Back again, with an update

Sorry for the rather long silence. The autumn turned out differently from what I expected, and a number of private and professional factors conspired to steal my time. The most positive of these was that Wesleyan University Press decided to publish my dissertation (so quite a bit of time was spent revising it, including some new material about the final Rob Holdstock novel, Avilion). I sent the manuscript to them the day before New Year’s Eve, and it is planned for publication early in 2013. If nothing changes, the title will be Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings. (More info as things progress.)

Another project that has finally moved into its second phase is a “radio” drama I write and produce with Jan-Erik Åberg and Stefan Ingstrand (read Stefans blog at Tumblr if you are into superheroes). It’s a sf/fantasy story in 18 episodes (season 1, that is) about … Ah, I’ll save that for a different post. We will soon start recording and the result will be podcast. I promise to post the link here.

Coming projects include a paper for the upcoming ICFA on fantasy city maps (using examples from Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon, Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora, and China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station; an article (in Swedish) on reading natural settings in fantasy; and two book projects, one in English, one in Swedish. If I find time for all this … (In fact, that could be three book projects; I really would like to put together a cookery book as well — for fun, as it were.)

But I’ll try to write here occasionally, as well. I really should share my thoughts with you about what it means when people talk about “the new Tolkien”.