Katherine Roberts

A New Year gift for my Song Quest fans... until January 4th, you can download the Kindle edition of DARK QUETZAL (Book 3 of the Echorium Sequence ) completely free of charge from Amazon. Yes, I know it's traditional to give away the first book in a series, and Dark Quetzal is the third book in my series about the blue-haired Singers who live on the Isle of Echoes and control their world with the power of Song, but the unicorn would like to reward people who have read Books 1 and 2 and might want to complete the trilogy, and I'm not about to argue with a mythical beast waving his sharp horn. Besides, if you're new to this series, you can always keep it on your Kindle (or other device with a free Kindle app) until you get around to reading the first two books. Also, if you're very quick , UK readers might still be able to download the first two Echorium titles Song Quest and Crystal Mask at the old 2014 prices, before the new 20% VAT rate on all ebooks purchase

Today is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, the longest night of the year. Tomorrow, the days will start to get longer and the nights shorter. So do not despair, fellow unicorn riders... there is a glitter of light in the dark window of this blog, and it'll be summer before you know it. I realise there have not been many posts here lately. I have an excuse. I've been busy working with students on their essays (see Royal Literary Fund Fellow on the right), and a unicorn cannot do two things at once. I am in the middle of writing a new book, but at the moment do not know when or how this will be published. All I can tell you at the moment is that it's YA romance and contains sexy angels, so will probably come out under a different name to avoid confusion with my other books... but I haven't decided yet whether I'll tell you what that name is, or let you guess! Meanwhile, my ebook sales continue to rise as more people get hold of e-readers. I can

Oh, the unicorn has been neglecting you! He has an excuse. He's been hard at work creating a new cover for the only novel I've written so far with unicorns in it... SPELLFALL. First he went for a trot in the woods and speared a few autumn leaves with his horn... Then he persuaded me to open my paintbox... And, after a bit of digital wizardry, we ended up with this: SPELLFALL UK /  US Naturally, the unicorn has made himself the biggest thing on the cover, but Spellfall also contains a heroine called Natalie, a hero called Merlin, a wolf/magehound called K'tanaqui, a standing stone with a hole in it called the Thrallstone, a giant soul-tree called Oq (whose leaves are spells), a villain called Hawk (he's hiding in the woods, I think), and a police helicopter. The story takes place partly in our own world, and partly in the enchanted world of Earthaven, which lies beyond the Boundary. Normally we can't see unicorns, or spells growing on trees. But

Some electric cats left comments on my last post, so total annihilation of this blog has been suspended until further notice. As the unicorn has pointed out to me (with his glittery horn), many people worked hard on guest posts for his little corner of the blogosphere, so it would not be good karma to delete those. If you haven't read them all yet, see the MUSE MONDAYS tab at the top for a full list of links. Also, there is a long-running series of posts based upon my epic novel about Alexander the Great's horse "I am the Great Horse" and its associated projects. That series is not quite finished yet, and Bucephalas will probably bite me if I try deleting him . He'll certainly squeal at the unicorn, which could get nasty. For links to this series, see the I AM THE GREAT HORSE tab. If you're looking for a viral blog, this is not the place to be. (But then you probably never found it in the first place, so that's okay.) If you're looking for an

... which means it's not really helping anyone, it's just for me and possibly my publisher (I'd call it a "unicorn blog" but that's the same thing, really, only a bit shyer and with a glittery horn.) So the big question is this: would anyone really miss me if I deleted the whole thing? I'll take zero comments as a big hint...

I'm over at the History Girls today with a post about my fantasy fortune... which might be of interest if you have some Welsh blood in the family! http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/who-do-you-think-you-are-fantasy.html

I am trying to find a new cover for the ebook edition of my Halloween fantasy thriller Spellfall! Since it is ebook related, I have posted about this over at Authors Electric, where you can see all the covers this book has had so far and vote on the current shortlist. http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/covering-spellfall-katherine-roberts.html Obviously my muse's favourite is cover number 1 (below)... but which one would YOU click on? Littera premade cover  

I'm on holiday over at the History Girls today, investigating the Historic Heart of the English Riviera... do you know its name? I'll give you a clue. It starts with P and was mentioned in the Domesday book, and the people are called "pudden eaters" because they sometimes bake an enormous pudding to celebrate special events in the town. Follow this link to find out more! http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/historic-heart-of-english-riviera.html

Today I'm visiting the History Girls, where Persian princess Scheherazade has some tips on how to survive 1001 nights as an author... Click here to read the full post

And what is a dog doing on the unicorn's blog, I hear you ask? Well, it's all because of a little book called The Gospel According to Dog which the author, Peter Ward, kindly sent me for review. The Gospel According to Dog by Peter Ward This book claims to be “the greatest story ever told by a dog”, and it certainly gives a unique viewpoint of the better-known accounts from the New Testament by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Kal is just a small, orphaned puppy when Peter the Fisherman rescues him from a gang of youths and takes him out on his boat. Growing strong and fierce on fish heads, Kal joins the disciples when his master Peter is called from his nets by Jesus to become a fisher of men. Kal follows the disciples to Jerusalem, where he takes his guard duty for his new pack very seriously. Along the way, Kal witnesses miracles, such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and later treats us to a unique dog’s-eye view of Judas’ betrayal. I very much enjoyed t

On this sunny Summer Solstice, I'm delighted to have been invited over to the Writers' Workshop blogspot, where I'm one of the authors talking about my route to publication and what has happened since. http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/routes-to-publication-writers-share-their-thoughts/ ( Muse: Yes, that should say "publishing over TWO centuries" in the guest post... not sure where the "four" came from, but I suppose Katherine's author photo does make her look as if she's just stepped out of an ancient oak tree. ) And if a workshop sounds like too much hard work in all this sunshine, young Alexander the Great fans can grab the first part of the new  I am the Great Horse serial  free today for Kindle: PRINCE OF MACEDONIA Happy Summer Solstice to all my readers!

My painting marathon has finally come to an end, with the final two Seven Fabulous Wonders covers. (The word "marathon" comes from the ancient Greeks, so it seems appropriate to use it here - even though painting these covers didn't take nearly as long as writing the actual books!) And now that I've done all seven, I thought you might like to hear a bit about the process. I needed three sessions for each painting: 1. First, I had to get the sketch/composition down on a blank sheet of paper (rather like the visualisation/outline stage of a novel). I then blocked in the main areas of colour with a large brush. Since these are watercolours, it is also important at this stage to leave some white paper, rather like the unwritten scenes of a novel... sometimes what you leave out is just as important as what you put in. For example, I had to resist painting over the pale temple in this scene for The Amazon Temple Quest. Lysippe, last of the Amazons, meets a gryphon a

I know I promised you some more Seven Fabulous Wonders covers, so here they are... Colossus underwater after the earthquake The Colossus Crisis takes place on the Mediterranean island of Rhodes, just as a major earthquake topples the sixth wonder of the ancient world - the famous Colossus of Rhodes, which was a huge bronze statue of their sun-god Helios. The statue actually fell on land according to the ancient writers, but having Helios' head splash down into the sea made a much more dramatic painting. Here you see the heroine of my story, Aura who has "mermaid" blood, diving down to reach it. She can breathe underwater, which is a usefull skill since she is a sponge-diver. That blue thing in her (webbed) hand is a magical creature rather like a sea-sponge but linked to the sea-god Poseidon, enemy of Helios and the human race. Aura, having both human and telchine(mermaid) blood, is caught in the middle when the two gods clash. Here is the cover with the paint

Today, I'm hunting dragons over at the History Girls (because my unicorn doesn't like dragons flapping around here, he says they make his horn itch). Click to visit the History Girls group blog Meanwhile, I'm still painting those Seven Fabulous Wonders, which is quicker than writing about them since a picture is worth a thousand words... more to see soon!

When my Seven Fabulous Wonders series was still in print, I used to carry around some laminated A3-size pictures of the ancient Wonders to show children when I visited schools. Six of them were paintings I found in books and enlarged, but I could not find a picture of the pyramids at Giza as they would have appeared at the time they were being built, so I had to paint that one myself. Great Pyramid at Giza (about 2500BC) After these books were retired by their publisher, this picture went into a box with the rest of them, where it stayed until I created the ebook editions and realised I needed some e-covers. I dragged it out and tried to create a cover from it, but gave up when I realised: (a) it was the wrong shape. (b) it was too big for my scanner, which was refusing to talk to my new computer, anyway. (c) I'd have to paint the other six ancient wonders to make the covers look as if they belonged to vaguely the same series. A daunting task, when I wanted to get all the

Today I'm over at the History Girls blog, revealing all about my public library loans from the beginning of my publishing career to the present day. (That's 14 years, in case you're wondering... not long enough to get famous, but too long to be called a sparkling debut any more... a perilous time in any author's life!) Click here to read more

This month, I'm excited to have a short story published in a new anthology about famous women and girls from British history. ( Muse: or should that be British  her story... ?!) Templar Books asked authors from the History Girls blog to tackle a woman from a different period of history, and I chose 60AD, when the Romans were in charge of most of Britain but the British were not very happy about it... in case you haven't guessed, my 'herstory' is about Queen Boudica and her two brave daughters. (I like to live dangerously!) You can find out more in my guest posts at: Winged Reviews Girls Heart Books You can buy "Daughters of Time" at good UK bookshops, online from  Amazon , or order direct from Templar .

Pick up any award-winning or best-selling YA novel today, and chances are it'll be told in the first (normally young female) person. So I ought to have been on to a good thing with picking the first person viewpoint for "I am the Great Horse"... except my book is told by a (definitely male) horse, and they aren't very romantic as a rule. If I'd been cut-throat commercial at the planning stage for this book, I might have let Bucephalas' groom Charmeia tell the story. But then it would have been a totally different book, and possibly a different story since Charm did not get to fight in all of Alexander's battles alongside the king. So it could have been a romance - but it's not. And it could have been a horsey book aimed at girls - but it's not. Since it was neither of those things, the publisher wasn't quite sure how to market it, which is bad if you're talking marketability in a bookshop, but maybe not quite so bad online where several

No, not shrink-wrapped mermaids on a 3 for 2 offer at your local supermarket, you'll be glad to hear... but the fantasy author's equivalent! This weekend, you can download my award-winning Echorium trilogy Kindle ebooks for only 99c or 99p each (see below for details). The title of this post was inspired by the lovely Shelley Workinger's blog, where I was invited to guest yesterday for her Foodfic Friday series. Mermaids, you see, swim in the warm seas around the Echorium, and in the first book of the trilogy "Song Quest" they are being hunted for their eggs. The 'quest' part of the title takes young Singers Rialle and Kherron from the Isle of Echoes to the frozen mountains of the Karch in a desperate attempt to stop the hunting. These books were first published more than ten years ago, and Song Quest was my debut novel for young readers - winning the very first Branford Boase Award back in 2000. So revisiting the texts for the ebook versions was a

Since this is the Year of the Horse, and books no longer disappear when they go out of print, I have decided to re-run my popular series about writing my Alexander the Great novel "I am the Great Horse", which is currently galloping across the world in digital form. It's interesting to note that some of my comments below about 'what to write next' are now out-of-date, since authors are no longer quite so dependent upon publishing contracts. But if you are after an advance and traditional publication they still apply. So, without more ado...   Where do you get your ideas from? This is a question every author gets asked eventually. But it’s never an easy one to answer. We don’t just sit down one day in front of a blank page or computer screen, pluck an idea out of the air and start writing… at least it never works like that for me! I don’t lack ideas for stories. They come to me all the time, at the rate of three or four a day if my mind is not too

It's the Chinese New Year of the Horse, so I'm over at the History Girls this week with a few horse books to get you in the mood. Happy New Year of the Wood Horse Please feel free to add your recommendations to the comments, since we are trying to build a History Girls list of interesting horse stories with a historical or Chinese/Mongolian slant - preferably both! Here's one to get you started, which I really enjoyed. I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade by Diane Lee Wilson

1. You must write. 2. You must finish what you write. 3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order. 4. You must put the work on the market. 5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold. These rules are not new. They are not mine. They were put together by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein in 1947 and have been quoted so often they've become infamous in the writing world. Having a unicorn for a muse, you might have guessed I am not really into rules. I believe every writer has their own way of producing creative work and trying to follow someone else's rules can seriously interfere with that, if not kill it stone dead. But I have time for Heinlein's rules because they aim at the heart of what we do. Rule 1 is obvious. If you don't write, you will never be a writer. Note Heinlein does not say "you must write every day" or "you must write 2,000 words an hour", or whatever the latest creative writing course te

When I was a child most of my reading came from my local library, so I am always excited to see my annual UK library loans. Although libraries are sampled for the purpose of calculating the loan data (which means not all of them are represented each year), I think loan figures are a truer indication of how much people are enjoying a book than sales figures, since when readers borrow a book from a library they do not have to worry about its availability or cover price. I'm pleased to report that my most popular borrowed title with over 5,000 loans is: Book 1 of the Pendragon Legacy   The UK loan year runs until June so it's a bit early for libraries to report later books in this series, but I'm delighted to see some of my older books are still popular too. ( Muse: maybe this means historical books are like wine... they improve with age? ) My top ten borrowed books of 2013: 1. SWORD OF LIGHT (Pendragon Legacy 1) 2. THE GREAT PYRAMID ROBBERY (Seven Fabulous Wond