Making money as a fantasy writer (or at least feeling good about entertaining people)

[PaulKemp]

Good for you, man!

CAn you let me know what books you've published?

King Stannis,

Sure. All of my novels are set in the Forgotten Realms. I'll link them so you can see reviews, if you're interested.

From the "Sembia Series:"

Halls of Stormweather This book kicked off the Sembia series. HoS is a compiliation of seven novellas by seven different authors, each featuring their signature Sembian character.

Shadow's Witness Book II of the Sembia series. This is the first full length novel in the series and features my character, Erevis Cale.

Cale's popularity in the Sembia Series led to the Erevis Cale trilogy, the first two books of which are out:

Twilight Falling and

Dawn of Night .

Book III of the Trilogy, "Midnight's Mask," will be released in November 2005. A subsequent trilogy, featuring many of the same characters, will follow, with books to be released (tentatively) in 2006, '07, and '08.

I'm also writing the finale to RA Salvatore's "War of the Spider Queen" series. That novel is entitled, Resurrection and will be my first hardcover.

I've also contributed stories to the Realms of Shadow anthology and the Realms of the Dragons anthology. I've had some short fiction published here and there too.

This post sort of indirectly makes the point I was trying to convey to Rangerwickett. Despite the fact that I've had some modest success as a writer, King Stannis hasn't heard of my novels and doesn't know who the heck I am. And this even in the face of WotC's great distribution and marketing machine (which is much better than most fantasy book publishers). So, to reiterate: Making a living as a writer is hard (and often humbling ).

Oh, it also happens to be a helluva lot of fun. So go get 'em, RangerWickett.

Paul