Gondolin in Winter (Illustrations of Middle-earth; gouache painting)

My wife has found the painting that I was missing from my collection! This is Gondolin in winter, seen through Tuor's eyes against the rising sun at the last of the seven gates that lead to Tumladen.

The gouache painting is again in my "historizing" style of those years: Assuming that the cultural superiority of the Elves in Middle-earth is similar to that of  the Moors in medieval Europe, the architecture of Gondolin is - like that of my "Tuor in Vinyamar" painting - obviously inspired by the Alhambra in the Spanish city of Granada. The tilled fields are currently covered by snow, from which only barren trees rise along frozen ponds and water courses.

Only when the painting was hanging at the wall I noticed that the big tree looks from afar like a dark, knurly hand groping for the Elvish city.

Dynasties of Middle-earth

Kings, lords and other noblemen
from the First to the Third Age

The first book published by Codex Regius this year is again an analysis of certain aspects of Middle-earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels. Due to the complexities of presentation, this volume is not available as an e-book but only on paper.

Which Ruling Steward of Gondor had two wives? Was Beren the One-handed an only child? How comes that Aragorn from 'The Lord of the Rings' has actually married his aunt? And were there any kings of Dale before Bard I?

"Dynasties of Middle-earth" expands on the tables, once published on Lalaith's Middle-earth Science Pages, that comprise the genealogies of the noble Mannish houses from the First to the Fourth Age of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. They are not found like that in the Appendices of 'The Lord of the Rings' or 'The Silmarillion' but spread over various sources which sometimes conflict with each other.

Available from Amazon and subsidiaries.

More essays on Middle-earth, not available in print, may be found on Lalaith's Middle-earth Science Pages.

Layoutverbesserungen - Improved Layouts

Wie an den neuen Bildern rechts zu sehen ist, haben wir einige unserer alten Titel fortentwickelt. Die Druckvorlagen wurden jeweils nach InDesign importiert, weil sich LibreOffice doch als überfordert mit unseren komplexen Formatierungen erwiesen hat. Die Bücher haben nun ein verbessertes Layout, erkannte Satzfehler wurden korrigiert und die Auflösung der Abbildungen generell erhöht. Die folgenden deutschen Bücher sind vom Update betroffen:

• Die Vergessenen Astronauten (mit Schwarz-weiß-Abbildungen)
• Die Vergessenen Astronauten (mit farbigen Abbildungen)
• Die Reiter des Mars

As you may tell from the images on the right, we have improved some of our older titles. The preprints have been imported into InDesign because LibreOffice ultimately did not have the capacity to process our complex formats. The books now have improved layouts, known typos have been corrected and the image resolution was generally upgraded. The following English books were updated:

• The Forgotten Astronauts (with b/w images)
• The Forgotten Astronauts (with full-colour images)
• Middle-earth seen by the barbarians (Vol. 1 and 2)
• The Moon in "The Hobbit"
• Words of Westernesse
• Horsemen of Mars 

Reviews by a famous voice

My eyes popped out of their sockets and dropped on the keyboard yesterday when I examined our author's profile on Amazon.com. The two volumes of "Middle-earth seen by the barbarians" had each received a 4-star review. That is pleasant for us but would not be worth mentioning if it wasn't for the name by which the reviewer had signed.

Orson Scott Card. Yes, that Orson Scott Card! The author of "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead"! I have read more than a dozen of his books, and it is incredible to believe that he would come and read ours. But see for yourself:

Middle-earth seen by the barbarians Vol. 1 review

Middle-earth seen by the barbarians Vol. 2 review

The business has indeed changed. Only Amazon has made it possible that authors from abroad might worm their way into the secluded American book market and get reviews by a high-grade US author. No trade-publisher could have arranged for that - or if he could, it wouldn't have been honest. Amazon is facing a lot of criticism from abroad, and some of it may be justified, but they also do many things right, particularly for us Indie authors. And this, seriously, is emphasised too little these days.

I challenge the traditional publishers: Stop complaining about big bad Amazon and start competing! Develop better business models and offer better conditions to authors than they do! We might consider coming elsewhere. But for the time being, Amazon's position on the Indie market is unchallenged.

Lalaith's Middle-earth Science Pages sind umgezogen/have moved

Das heißt: Eigentlich haben sie es schon vor sieben Jahren getan. Der frühere Provider hatte aber versäumt, meine Seiten zu löschen, und schließlich stellte ich fest, dass die Einträge der gängigen Suchmaschinen noch immer auf diese Uraltversionen verwiesen. Das ist nun geregelt. Ich bitte darum alle, die noch Links auf die alte Version gesetzt haben, auf die unten stehende Adresse umzuleiten.

Or, matter of fact, they did so seven years ago. My previous provider, however, had failed to delete my website, and recently I discovered that the entries of the common search engines were still pointing at those palaeolithical versions. That has been settled now. I would like to kindly ask everyone who still has set links on the outdated version to redirect them to the address given below: 

Lalaith's Middle-earth Science Pages: http://homepage.o2mail.de/lalaith/M-earth.html