Today is the release day for the sixth and final book in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series. Heart of the Mountain is out now in eBook and hardcover (audio is on the way).
Please tell your friends, and once you’ve read it post a review and let me know what you think. I’ve been working on toward this ending for ten years. š
So I hear certain people are trying to stir up outrage clicks spreading dumb rumors about some publishers again, this time because I’m writing books for other publishers too.
Guys, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m pretty good at what I do. I’ve got an awesome fan base. My work is in demand, people are willing to pay for my skills, so I take advantage of that. In business it is always smart to diversify and not have all your eggs in one basket. The market is constantly evolving and you either learn and adapt to the changing conditions or you don’t. So I keep trying different things through different venues to see what works for me and what doesn’t.
I’ve been perfectly open about this on many episodes of WriterDojo, and explained exactly why I decided to do a progression fantasy series with Aethon. They’re absolutely killing it in a market that I’ve not done anything with (KU) and the project sounded like a lot of fun. I like the guys running it and they’ve been really successful. Now let’s see what happens (and I really enjoyed writing Academy of Outcasts, coming in October).
The Ark Press offer developed while WriterDojo has been on hiatus (because cohost Steve’s high powered corporate day job has been crushing him so we’re taking a few months off, though we did just interview Critical Drinker and that’ll air soon), but if we’d been recording during this I’d have talked about that offer too.
It’s another unique opportunity, with a start up company doing things in a different way than I’ve traditionally done them. The editorial staff are people I know, respect, have worked with before, and like a lot. They’re still getting everything in place, but when given an opportunity to be one of the flagship authors of a new publisher that’s got big plans and goals, why wouldn’t I go for it?
Here, I’ll even add to the freak out, I’m also going to be doing some pure indy stuff in the future too. Why? Because I can, and I want to see what happens when I do. It has been a long time since I’ve experimented in that, the market has changed a ton since then, and has a lot of potential. I like making money. Me doing an indy project might make money. Go figure.
Nothing about me branching out into various other business ventures should be used as a club against the publishing house I’ve done most of my books through. I’ve never once ever said a single negative thing about my private business dealings with any of my publishers in public ever (because frankly that’s none of your business and just provides fuel to the rumormonger grifters).
I still have several projects under contract with Baen, and I love Toni Weisskopf, but I am an independent contractor who enjoys bouncing around and they are one publisher who does one specific thing. Seriously guys, think about all my novels, novellas, and shorts and then count how many different genres, flavors, and worlds I’ve dabbled in. Most author’s careers they do one or two. Statistically I’m a friggin’ anomaly.
I started out indy. I’ve written book for Baen for 15 years, but during that time I also wrote two novels for Privateer Press and one book for Regnery. Now I’ve got stuff with Aethon and Ark. There are whole giant branches of publishing which didn’t even exist when I started, or that were in their infancy when my career took off. Now that I’ve got a rep and skills I’d be stupid not to try my hand at those branches when given the opportunity.
Something that I’ve been super open about my entire career is that I hate when people get stagnant, complacent, and stop progressing. I’m the same way in all my hobbies. That’s how I practice shooting. Hell, that’s how I paint or play video games. If you’re not learning, measuring progress, or getting better, why bother?
What does the long term future look like for my career? Who am I going to be writing for in five years? I have no friggin’ idea. I’m just going to keep trying new things to see what works best for me, and anybody who wants to try to stir up outrage clicks over that is full of crap.
I havenāt done a Fisking in a while! But to be fair I havenāt infuriated the internet this much in several months. My crime? I dedicated the sixth and final book (which comes out February) of my epic fantasy series to George RR Martin.
The original article will be in italics and my responses will be in bold.
Fantasy author taunts Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin in his new book
Story by Dan Selcke
ā¢ 23h ā¢ 3 min read
Yeah, 3 minutes to read, 10 minutes for me to point out all the bullshit in it.
George R.R. Martin is the author of theĀ A Song of Ice and FireĀ series, which was adapted for TV asĀ Game of Thrones.
Which made George one of the wealthiest and most famous writers in human history, but weāll get back to that part.
Only the producers behind Game of Thrones had to finish the story before Martin finished the source material; he released the last book in his series, A Dance With Dragons, way back in 2011. Fans have been waiting for the sixth book, The Winds of Winter, for over a decade at this point.
Thatās a nice way of saying that babies who were born when the last book came out are now learning to drive.
And Martin will still have at least one more book to write, A Dream of Spring, after that.
And this will still totally happen, provided he lives to be a hundred and forty years old.
Martin’s exceedingly slow writing pace with Winds has become legendary among fans, with some wondering if he’ll ever finish the book.
āSome wonderingā is doing some profoundly heavy lifting in that sentence. As I discovered this week after kicking the GRRM Simp Hornetās Nest on Twitter, normal readers have all given up on the series ever being finished, and the only people who hold out hope have cartoon avatars, their entire personality is based on a TV show, and their screen name is Daemon Tagyaren Daenerys Uterus or something like that.
Fantasy author Larry Correia ā who is publishing the sixth and final book in his own epic fantasy series, Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, in February ā has noticed.
Well, it is kind of hard not to notice after watching Georgeās lazy hubris burn a significant part of the epic fantasy market so badly that those customers have given up trying new series until they are done. Thus fucking over an entire generation of new authors, because if nobody will try their first books, they canāt afford to finish the series. Guys like George are fine. Heās got his. Guys like me were fine because we were already established, but donāt kid yourself, George (and a few notable others) fucked over a whole bunch of careers.
I go into detail about that in this link. It is a real fucking problem. If you want to know the real reason I dunk on George, it is this here-
He’s included a dig at Martin on the dedication page of his new book, Heart of the Mountain. “To George R.R. Martin,” Correia writes. “See? It’s not that hard.”
Is this a playful jab or a petty insult?
Trolling, mostly.
It’s probably closer to the latter, seeing as how Martin and Correia have locked horns before.
And now we get into the biased bullshit section of the article. Because of the Brandolini Principle it is going to take me an order of magnitude more effort to refute their bullshit than it took this writer to create it.
Their last public clash involves the Hugo Awards, which are handed out every year to honor the best in science fiction and fantasy fiction.
Thatās the problem right there, theyād stopped being about āhonoring the bestā. Iām the guy who made it public that those awards were really about politically like-minded assholes giving awards to their connected buddies, while excluding every author who wasnāt part of their clique. (and best part, as we shall see, George RR Martin ADMITTED I WAS RIGHT)
Martin has been attending the Hugos since the 1970s, while Correia got involved in the 2010s.
George was nominated for the Campbell Award for best new writer around when I was born. I was nominated for the exact same Campbell Award for best new writer thirty something years later, which was when I saw that entire system was rigged bullshit catering to the tastes of angsty old hippies who had a complete fucking come apart when George Bush got elected.
To make a very long story short,
I like how this totally unbiased reporter links to Wired for a political topic. Never change, progs. Never change.
Correia was involved with a faction of Hugo voters called the Sad Puppies, who thought that too many awards were going to authors who wrote about social issues.
āSocial issuesā is code for lefty message fiction written by proper Manhattan approved authors. You know, the usual Dying Polar Bears, Everybody Rapes a Robot, bossy preachy claptrap which chased most normal readers out of reading sci-fi.
They conspired to manipulate the voting process and push the authors didn’t like off the ballots.
Ha! By āconspiredā they mean Iāin publicāput up a bunch of blog posts (with a cartoon manatee as my spokesman) to get conservative and libertarian fans involved, and by āmanipulateā they mean I did the exact same thing proper approved liberal authors had been doing forever and asked my fans to go vote. And by push them off the ballots, that means we got on and they didnāt, because more of my fans voted than theirs did. HOW NEFARIOUS. DEMOCRACY IS THREATENED! Someone call Liz Cheney!
A smaller faction known as the Rabid Puppies did much the same thing, only with a lot more overt racism, homophobia and sexism.
The difference was my people (SP) didnāt want to destroy it, we just wanted a fair shake at these awards that were claiming to be about picking āthe bestā (we called ourselves the Sad Puppies, because it was a joke on the whole Sarah McLachlan commercial for animal shelters that showed sad dogs in the rain while singing In The Arms of an Angel, and how boring liberal message fic was the leading cause of puppy related sadness).
The Rabids came along the next year after the Hugo libs treated those conservative fans I brought in like shit and told us our kind werenāt welcome. We (SP) tried to save the awards. They (RP) said fuck it, it deserves to burn down. Asshole reporters have loved confusing the two on purpose ever since.
Also, that whole racism/homophobia/sexism angle was utter fucking bullshit the WorldCon libs launched at Sad Puppies as soon as my people got on the ballot. Bigotry had fuck all to do with what I did. We were just trying to get a bunch of good writers who normally got shunned a chance.
How much is that whole racism/sexism thing a blatant fucking lie? The year before I got involved the winners were 14 white liberals and 1 Asian liberal and these vapid fucks hailed that as āa huge win for diversityā. Then I got outsiders on the ballot, they freaked out and there was an organized news blitz about how I was a racist hate monger trying to keep women and minorities out of publishing. (By nominating a bunch of women and minorities for an award? Huh?)
For example check this Entertainment Weekly article out, including the best fucking retraction ever (which I got after I lawyered up and said I was going to sue them for defamation)
https://ew.com/article/2015/04/06/hugo-award-nominations-sad-puppies/
Thatās right. It turns out that my nominees were actually far more diverse than usual. Racially, sexually, religiously, and most of all politically (GASP!). I even got surprised a few of them were gay because I never asked. I didnāt give a shit what boxes anybody checked, I was just nominating good writers and editors whoād always previously been shunned because they didnāt sit at the high school mean girls table.
This scam where libs accuse everybody who disagrees with them of racism/sexism until we go away was relatively new and exciting back then. Sad Puppies was an early battle in the culture war, but now everybody has caught on to their grift. We hit Peak Woke a couple years back, America said no more, and election day put that casket in the ground. Nobody believes these dorks anymore.
It was a strange scandal that resulted in a lot of the big Hugo Awards going to “No Winnter” in 2015.
No WinnTer? Nice job, professional media outlet MSN. What actually happened is after I got a bunch of outsiders nominated, two thousand new voters suddenly materialized from the ether to No Award every category. Because if they couldnāt have it, then nobody will.
These fuckers, in the name of ādiversityā blocked a Jewish single mom, who was one of the most respected editors in the history of science fiction, who got the most nominating votes for the editor category in the history of the awards, who had been involved in their cons and their precious fandom for THIRTY YEARS, and they kicked her to the curb like trash because when she FINALLY got nominated, it was by right wingers (previous to this the same few white male liberal editors from one Manhattan publishing house took turns getting the award every year, as is proper and good).
And then at the ceremony, they handed out wooden assholes to all my nominees (keep in mind, Iām the political one, not those writers or editors). And (alleged) serial rapist Neil Gaiman got up on stage and said āfuck the Sad Puppies.ā Thatās how vile and insular these assholes are.*
So no. Thereās nothing āpettyā about my insults.
*on that bit, it is crazy that of my loudest detractors during all that, proud āMale Feministsā who kept screaming how Sad Puppies was misogynist (even though half of us were female), like a dozen of them have since been revealed to be some kind of pervert or sexual predator? What an odd coincidence.
Martin has been involved with the Hugos for a long time and was not a fan of what the Sad and Rabid Puppies were doing.
At the convention George Martin spent a bunch of money and threw a banquet celebrating my nominees who had dropped out due to his sideās career threats and peer pressure. Heās classy like that.
He and Correia wrote back and forth about their perspectives on the matter, much of which is preserved online, like on Martin’s blog. Their exchanges are very wordy, but it basically breaks down to Correia claiming that he felt shut out of the cool kids’ club at the Hugo Awards and was thus justified in ruining the awards for everyone, while Martin argued back that he was behaving like a bitter angry loser desperate to feel like a victim despite his work being on The New York Times Best Seller list.
That is truly the dumbest fucking take ever.
That’s my paraphrase, of course.
And you should be proud that it is that fucking dumb, because that takes some effort. You reached for the stars, and the stars looked down and said āwow, that is fucking dumb.ā
But the point is that these two had a little internet feud back in the day,
Actually no. That little internet feud came out in my favor so much it was either the Boston Globe or the New York Times which tried to cover for Georgeās bloviating ass by labeling him āGeorge Martin, son of a humble longshoremanā even though he was like the richest author in the world at the time, while I was āBestselling author, Larry Correiaā even though I was a relative nobody. How come I didnāt get to be Larry Correia, son of a humble Portuguese dairy farmer?
Ironically, that isnāt the first time Iāve been the heavy for āpunching downā against a liberal billionaire in a fight. Probably wonāt be the last.
Hereās links to our whole exchange, but the most important thing about it, which all these lying ass dorks always manage to leave out, all that stuff I alleged about authors getting excluded because of the wrong politics? Saint George ADMITTED I WAS RIGHT. In his lecturing, sea lioning, and hurumphing, on accident, George helped me prove my point more than anyone else.
These are super long, and looking back it is hilarious how polite I tried to be back then. Ten years later my thin veneer of civility got ground off entirely by these pricks, and Iām way past giving a fuck about fake nice.
and
https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/14/george-r-r-martin-responds/
But the important thing here is that George screwed up and admitted what I was saying was true. Theyād always claimed that the Hugos were for the best of all fandom, but George was the first big shot to admit that was a lie, and it was actually their precious special little thing that belonged to them only.
which might explain why Correia decided to taunt Martin on the dedication page for his new book rather than, I don’t know, thank his family or something.
Can I just note how incredibly fucking stupid that bit is? Why didnāt I dedicate this book to family or something? Well, because Iāve written 28 other books before this, Iāve dedicated lots of books to close family and friends already and (unlike George) Iāve got more books coming. This book got dedicated to him because it is the final book in a 6 book epic fantasy series, which I STARTED after his last book came out, and I’m sorry, thatās just funny.
Clearly the argument still bugs him.
That’s backwards actually. That argument with George proved that I was right. (and the Hugos have since tried extra hard to prove me right ever since, by going super crazy woke, leaning even harder into the identity politics, and eventually ending up as a bootlicking censorship tool for the government of Communist China). What bugs me about George is that first bit about how his laziness fucked over a generation of new authors, not when he inadvertently proved my point.
Anyway, The Saga of the Forgotten Warrior begins by introducing us to Ashok Vadal, who is charged with enforcing the brutal law of Correia’s fantasy world.
One funny note on my main characterās name, when the 70 IQ simp brigade (and I swear every one of these was named after a GoT character, their entire profile was GoT shit, and they all had Palestinian flags after their name, like theyād come off some cookie cutter assembly line for clichĆ©s) rolled into Twitter to bark at me, one dork sneered āAshok Vadal, what kind of stupid name is that?ā and somebody responded āItās Hindi, racistā and the first dork promptly deleted his tweet.
Iām sorry, internet randos are so dumb itās hilarious. Having a bunch of broke Gen Z kids who named themselves Jamie Tyrion Hufflepuff defend the lazy mega rich boomer who wrote half a series about pseudo-Englishmen by calling the little guy Gen Xerāwith a complete series where all the characters are Indianāa racist has been a hoot.
The first book in the series, Son of the Black Sword, came out in 2015. Nine years later, it wraps up with Heart of the Mountain. Obviously, Correia’s series isn’t anywhere near as well-known as Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire,
No shit, sherlock. HBO gave him the greatest marketing campaign in the history of books. George made like a billion dollars. But the thing about Georgeās entire career, and this is common knowledge in the publishing business, he only works when heās hungry. And HBO made it so heāll never be hungry again.
so taunting Martin in the dedication page, petty though it is, may be good for exposure. We’ll see if all press is good press when Heart of the Mountain drops on February 4.
Maybe. Weāll see. Honestly Iād still have done it either way, because it made me and my friends laugh, but the important thing as the son of a humble Portuguese dairy farmer, that lack of work ethic offends me.
As for when The Winds of Winter might come out, who knows?
Iām guessing that will be sometime after the publisher pays James S.A. Corey to finish it.
At least a bunch of chapters are already available to read: To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.
From that accurate quality reporting, Iād rather get a colonoscopy.
This article was originally published on winteriscoming.com as Fantasy author taunts Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin in his new book.
And not even proof read, because MSN is as lazy as George R.R. Martin.
A brand new fantasy world from Larry Correia, bestselling author of Monster Hunter International!
Except, to do so requires the natural gifts or wealth necessary to secure an appointment to one of the prestigious magical academies in the Core City at the center of the seven realms. Oz had neither.
He was born without magical talent, serving in the elemental plane of fire, a nightmarish hellscape of treacherous lava and vicious monsters, where life is cheap, and escape is rare. But Carnavons never give up.
When Oz fakes his death to get out of his familyās contract and crosses the Nexus gate to sneak into the Core, everything seems to be going according to planā¦ Until he gets blamed for an assassination attempt on the fire realmās ambassador.
Now, Oz must become a fugitive in a vast magical city, while trying to earn a place among the magical academies which have nothing but disdain for his kind.
And the clock is ticking, because in one week, the most dangerous wizard in the realm of fire is coming to track him down and drag him back to hell.
This is a new progression fantasy from me, published by Aethon. The release date isn’t set, but I believe it will be 3rd quarter, 2025.