Assassin’s Apprentice is the first volume in The Farseer Trilogy, my first work as Robin Hobb.

It has never been available in hardback in the US.  And the UK editions with the stunning John Howe covers quickly sold out.  You can occasionally find them on E-bay for shocking sums of money.

I frequently receive queries as to how to find this book in hardcover.  HarperCollins Voyager is offering a solution to that knotty problem.  This is a cloth bound book intended for those who would like to make a permanent edition to their library.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I’d done an interview with Speculate and greatly enjoyed the questions offered.

Speculate commonly does a triptych when they select an author.  They focus first on a work (in my case, The Inheritance), follow that up with an interview, and the third piece is  a writing discussion based again on The Inheritance.

Well, the writing discussion is now live.

My thanks again to Bradley  Beaulieu and Gregory Wilson for this opportunity!

The release date for Blood of Dragons, the concluding volume of the Rain Wild Chronicles, will be April 8, 2013.  I will be doing a book tour to promote the book and sign copies for readers, with visits to Seattle, Olympia, Los Angeles, and Boston. But if you don’t happen to live in one of those cities or don’t wish to wait, you can contact Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore  and pre-order your signed first edition right now, to be delivered to your door by the release date! 

Thanks again for your readership, and I look forward to meeting many of you in person at the signing events!

I just conpleted an interview with the British Fantasy Society.  I very much enjoyed it. It wasn’t the standard set of questions.

Yesterday, I was virtuous.  I sat at my desk and let nothing distract me.  I worked on my revisions all day. 

Today I shoveled most of a pick up truck of soil into the raised beds that I’d lined with landscaping fabric. Then we went down to the building-that-is-soon-to-be-a-dojo where I rewired a pigtail for the pump that theoretically makes hot water reach the bathrooms faster, hung signs for the handicapped bathrooms in braille at the appropriate height, hosed out the truck bed, pressure washed part of the side of the building, and nearly broke a drill bit trying to get through some ancient masonry to hang toilet paper dispensers at the prescribed height in the bathroom.  Then I picked up half a truck load of construction debris from our site.    On the way back to Tacoma, we stopped and picked up vermiculite, more landscape fabric, extra pipe hangers for the saggy pexpipe, two more drill bits, and the hangers for the rain gutters.And we came home.

Fred wants me to come down there again tomorrow with him to shovel another truck load of soil into raised beds and possibly get the rain gutters hung on one side of the dojo and try out the new drillbits that may get through the masonry.  Oh, yes, we have vermiculite to mix into the filled beds of soil.  And if we have time left over, we need to paint the trim in the janitor’s closet.  And if the drillbits work, I can put the pipehangers on the saggy pexpipe.

Or I can stay home and write.

And I’m really tempted to go with him, because that sounds like a much easier day than trying to make the words go right on the screen.

Over at Speculate you will find a review of my story collection: The Inheritance & Other Stories.

Here is Speculate’s own description:

Welcome to Episode 69 of Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers and Fans.  With this episode we begin a new triptych of shows on the work of Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, looking at the 2011 short story collection The Inheritance and Other Stories–the first time both pseudonyms have been brought together in one volume.  In particular we talk about Lindholm’s stories “A Touch of Lavender” and “The Fifth Squashed Cat,” along with Hobb’s stories “The Inheritance” and  “Cat’s Meat”; although both names belong to one author, the voices and emphases are quite different, and we look at both those differences and the assured touch of a speculative fiction master evident throughout all of the book.  If you like what you hear, don’t forget to check back next week when we’ll continue the triptych with our interview of Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm herself.  Until then, thanks as always for listening to the show, and please continue to spread the word.

I had a wonderful time doing the interview via Skype (but it is audio only!) despite the challenges of doing this in a lively household.  The first time we attempted it, I was knocked off the internet several times, possibly by my home phone ringing.

In the second episode, I waged a mostly silent battle with Diego the desk cat over whether or not he was allowed to stroll on the keyboard, or perhaps just sit on it during the interview.  And, of course, I was knocked off Skype once, and had three phone calls making my house phone ring.  I’m trusting those will be barely audible.

Nonetheless, it was very enjoyable and I hope readers will likewise enjoy the interview when it comes up.

In the meantime, I commend to your attention the Speculate interview with Peter V. Brett and Myke Cole, findable (did I just invent that word) on the right hand side of the Skype site. Good stuff there.

Happy March!

A excerpt of my novella The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince is now available over at Tor!  Why Tor?  Well, why not?    If you’d like a peek at the tale before you commit to buying, follow the link and see if you like it!  At the very least, go look at the lovely cover art!  You won’t regret it.

And another quick bit of news.  For the very first time, I will be venturing into South America.  Or rather, my books will.  Maybe I’ll have the opportunity to follow them eventually! 

I’m very pleased to announce that my amazing agent Chris has negotiated a publishing agreement with Texto Editores LTDA. They will be publishing the Farseer Trilogy sometime before December 2014, followed by the Liveship Traders before December 2014, in Portuguese.

I am so very pleased about this!

I’ve received a number of queries recently, so I decided I should re-post the information here.  Blood of Dragons  will be released in the US on April 9, 2013.  Australia and the UK will have it on the shelves by then also.

You may even find the book on US shelves at the end of March, as some bookstores put books out as soon as they arrive.

Thanks for being interested!  The amazing cover is by Jackie Morris.

Rant warning!  A former rural route letter carrier is going to lecture you!

Last night I ordered 25 baby chicks to replenish the flock down at the farm.  Murray McMurray is my favorite hatchery.  I ordered them knowing that they will be whisked from hatchery to my local post office. And that on the day of delivery, my postal worker will call me, probably at about 5 AM to let me know they are there.  I could leave them there and my carrier would deliver them to my door, but I like to get them as soon as possible. So the post office phones me.  They’re excellent at that sort of thing.  As they are at many things that people overlook.

The people ragging on the Post Office need a remedial field trip visit there to see what actually goes on.  As a former letter carrier, let me remind you of a few things.
Machines can ‘kind of’ sort mail.  Just as they can ‘kind of’ scan print into text.  *uproarious laughter from writers who have tried to scan old books/manuscripts into text*   So your mail is sorted by PEOPLE.  And no matter how many feet of mail come in per day, your letter carrier is expected to hand sort it all into the correct delivery order, bundle it up, and deliver it ON TIME.  Christmas catalogs and Politcal junk mail not withstanding, no matter how  heavy the load that day, no matter that the shopper mailers have come in too, you must still do the task in the time allotted.  Do you know any other job that demands that?

Mail routes are NOT alphabetical or numerically in order.  We go up and down streets, leave 28th, do Mullen, and come back to 28th later, and keep track of the kid that went to college and needs her mail forwarded.  PEOPLE do that.  Not some magical machine.  You want to see what human memory is capable of, watch an experienced carrier sort mail.�
Oh, and snow days?  Forget that.  Get out there, and rural carriers, you’d better maintain your own personal vehicles that you use for the job very well.  Mine had  a heavy duty alternator in it, to allow for over 300 stops and starts on my route every day.  I went through brakes like candy.  And turn signal lamps, as you signal in and out of every rural mailbox you service.

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No other service delivers what the post office does.  I’ve delivered trees, bees, worms and chicks.  UPS won’t touch chicks!  We did.  Maybe you live in the city and think that no one needs that service anymore.  Then you’re ignorant.  The mail service is a lifeline for rural people.  Don’t you remember the Sesame Street segment on the mail carrier who delivered on horseback?  Streets don’t go everywhere, but the mail has to.  Every US citizen has a right to receive mail, even if it’s only General Delivery at the post office.�
Let’s talk about politcal junk  mail.  Your politicians have a Franking Privilege.  It lets them send out all the mail they want to promote themselves under the guise of keeping you informed.  AND they NEVER EVER get around to correcting their mistake ridden mailing lists.  You are tired of getting six copies of the same useless flyer delivered to your house?  Your carrier has to hand correct all the wrong ones and send them back.  And next time the deluge of political mail comes in, there are all the bad addresses and ancient names and duplicates again.  Because the politicians have no incentive to correct their mailing lists.
Are mistakes made?  Yes.  Are things late or damaged?  Yes.  It happens.  But of all the mail stream that must be handled, it’s a small percentage.  You recall the damaged box or the late check. Do you think of the mail that reaches you six days a week, on time?  When there are fallen tree branches, icy streets and wild winds, there is the mail coming in through your door or in your mail box.
You get a lot for a single postage stamp.

Pulling myself together to head up to University Book Store for my 7 PM event with Jackie Morris. Jackie will be reading from one of her books, perhaps I am Cat or East of the Sun,West of the Moon and doing some sketching. I will read a bit from the forthcoming Blood of Dragons. We have a gift basket to raffle off to attendees. It has all four of the Rain Wild Chronicles books in it, all with cover art by Jackie. It includes an ARC (advance Reading Copy) of Blood of Dragons, the unreleased finale to the Rain Wild Chronicles. Hope to see some readers there! 4326 University Way, N.E. – Seattle, Washington 98105