Sarah Ash – fantasy author

Children of the Serpent Gate – the gorgeous US hardback edition – will be available from the end of September 2005. I’ve just completed the proofs for the (equally gorgeous) UK edition, which will – all being well – be available to buy at the beginning of December. This is the third and final volume of The Tears of Artamon and I’m delighted that Publisher’s Weekly has given it a starred review!

I’ve recently begun work on another series set in the same world called Embers of Empire, so keep your fingers crossed that a kind publisher will like it and take it on. Read more in my new interview with Jay Tomio at www.fantasybookspot.com.

The second novel in my Tears of Artamon series will be published by Bantam Press in the UK on May 1st this year.

But if you don’t want to wait that long for a taste of what’s to come, you can read the entire prologue and first chapter of Prisoner of Ironsea Tower right now.

I’ve just delivered Prisoner of Ironsea Tower to Simon Taylor in the UK and Prisoner of the Iron Tower to Anne Groell in the US, so book two of The Tears of Artamon will have different titles on either side of the water!

And my new short story, ‘Divina’, has been published in UK genre magazine ‘Interzone’. It’s set in the world of Bel’Esstar, though many years later than Songspinners. Like all the Bel’Esstar stories, ‘Divina’ is set in the world of music, opera and singers.

The idea for Lord of Snow and Shadows came to me some years ago with the single vivid image of a young man and a girl rescuing an injured owl in a snowy forest. Blood on the snow, wild golden eyes of a frightened creature, the towers of a haunted kastel looming behind them… All I knew at that moment was that the young man’s life was tainted by a terrible family secret and that the girl, Kiukiu, was a servant in his household. That single image led to the slow unravelling of the story of Gavril Nagarian – and his dark inheritance.

The discovery of the music of Reinhold Glière helped to shape the story in its early stages. His music to the Azeri folk legend ‘Shakh-Senem’ with its driving rhythms, evoked the wild, ghost-haunted moorlands of Azhkendir; ‘The Bronze Horseman’, by contrast, brought Mirom, capital of Muscobar to life, with its broad river and elegant Winter Palace. Memories of Russian hero legends first encountered in childhood were revived with Glière’s Third Symphony and inspired the creation of the Drakhaon’s fierce Azhkendi bodyguard, the druzhina.

Lord of Snow and Shadows (Book One of The Tears of Artamon) grew from these little seeds into a fantasy saga of empire and thwarted ambition, enchantment and madness. In Azhkendir, the remote mountain kingdom he inherits from the father he never knew, Gavril encounters scientists and shamans, spies and sorcerers. And, haunting his every move, is the daemon-spirit he comes to know as the Drakhaoul.

I’ve just delivered Prisoner of the Ironsea Tower (Book Two of The Tears of Artamon) and I’m starting to plot the intricacies of Book Three. I’m still having the greatest fun imaginable following the tortuous destinies and the loves and losses of Gavril and Kiukiu!