# The Hawk And His Boy - the avocado, Aunt Marge, and Comrade Lenin



## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

I just published my second book after a heroic battle with the DTP fiend. Take that, you monsters of the Amazon! THE HAWK AND HIS BOY is the first book of The Tormay Trilogy. The whole trilogy is finished, though, I'm tinkering with the ending, as I'm an incorrigible tinkerer. Just to give you an idea of my taste and fantasy sensibilities, my big heroes in that genre are J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, George MacDonald, Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Robin McKinley and Patricia McKillip.

The Hawk And His Boy...

One night, in the city of Hearne, a young thief named Jute is instructed to steal an old wooden box from a rich man's house. It should've been an easy job. Down the chimney, sneak through the house, find the box, and get out fast. On pain of death, Jute is cautioned to not open the box. Being a boy, and being rather curious, he can't resist a peek inside.

What Jute discovers in the box sets in motion a terrible chain of events that soon has him on the run for his life. Everyone wants him dead, from his former masters in the thieves guild, the rich man (a rather vindictive and unscrupulous wizard), to the anonymous client who hired the thieves guild for the job in the first place. The client just happens to be the Lord of Darkness himself, and he'll stop at nothing to have Jute dead, even it means plunging the whole land of Tormay into war.

Jute's odyssey brings him unusual companions: a guilt-ridden assassin, an overly talkative ghost, a self-doubting wizard who really isn't sure if he's a wizard or not, and a hawk who just might be able to teach Jute to fly. When Jute opened that old wooden box, he also opened the door to a strange and terrible world. And some doors, once opened, can never be shut.

The Hawk And His Boy is around 75,000 words. The story continues in The Shadow At The Gate and The Wicked Day (both to be published, hopefully, in the next few months). While there are reasonably dark elements in this book, I figure the Motion Picture Academy would give it a PG-13 at the most.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Welcome to KindleBoards, C.H., and congratulations on your book.

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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

A question for all you wizened and wise denizens of this forum: is there a typical sales figure for the first week of release? Or is that number all over the place and impossible to pin down? I've sold 12 copies of The Hawk And His Boy in this first week of being on Amazon. Kinda fun (and bizarre) to have random strangers buying my thoughts.

Anyway, any thoughts on initial sales would be appreciated. Also, is there a secret trove-post somewhere that lists book review bloggers? I've been reading through old threads on the Kindleboards and noting names/sites of bloggers that review here and there. I'll post my list once it gets substantial.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Aha! Seven days are up. 

John at Indie Fantasy Writers Unlimited very kindly put up a blurb about The Hawk And His Boy. It resulted in an immediate call from Steven Spielberg to inquire about movie rights (he's a pretty good conversationalist on the phone, but kept on wanting to argue about the relative merits of Indiana Jones vs Bridget Jones as action heroes), world peace, and a band of hippies appearing in my garden, all dressed in camouflage and singing The Girl From Ipanema. They refused to leave until I fed them tofu and promised to not use styrofoam peanuts in my Christmas packages.

Oh, wait. That was my dream from last night. But, John actually did put up a blurb: http://indiefantasywritersunlimited.blogspot.com/


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Hi Kindleboarders! I'm giving away 5 free Kindle copies of The Hawk And His Boy, drawn randomly from anyone who posts on this thread from now until Sunday, December 19, 3pm (California time). 

If you like fantasy such as Patricia McKillip's The Riddlemaster of Hed, or a wildly truncated version of Robert Jordan, then I'm betting you'll probably like The Hawk And His Boy. At any rate, if you get one of the free copies and you don't like it, I'll give you your money back.

That's all for now.


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## jbh13md (Aug 1, 2010)

I'm definitely interested in your kind of fantasy, C.H., but what kind of free copy is it that you're giving away?


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

I was planning on gifting them through Kindle.


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## jbh13md (Aug 1, 2010)

Well, sign me up then.


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## Tuttle (Jun 10, 2010)

I'd be interested in your book.


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## Neo (Mar 30, 2009)

I'm in, I'm in  !

But I only read series once I have the whole thing complete, and then I devour it. And so my question is: when do you think you will have the whole trilogy available?

Thank you


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Hi Neo,
The entire series is written and finished. Book 2, The Shadow At The Gate, is with the copy editor, who says she'll be done with it next week. I aim to publish it on Amazon in January. The last book, Book 3, The Wicked Day, should be on Amazon by February. The only wild card is how quickly I can get the covers done. I'm not super thrilled with the cover for The Hawk, so I plan on redoing that as well. I just need to find a budding Alan Howe who'll illustrate/design them for cheap.


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## Neo (Mar 30, 2009)

Thank you Christopher! This is very exciting, I love having a new complete series to look forward to, and the plot of yours sounds really promising  

I'm not sure what style you are looking for for your cover, but I understand that Ronnell D Porter here does covers for others for a very reasonable fee - obviously I am biased, as while I do not know Ronnell at all, I do find his covers gorgeous (one of the rare instances where I actually picked up one of his books because of the cover!).


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Yeah, I have my eye on Ronnell's work. He does some cool designs. I'm finishing up a collection of humorous urban fantasy stories and I'm planning on asking him to do the cover. As far as the fantasy trilogy, though, I'd like to go more in a classically illustrated direction (though, might just end up being way too expensive).


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Sounds interesting.  I'll see if I can win one, please.


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

In the interest of supporting a fellow epic enthusiast, I just bought it. 

(Spent some time as an amateur falconer in my younger days, and lived with another grad student who was researching raptor populations in the midwest. Never met a hawk I didn't like.)


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Thank you, Archer. That's very kind of you. I hope you enjoy it. 

A hawk enthusiast? When I was a boy, the local SPCA rehabbed an injured red-tailed hawk on our farm. I can still remember his fierce eye inspecting us contemptuously from his cage. Beautiful bird.


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

Yes...we found that corn cribs made excellent hawk enclosures!


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

It's that time of year again. I thought I'd burble a bit about the books I've read that, presumably, have had a hand in influencing how I wrote The Hawk And His Boy.

I was a precocious little twirp and started reading at a tender age. I plowed my way through Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Bill Peet, Ludwig Bemelmans, and Company. Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series and Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, however, were the first fantasy series that made a serious impression on me. I remember reading Cooper with a flashlight under the covers, late at night. She scared me half to death. I think I was around nine at the time. Later, I moved on to The Hobbit and Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, followed by the mind-blowing, monolith that is the Lord of the Rings. I remember being very depressed when I finished the Lord of the Rings, thinking, surely life has nothing more to offer now.

When I grew older, and my tastes became more eclectic, I began to read much more widely. Dickens impressed me greatly at that time. He has many talents in the realm of writing, but a standout for me is how he can draw characters with such an economy of words. And not just draw them, but create so many that are so unique as individuals, as opposed to a faceless, grey train of characters that all blur into each other after a time.

Anyway, Dickens, Chesterton, MacDonald, Charles Williams, McKillip, Le Guin, Tolstoy and Louis L'Amour (yeah, L'Amour, darnit - the guy is a master storyteller, regardless of what one thinks of his limited plots), I think they all had a hand in shaping how I write. At least, I sincerely hope so. If not, then I'm completely delusional.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

If you're a hawk, a flying robot, or even that guy from Venice Beach, California, who base jumps in his bat suit and then soars all over the place, today is not a day for flying around here. The sky's iron-grey with clouds, the promise of rain is trembling in the air, and the wind never ceases. Last night was even worse, with the wind snarling through the darkness outside, and then galloping across the fields before returning to throw itself against my door. It sounded like the hound of hell himself.

Speaking of stormy nights, I once worked a summer in Ethiopia. If you need nightly lightning, then that's the place to visit. I was up in Addis Ababa, in the highlands, and practically every night the lightning would come out to play. Massive, branching forks slamming down into the ground and stalking across the plateaus in blazing white light. That sort of thing will put you in your place, flip you upside down and then shake free quite a few of the complacent assumptions we humans are fond of hoarding.

What has any of that to do with my book? Not a whole lot, yet everything, I suppose. Whatever we write, from romance to thrillers to gardening monographs, we bring who we are to the page, whether we want to or not. We can't leave ourselves behind.


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

I just read the review of The Hawk and His Boy on Fantasy Book Critic blog. Congratulations on an outstanding review -- A+! Liviu really loved this book, so I've added it to my wish list and hope to read it sometime this spring.

For those who don't know this blog, it's one of the most prestigious, most read fantasy blogs on the net. It's a big deal to get a review there, let alone one that good!

Well done, Christopher!


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Hi KC,
Thank you so much for your kind comments. I was totally floored when Liviu contacted me. I sent him a query email back in November and hadn't gotten a response, so I just figured he wasn't interested. Unbeknownst to me, he'd gone and investigated the sample and then bought the book. His review is the first I've gotten. I hadn't realized how big his blog was until I started spending some time on it recently. I'm very happy and, well, astounded that he liked the book that much. I'm very new to all this, and the whole idea of a complete stranger liking one's writing...well, that's pretty amazing!


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

I'm finally starting to get some reviews for The Hawk. The whole review process is pretty fascinating. I'm starting to understand that you have to be extremely careful where you go looking for reviews. Basically, don't flip over every rock to find a reviewer. Instead, thoughtfully target (thank you, Julie/Bards and Sages!). It's interesting, though, how one person will really like a book, and then the next person will think its perfectly dreadful.

My newest review is from Lis at The Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell. The two reviewers from that site, Lis and Blodeuedd, are Finnish (I think), but have an excellent command of English. They write interesting and thoughtful reviews of everything from chick-lit, paranormal and urban fantasy, YA, romance, literary and, of course, regular old fantasy itself. Lis did the review of The Hawk. Thankfully, she liked it a lot, as you can see from this excerpted sentence:

"The story is as refreshing to the genre as water is in the desert."

You can read the entire piece http://books-forlife.blogspot.com/2011/01/review-hawk-and-his-boy-chbunn.html.

And then, just to keep myself humble, here's a depressingly negative review at Life of a Bookaholic: http://lacedlittlemuffin.blogspot.com/2011/01/review-hawk-and-his-boy-by-christopher.html

At any rate, I didn't do my homework on this one. Epic fantasy, such as The Hawk, is not this reviewer's cup of tea. Granted, you can't prevent bad reviews if you deserve 'em, but you really should do your due diligence when sending copies out for review. Lesson learned.

Anyway, I also got a nice review recently from Tiger Holland: http://tigersallconsumingbooks.blogspot.com/2011/01/review-hawk-and-his-boy-by-ch-bunn.html Tiger is scarily smart, which is pretty apparent, once you start digging into her review site. She gave Tolkien's Two Towers an A-, so I'm pretty happy with the B+ she gave!


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## Phil Edwards (Jan 13, 2011)

For all you Hawk fans out there, The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow has some good hawking in it...


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Augie March is a great book (any lit fans out there should give it a read). Saul Bellow sure knew how to write.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Attn: Dear Sir/Madam,
Fund Beneficiary,

I am widow thirteen years of Mr. Jacob Ngongo former government minister of oil exploration Government of Nigeria. Recently, it has come to light the sum of $5,000,000 millions Dollars US has been approved finally to withdraw from frozen bank account. As research on Internet shows you are my closest dear kin. I am dying inoperable brain cancer and will give you entire money for you do good with for orphans of America. Please to send me your details (social security Number, date of birth, bank numbers) and I immediately deposit sum of $5,000,000 millions Dollars US in your account US.

Sincerely my dear,
Mrs. Jacob Ngongo (rtired.)

Oh, woops! Wrong email. That's from my day job. Pay no attention to that. Though, if you're interested, please send me details above, etc.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

I'm afraid out here in California the weather's decided on pure sunshine for today. I feel sort of guilty about that, seeing that most of you are buried under ten feet of snow, fighting off polar bears, burning your furniture to keep warm, etc. However, there's a trade-off in everything.

That's how life works. Trade-offs.

For instance, if you finally found a deli that sells an amazing Reuben sandwich, then your doctor will tell you the next day you gotta cut back on pastrami due to some weird anti-pastrami gene he found in your DNA. If you finally bought that hot air balloon you've always wanted, then when you go to launch you'll notice the next door neighbor's kid loitering suspiciously on his roof, clutching a BB gun. If you finally save up enough money for a holiday in Russia, a revolution will start the same day you arrive.

In this case, we have awesome weather in California, but the trade-off is that most of the people who live here are crazy.

That's why, if you enjoy epic fantasy, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream, or can't live without flannel sheets, you will almost definitely enjoy The Hawk And His Boy. It has several crazy people in it, others who loiter on roofs, awesome weather, but, sadly, no Reuben sandwiches.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Just got a great new review from the other side of the Atlantic (London area, I think). Here's a brief quote from the review:



> I don't know whether I have ever been so exited about a review-book. It has everything I would expect in a fantasy-book and it's an amazing first part of a trilogy.


It's always a blast to get a nice review. That'll never get old.

The complete review can be found at Universe in Words.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

I'm tinkering with new covers for the Hawk. Here's the latest below. A friend of mine painted it for me. He's currently working on his MA in Digital Illustration. Super busy with school, but managed to whip that off in a few hours. The illustration shows one of the main characters from the book, Jute, looking at the old university ruins in the city of Hearne.

I still have to fiddle some more with the text design on this one. It's times like these that I wish I had taken some Photoshop/Illustrator classes in college instead of electives like The Politics of Modern European Terrorism.

Anyway, this cover is an interim one, as I have an illustrator working on a more character-driven cover. First, though, he's working on the cover for the second book in this series, The Shadow at the Gate, because I want to get that one up and running. Then, he'll come back and redo _this_ cover. Was that all as clear as mud?


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

The Hawk and His Boy is the first of three books, but I actually wrote the entire trilogy at one fell swoop. I had to, otherwise I would never have been able to keep all the threads straight. Anyway, book 2, The Shadow at the Gate, is uploaded and ready to go on the KDP. I'm impatiently waiting for the cover designer to finish the cover. It's times like these that I wish I had taken a whole bunch of art electives in college. Oh, well, you can't do everything on your own. That's one of the earliest lessons that life teaches us.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

In honor of the second book in my trilogy going live (The Shadow at the Gate), I'm dropping the price of The Hawk down to 99 cents. That's also in honor of the ancient and illustrious Hocking-Victorine-Etc Method. I changed the price about a week ago and it had an immediate effect. Interesting.

Apparently, the Romans also employed such a method with amphora (the jugs they sold wine in). In order to corner the market in Gaul, they introduced a signature Julius Caesar amphora (carved with a profile of old Julius, plus the slogan "Buy Roman or we shall conquer and enslave you!") which started at 2 sestertius (sestertii?). Then, when they later introduced the Caligula amphora (carved with a profile of Caligula, plus the slogan "Not as loony as the rest"), they then discounted the JC amphora. Sales went through the roof. Of course, if you didn't buy, you were promptly carted off to the Coliseum for a date with the lions. Ah, marketing.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

I think I've forgotten about updating this thread in quite a while. It's strange how we often forget things that are important to us. My uncle George once forgot his wife Marge in New York Grand Central Station one Tuesday. It wasn't until the following Monday that he remembered, but by that time he was already halfway to Indonesia, a stowaway on a Dutch freighter running guns to the Ba'hai separatists on Bali. For some reason, Bali always has an odd effect on people who are accustomed to large amounts of avocado and bean sprouts in their diet. The avocado, or alligator pear, is a tricky fruit at best (yes, Virginia - in addition to the existence of Santa Claus, the humble avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable). Unbeknownst to most people (except for the entire population of Singapore), the avocado was largely instrumental in Vladimir Illyich Lenin's decision to become a Communist instead of a lederhosen designer. That squishy green fruit has a lot to answer for, and not just the extermination of millions of Ukrainians.

Aunt Marge? Oh, she made out just fine. Though, the Soviets would never have gotten Sputnik off the ground if it wasn't for her. Even Marge wasn't perfect...

(disclaimer: none of the above has anything to do with The Hawk and His Boy)


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