, after all -- you have to remember that “negative data” is useful too. What I’ve learned so far is that not too many people are interested in following a serial! And/or they have no real use for ebooks, so reading fiction on-screen is anathema. Or, they don’t like the action broken up into daily doses. Or, they don’t care for fantasy. You add those things together, and you get a fairly small nucleus, or core, of readers who are enjoying it … just too few people to make the project a success.

AG: And are readers being supporting via the advertising?

MK: Not really -- and this is where I’m very surprised indeed. We had a flush of people supporting Legends in the first week, but right now we can go 1,000 page loads without getting a click on a Google ad, for instance … and the click, when you do get one, is worth about 15c. I understand about people not wanting to donate $1 (we’ve had the mighty sum of 7 of those clicks in a month -- I’m very grateful to those people who did indeed click!), and I also understand about people not shopping at Amazon, because folks are counting pennies -- myself included! But there are ways to be supporting that don’t cost the reader anything at all, and it seems that very few people are sensitive to this issue.

AG: In other words, they’re happy to swing by every day and get the fiction, but they don’t want to trade anything at all for it…

MK: Most people swing by once at week (at the weekend) and collect 10 segments at once, and vamoose till next week. I don’t at all mind people doing this -- it makes sense! But with one visit per week there doesn’t appear to be any impetus to offer some support, even be it just a click on some item that everyone in the world knows will vector a microscopic gratuity back to the host. It’s curious to watch what’s going on, and this is also a valuable part of the experiment. It’s just important to be patient, leave no stones unturned, give the project the full energy and creativity it was supposed to have, and allow enough time for it to “cook” properly.

AG: You’ve got a lot more patience and perseverance than I would have! Last question … what are you writing now?

MK: Obviously Legends, but unless there’s a miracle, I’ll be putting that onto hiatus at the End of Book One. I’m spending the rest of the year to finish Hellgate. Completely. Totally. Right to the end. Then we’ll relaunch the series in new venues, with a new campaign … and see what happens next.

AG: Thanks for your time, Mel -- I know you don’t have a lot to spare and I see you fidgeting in the direction of the door! Best of good luck with all your projects.

MK: Thanks -- and it’s been a pleasure.

***

Many thanks to Mel Keegan for this interview, which will “hold” this blog while I dig my way out from the pit of work that I’ve been buried in. Next review: Lords of Harbendane. Then, The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks. I’m hoping to get back with those next week.

Read more...

Bits and pieces

Today I'm flying flat out and seriously doubt I'll have the time to review a book, so it's going to be news and trivia.

The big news is that THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE is launching today -- as an ebook. If you're waiting for the paperback you have to wait a while longer, and then you'll be able to order it from Amazon direct. This will be better for everyone because of the postage rates and printing quality. (Seems like Lulu has done something with its postage rates and things are expensive there -- I don't know the whole story, but I do know Amazon looks like a better deal now.)

The HARBENDANDE ebook is available from Mel Keegan's blog. Go right here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/lords-of-harbendane-ebook-online-and.html

I'll be reviewing this book very soon ... I was one of ITS proofreaders, so I have a vested interest in it! Also, if you find typos (and you shouldn't!! It was proofread a total of 12 times by three readers plus the computer) you know who to blame!

I love the book ... don't miss it!

Terrific news on the blogging front here: this blog is starting to win Google searches, so people are finding it in places like France, New Zealand, Turkey, the USA, Scotland, Ireland. This is great. Looks like we're on our way.

I actually had two people asking if I would consider reviewing a certain book. The answer is -- sure; but I have to have READ it first! Unfortunately, I haven't read either of the two books that were suggested, but one of these days someone will ask for something I HAVE read, and then -- sure.

Right now, the list of books I have in my stack to review in the days and weeks to come include, The Buccaneer, Hold Tight, The Hustler, Street Lavender, Fortunes of War, Arson!, Edward, Edward, Lords of Harbendane, Gaveston, The Persian Boy, Windrage, China Mountain Zhang, The Charioteer, and ... a whole lot more. The stack's about two foot deep. Also, I want to look at some new(ish) books too.

In these times of economic distress, who isn't looking to get more for less? It doesn't get much better than free ebooks from good writers. Check this out: http://sharrow.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/free-christmas-goodness/

...and for those folks who -- like me -- haven't gotten into ebooks yet because we haven't bought a screen reader ... well, I followed links off the above page and got here:

http://www.ebookwise.com/ebookwise/ebookwise1150.htm

This gizmo -- the eBookwise -- doesn't have the brains to open a PDF, but here's the info from the manufacturer's page:

The eBookwise-1150 can display premium content from eBookwise.com, including best-sellers from major publishers, with more signing on all the time. See our home page for major best-selling authors and titles, or browse our extensive catalog for details. In addition, the eBookwise-1150 can display your own personal content in the following file formats: plain text (.txt), rich text format (.rtf), Microsoft Word documents (.doc), HTML (.htm or .html), and Rocket eBook Editions (.rb). There are several ways to transfer personal content onto the device; for more information click here.



And a lot of the ebook stores are selling html versions lately. This will be why. (In fact, if you've been keeping up with Mel Keegan lately (http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/) you probably know MK is getting into the digital novel idea next year. The idea seems to be -- and I'm quoting here, so don't blame me! -- you give the fiction away and make your money on the advertising. MK has crunched a lot of numbers, and it looks like being an ultra-viable alternative.

The thing that worried me was, how the %@*! do you read a huge novel on the PC screen? And I can't afford one of the fancy schmancy ebook readers. The price is my groceries for three months!!! But I could probably take a look at the eBookwise without going belly-up financially.

Now I have to run off and take care of STUFF that must be done today, which is the whole reason I'm sure a book review will have to wait till tomorrow!

PS: did you get the DreamCraft newsletter? I know Dave was sending it out this morning (Aussie time). You can actually subscribe off MK's blog page ... I'm thrilled because I have a really nice "plug" in this newsletter!

Read more...

Gay edutainment, way out in front

I thought everybody knew this book ... until I was talking on some website somewhere, and mentioned it ... and it turned out I was talking to a Twinkie of about 20 years old, who said "What's The Front Runner?" He or she had never even heard of it. They could quote me Captain's Surrender (Alex Beecroft), My Fair Captain (J.L. Langley), Eclipse of the Heart (Emily Veinglory - seriously, that's the pen-name), Bareback Mountain (Frank Sol), and basically anything that's doing the rounds digitally (this whole list and maybe 250 more and available at Diesel Ebooks), but if it was printed on paper ... "What's a paperback?"

Grrrr. So, even though I might be preaching to the choir in a lot of cases, I'm still going to talk about The Front Runner, because the book was published in 1974, which is 34 years ago ... maybe 16 YEARS before some of today's readers were even born!

It's possible some very young readers might have a problem with this book. The reason I say this is because PNW's fiction is about the anti-gay prejudice of the 1970s, and things have lightened up so much lately that kids who're just coming out now might find it hard to believe crap like this happened. Or else, they know it happened but they can't relate to it.

Well ... that's not good. The Holocaust happened over 60 years ago now, which is a long time before most readers looking at this page would have been born. And we'd all better find a way to relate to the Holocaust, quick, because somebody very wise once said, "Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it." I'd love to know who said that. They were so right.

So ... if you had an 18 y.o. who was just coming out and saying, "What am I supposed to read?" I'd be recommending The Front Runner. PNW's book sits right on the fence where two zones are divided. One one side you have entertainment. On the other side you have education. Front... is like a cross between the two.

(I actually went into this in a comment on someone's webpage a couple of months ago, and Mel Keegan took up the thread, and Dusk Peterson got into commenting, and quite a discussion was going on this subject -- http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/gay-fiction-edutainment-or.html. It all started with something I'd said on a page at Speak Its Name: http://speakitsname.wordpress.com/about/ ... so there's food for thought for you. If there was ever anything in reality where gay fiction could be called "education" I think I'd nominate The Front Runner... but it's also a really great novel.)

The story is another "gay sporting tale" so it has something in common with Out of Bounds, which I blogged about a few days ago. It also features a relationship between a very young guy (in this book it's Billy Sieve, who's an endurance athlete, a long-distance runner) and his coach/trainer, Harlan Brown, who's about 40, and thinks he's too old for Billy ... fortunately Billy has other ideas.

The book has a LOT about running, but PNW manages to make it really interesting. You'd have to be seriously allergic to sports to not find something interesting here. The relationship between Billy and Harlan is very well drawn ... but there's also a lot of very very angsty material. Reading it back in the 1980s, I really did feel keenly for the characters. Reading it in 2008 -- you are very aware that it's a historical. But at the same time, the recent Proposition 8 situation in California makes you realize gay rights are still delicate. Which makes The Front Runner poignant all over again.

The book has an extremely sad ending. Billy does get to run in the Olympics, but as the first openly gay gold medal winner, someone in the grandstand has a big problem with him ... and a high-powered rifle.

Again, you have to remember: The Front Runner has turned into a historical. In the days of the "War against Terror" where you get to walk through metal detectors and get frisked on your way into a footy game or cricket match, and you're under the eye of CCTV everywhere you go, younger readers would probably find it utterly unbelievable that anyone could get into the Olympic stadium with a rifle.

But in the 1970s the security wasn't there. It could happen. No gay athletes got shot, but it definitely could have happened. Very nasty events took place at Munich in 1972, where people weren't killed for being gay ... they were killed for being Jewish. In fact, they made a movie about it a couple of years ago. (Drat. I'm old enough to remember watching Munich '72 on the news as-it-happened.)

So... The Front Runner. Great book. Historical. Highly recommended. Is it edutainment? Read it and make up your own mind. I love the book, because it's not "just" a gay love story where everything turns out right in the end ... everything doesn't! The book is a gay love story where everything goes wrong. It's a story about freedom, gay rights, human rights. Oh, and long distance running. You can definitely, positively get copies from alibris or Amazon.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Read more...