Demon Lord IX: The Forgotten Lands Launch Coming Soon!

Good news! It’s almost here! Only eleven days to go before Demon Lord IX: The Forgotten Lands is released. It’s already available as a pre-order at the iBookstore, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, and will be available at Amazon on the release date: 30 June. So place your pre-order today and ensure you receive your copy right away! The book is now on the final leg of the creation process: editing and proofreading. To all of you who have been waiting almost two years for the next instalment of the Demon Lord series, deepest apologies.

My creative process was stymied by my first visit to hospital, where I underwent major surgery to cut out a five-kilogram ovarian tumour. It wasn’t just the trauma of the op or the recovery time that delayed the next book for so long; it was also the illness beforehand and the diagnosis that rendered me totally incapable of writing. That’s a lot of stress! The good news is, that’s all in the past. The tumour was mostly benign, I’m cancer-free and my channel to the fantasy worlds where my heroes and heroines live is unblocked.

The Forgotten Lands may be the penultimate book in the Demon Lord series. I can’t be sure until I write the next one, but it seems to be a distinct possibility. So for everyone who feels my series are never-ending, good news! They do eventually end. I’m hoping for a happy ending, but it’s out of my hands. I go where the story takes me, and I have no idea what will happen next. It’s as much of an adventure for me as it is for you. I’ll be publishing some extracts here on my blog over the next few days, so watch this space!

Emails Lost!

I’m sorry to say that some of the people who emailed me asking for updates on new book releases will not receive a notice about When Angels Fall because I’ve just discovered, whilst sending emails announcing it, that Hotmail has been deleting my flagged emails. I really thought emails that were flagged as important wouldn’t be deleted, but, alas, I was wrong.

In future, I’ll move requests for updates into a separate folder so they’re not deleted – as I’ve done with those I still have – but for those who asked for updates but didn’t get an email about When Angels Fall, I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to let you know. Please email me again at demonlord07@hotmail.com so I can save your email for the future. Adding addresses to my contact list doesn’t really help, because I need to know whether you wanted to be informed of any new releases, or only in a specific series.

Alternatively, all updates are announced on my site: http://www.tcsouthwellbooks.com/, in Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tcsouthwell and in Twitter by @TCSouthwell.

More About How And Why I Write

As it turned out, being rejected by traditional publishers was a good thing, and the boom in self-publishing came along at just the right time, or the books would probably never have been published. Perhaps the worst part of the traditional publishers’ rejections was that they didn’t give reasons for them, except one, which said the familiar idea was too similar to another book they were publishing, although those familiars were all insects. Self-publishing has allowed me complete artistic control and enabled me to offer the books at low prices, so I’m happy about that. I’d have had huge problems with editors telling me to change stuff.

I think one of the reasons The Queen’s Blade is hard to predict is because it has no plot. It’s just a series of events based on the characters’ decisions and the consequences thereof, and I don’t always like what they get up to. They told the story, though. I’m just the ‘scribe’. The ideas Blade came up with and the lies he told had me gobsmacked. He’s a lot cleverer than me, and definitely much more devious.

I enjoy all aspects of writing. It’s my favourite thing to do. When I’m in the ‘zone’, it’s like I’m in that world, with the characters, watching and listening to them, and, depending on whose point of view I’m channelling, sharing their thoughts, too. Some writers say it’s best only to write from the main characters’ points of view, but I have no choice in the matter. It allows me to escape the harsh reality of my humdrum existence. I much prefer imaginary worlds, which is probably why I spend so much time there!

When I’m channelling, the only thing that slows me down is my typing speed, and sometimes I go back and embellish descriptions later, if the story’s moving particularly fast when I channel, but most of the time I manage to describe things pretty well the first time around. I find I can ‘pause’ the story if I need to describe the surroundings, but sometimes I want to get on with it and find out what happens next.

The really weird thing is I can’t change anything! When I edit, I sometimes think of a better way to describe a certain scene, without actually changing what happened, but then I always change it back again. It just isn’t right any other way. I can enhance background info, but not actions or conversations. Also, sometimes I’m asked why something happened the way it did, and I have to figure it out, because I honestly had no idea when I wrote it. I also get information that I have no knowledge of, things I’ve never done or learnt about, yet when I research it afterwards, I find that what I’ve written is correct. It’s kind of creepy.

About the author

I was born in Sri Lanka, a long time ago, when it was still Ceylon. My parents moved to the Seychelles when I was a baby, and I lived on Cerf Island and spent my formative years exploring the islands – mostly alone. Naturally, my imagination flourished and I developed a keen love of other worlds - mostly to escape the one I was in. Living on a tropical island isn't all it's cracked up to be, trust me. My family travelled through Europe and Africa and, after the death of my father, settled in South Africa.

I have written over twenty novels and five screenplays. My hobbies include motorcycling, horse riding and art, andI try to earn a living in the IT industry, as well as doing copywriting, editing and proofreading, amongst other things. Basically anything that will bring in a bit of cash and uses some of my dubious skills.

I started writing fantasy stories in school, where I was often guilty of daydreaming in class, and chastised for not paying attention. I wrote my first full length book when I was twenty-six, a science fiction novel. After a number of publishers resoundingly rejected it, I gave up for a while. I went back to being an avid reader, devouring libraries of books in my hunger for other worlds and fantastic adventures. After reading a truly atrocious fantasy book, I decided to have another bash at the writing lark, thinking that if that guy could get published, why not me? I wasn't that bad.

During a fantastic six-year period when I was unemployed and lived with my mom, I wrote over twenty books, indulging my passion with the aid of a borrowed PC and loads of free time. I enjoyed writing them almost as much as I enjoyed reading them afterwards, since the stories came to me effortlessly, as if I was plugged into some sort of cosmic video feed that played all these marvelous stories in my head.

I still didn't have the courage to send anything to the publishers though, afraid of more rejections. I don't handle rejection all that well, although it's par for the course in the book-writing world. Every author is rejected many many times. I wrote them for the pure enjoyment of it, and the pleasure of reading them again. I became my own most ardent - and only - fan. Still, that didn't dampen my enthusiasm. Then in about 2002, I moved to Cape Town and, miraculously, a local publisher accepted Demon Lord, the first in a five - probably more, but five so far - book series. The sales were dismal, however, due to the bias in the local press that decided - without bothering to read it - that if it was local it had to be rubbish. They also, apparently, thought it must be a 'devil's handbook', because of the title. Nothing could be further from the truth, but anyway, they're entitled to their opinion, even if it has no basis in reality and if they'd bothered to read the book they'd have seen that it's just the opposite. Enought about that.

I have now sent off the first book of another series of five - six if you count the prequel - to a few UK publishers, and await their verdict. Two rejections so far, but I'm hanging in there. The series is called The Queen's Blade, and I shall post more details about it here when I have a bit of time. I also have two other series awaiting the day when they will visit the publishers, which are Cyber Warrior and The Broken World. My original science fiction series, which I have now rewritten and made fairly good - it was rubbish when I sent it to the publishers, so they weren't wrong to reject it - still languishes on my PC's hard drive, and I don't think that one will ever be published, simply because I don't want to publish it. So there you have it. That's me.

To read more about the only book of mine that's been published, visit the blogspot. I plan to have a website one day, but finances are grim right now. If anyone's interested, I'm looking for a patron of the arts to sponsor me. That would be nice. Who knows? Miracles do happen.