Book of Glorious Joy

In case you haven't heard (and its hard to believe that many people reading this haven't), after nine long years, The Book of Glorious Joy has finally been published. Seeing it in print at last is, indeed, both glorious and joyful.

You can buy it, in paperback, hardback, or just as a PDF, here. I don't get royalties, but, obviously, I'd like to encourage you all to do so nonetheless!

This is the book that would have been Lords of the West 3, and the first three chapters of Lords of the West 1: Heroes of Malkion added at the beginning for good measure, and in order to set the scene. It primarily serves as an overview of the magical and idealistic Kingdom of Loskalm, one of whose valiant wizard-knights you can see riding through perilous lands in the superb cover by Jon Hodgson.

I'm not sure there's much more to say here about the book that I haven't said already, so I'll gloss over that. I will say that I actually don't know what has happened to Lords of the West 2: Kingdom of the Flamesword, which would have covered Seshnela and the Rokari in the same way as BoGJ covers Loskalm, and would have also included the full write-ups for the more widespread saints and wizardry schools from LotW1. The last I heard it was still due to be published - but not in a single standalone volume - but more recent attempts at communicating with the publishers have not been successful, so that may no longer be the case.

I may therefore, try to get it out by other means, since Moon Design will naturally not want to it to clash with their own upcoming Guide to Glorantha. That may be a webpage-only release, or some kind of no-frills PDF, but one or another, something will happen, and I'll try to avoid any conflict with Moon Design's release.

In a similar vein, what would have been LotW4: Jonatela is being written and released bit-by-bit on my website, just as basic art-free HTML, but that's a long-term ongoing project, to which I am not devoting the time and energy that went into the books intended for physical publication. Current progress has me through all of the political, historical, and social information and most of the way through magic and religion, as well some bits of the gazetteer. It will plausibly be at least another year before I finish doing everything I want with it, so there's plenty more to come there - and all of it entirely free of charge, should anyone want to use it.

At the moment, I'm spending a fair amount of time writing other material, unconnected with Glorantha. My other blog, Synapsida, for example, takes up a lot of time - it can take hours to write each post, what with all the background research needed. With that, Jonatela, and the Hogwarts MBRPG that I'm still helping to run - and write classes for - there isn't much time for anything else, and what there is has no plans for publication any time soon.

But the good news is that Book of Glorious Joy is at last out there, and available for purchase. I'd be interested to know what people think of it, once they have the time to digest it. It's no good asking me what the sales figures are, because I don't know, and publishers normally keep that sort of thing confidential, but if other questions arise from it, I may well return to the subject here, or elsewhere.

Until then - may the Invisible God bless you and your endeavours in the light of righteous peace!