A bit of Joe Abercrombie

Books, coincidences and a touch of Jabercrobie - yesterday was a great day for me.

A few months ago, I started reading a lot more and was getting so much enjoyment from it I wanted to give a little back, support the authors I was really digging and hopefully score the odd free book or advanced copy.

I picked up a book called The Grim Company by Luke Skull and found myself officially entering the world of Grimdark. One cannot enter this world without the password, which is currently Joe Abercrombie, and every other reader who enjoyed Grim, or not, said that they felt the style of the book was very much influenced by Joe’s writing. So naturally I had to go and find out whom Joe was and was lucky enough to spot his new book on Netgalley as an advanced copy.

As Half a King is the start of a new trilogy, I jumped on board, despite it being more YA than his signature style. Great frigging book! So I got Heroes and am 95% done but I can confidently say - Great frigging book!

So here is how the Universe worked specifically for me. It turned out the Joe was going to be signing books at one of the greatest bookstores in the world - Mysterious Galaxy. I went to SD and met up with my wife’s friend and her new boyfriend Jory and we were hanging out and he asked me what sort of stuff I read.

I mentioned that I was reading a book called Heroes and I mostly read Fantasy and Sci Fi and, like someone acknowledging a dark secret, he told me he’d read some Fantasy once and really enjoyed it. He said it was some First Law trilogy, and even though I’ve not reads this series yet I knew it was Joe’s.

So I says to him, I says ‘I’m reading a book by him right now and going to get some stuff signed by him tomorrow’. He was blown away and we spent the next couple of hours talking shop and becoming friends.

I took him to Mysterious Galaxy where we got to hang with Joe, listen to him read and tell us all how amazing his books are and what an incredibly gifted writer he is. We both bought a couple of books and got them signed as did I, and the best part was, it was both our first signing and we walked away thinking Joe is the sort of guy you could sit down with and have a beer or four.

So thanks Joe for making it an awesome day for my new mate and me, and please keep writing those fantastic books. No rush though as I have a lot of catching up to do. Something about the Bloody Nine...

You can follow Joe on Twitter @lordgrimdark