STORM FRONT by Jim Butcher: a Dresden Files reread

Mark Yon has been a reviewer and web administrator at SFFWorld, one of the world’s biggest genre forum sites, for nearly ten years. He has also been on the David Gemmell Awards organisation committee for the last two years. In this series of rereads, Mark will guide us below through the whole of Jim Butcher’s fabulous Dresden Files series as we count down to the new hardback at the end of July.
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And here’s where we commence the series.

Storm Front starts in typical film noir mode. With the sentence ‘I heard the mailman approach my office door, half an hour earlier than usual’, we are introduced to Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. And he’s the only person in Chicago’s director enquiries listed under ‘Wizard’.

However, this Harry is not the ‘Potter’ type. As we see from his advertisement, his stock in trade is: ‘Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Reasonable rates. No love potions, endless purses or other entertainment’. Harry is more of your paranormal dealing, insoluble crime-solving type of guy, and the only wizard used as a consultant by the Chicago Police Special Investigations Department. They need him when dealing with the demons and ghouls that live in the strange other-world of the Nevernever.

Harry is in his typically seedy office when a phone call from Chicago’s SI chief, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, involves him in a double murder investigation. The male victim is a bodyguard for the local mobster, Johnny Marcone. The other victim is Jennifer Stanton, an escort from the Velvet Room, a gentleman’s club run by one of Chicago’s vampire families.

Things get really interesting when Harry discovers that the murders involve black magic, and a black mage is behind them. And more worryingly, though Harry doesn’t know who it is, the black mage knows him. And is out to get him.

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Like the Dragon’s Path? Good, because there’s more…

We are very pleased to announce that we have acquired two more books from Daniel Abraham– the as yet untitled books four and five of The Dagger and the Coin. Orbit will be publishing the entire series over the coming years and we are committed to supporting and building on the great success that Daniel has already achieved with the launch of The Dragon’s Path.

Daniel Abraham’s The Dragon’s Path is out in stores now and the rave reviews keep coming in…

“Daniel Abraham’s new novel cements his status as the literary successor to George R. R. Martin.” — Grasping for the Wind

“Comforting yet complex, The Dragon’s Path is a textbook example of how to do meat-and-potatoes fantasy right.”– The A.V. Club

“A pleasure for Abraham’s legion of fans.”— Kirkus

“Prepare to be shocked, startled, and entertained.”— Locus

“With a deft and light hand, Abraham questions and explores the fantasy world assumptions most authors take for granted, telling an enjoyable and genuinely innovative adventure story along the way.”— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“The Dragon’s Path is a tremendous novel”– A Dribble of Ink

“The Dragon’s Path is without a doubt one of the most anticipated fantasy books of the year… Abraham’s latest featured in the ‘Most Anticipated’ lists right up there with the new Abercrombie or Rothfuss.”–LEC Book Reviews

“Daniel Abraham has been a kind of King-in-Waiting in the fantasy genre for the past few years… Now he’s back with an epic new fantasy series, Dagger and Coin, that might indeed put him on the throne.”– Jeff Vandermeer

“(A++) A  first superb installment in a series that has established itself already in my top level of current ongoing fantasy series and moreover one I easily see becoming one of my top-top if the promise implied here continues to be fulfilled.”–Fantasy Book Critic

“Even in a year stuffed fat with triple A releases (Abercrombie, Rothfuss, GRRM, et al) The Dragon’s Path is sure to appear on many people’s “Best-Of” lists for 2011. I know it will appearing on mine.”–Literary Musings

“This is a fantastic start to a new series, and I loved it!”–Reading Fairy Tales

Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi – Part 1

Paolo Bacigalupi is an author that needs no introduction: his debut novel THE WINDUP GIRL won a host of awards, including a Hugo and a Nebula. His second book – a young adult novel called SHIP BREAKER – will be published in paperback in July by Orbit’s sister imprint, Atom.

Paolo kindly took some time out from his busy schedule to answer a few questions about his writing.

In this first part, Paolo discusses the inspiration behind THE WINDUP GIRL and the concern he feels about a possible future where fossil fuels have run out.

What was the original inspiration for THE WINDUP GIRL? What was the spark that made you think I have to tell this story?

Honestly, it wasn’t just one thing. I originally wrote a short story that was set in Bangkok but it was so hairy and convoluted that it didn’t work.  A friend of mine commented that if felt so packed with ideas that is was a bit of a dwarf star, and she suggested that I was actually working on a novel. At the time, I was horrified, because I’d had four novels rejected previously, and was pretty determined to only write short stories, ever after.  So I took the most interesting aspect of the world and wrote a different story (one that really was a short story) called “The Calorie Man.” That story utilized some of the ideas about peak oil and agribusiness and GMOs that I was interested in, and that was that. Later, I was looking to write another story, and I’d always found the character of Tan Hock Seng interesting from that original short story, and so I went and wrote  a piece of his back story, and that became “Yellow Card Man.” (more…)

Feminine Fantasy

Anyone who’s ever read my books will discover, perhaps to their surprise, that I tend not to write heroines.  And sure, this is a habit I’m currently in the process of breaking, but as it’s been such a long-running thing, I figured I’d take this time to talk about why.

Women and fantasy have always had a curious and complicated relationship.  On the one hand, we’re a very large part of the reader’s market, but on the other hand, we tend not to embrace the geekiness in a particularly overt way.  Certain aspects of the genre – zombies and spaceships, mainly – are still considered largely a male-dominated preserve, while others – women having unwise relationships with vampires, for example – rake in the female readers like hungry pigeons to breadcrumbs in the park.  That said, at those few science fiction and fantasy events I’ve been to where writers are invited to mingle en mass, I’m regularly reminded of just how few female writers there are in this genre – or at least, how few turn up for the free crisps and bits of cheese on a stick.  As a girl discovering her innate geek, I did indeed endure those painful teenage years where the idea that I might like science fiction and fantasy books somehow made me outside the accepted norm of youthful female behaviour.  The cliché of the female fantasy fan is hardly a glorious one, often implying pale skin, bad hair, a dress sense worthy of a mortician and quite possibly a thing for Star Trek, only two of which I actually had – the dodgy complexion and bad hair – and that through too much time spent on the London underground and not enough sun.  Even now, when I announce that I am an avid fantasy reader, I often find myself on the receiving end of comments from my non-genre counterparts along the lines of, ‘oh, like elves and stuff?’ and the explanation of why this is a ridiculous way of understanding the genre usually takes more time than we have.  To go that one step further and declare that I’m not just a reader, but I write this stuff, for actual cash as well as glee, tends to produce an expression that I can only really summarise as ‘does not compute’ and usually a hasty retreat from further conversation on the subject.
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Orbit Seeks Assistance!

Your next desk?

Want to see how the sausage is made? Learn all the dark secrets of editorial meetings? Live life high on the hog like all of us publishing big wigs? Well, now is your chance.

Orbit US is seeking an editorial assistant to join the team in our New York office. We are looking for motivated, engaged, and committed individuals who want to pursue a career in genre publishing. Publishing experience is a big plus, but not required. What is required is an enthusiasm for genre fiction, a near pathological attention to detail, and truly supernatural organizational skills.

If you are interested, apply here.

Orbit Podcast Episode 3, with Daniel Abraham

This week Jack Womack chats with Daniel Abraham, author of THE DRAGON’S PATH, which is out now. Subjects covered include economics and fantasy,  warcraft and tradecraft, sympathetic villains, and a writing trick Daniel learned from video-games.

You can listen to the full episode below, or subscribe on itunes or the RSS feed.

Love Hurts

Love Hurts is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in Songs of Love and Death, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois). It takes place between Turn Coat and Changes.

Gardner Dozois has a bunch of awards for his anthologies because he’s good at them, and I leapt at his invitation to contribute to the anthology he was working on with George R. R. Martin, originally titled Star-Crossed Lovers. Despite my enthusiasm, finding a starting point for a Dresden story was sort of a puzzler for me, since Harry Dresden might be in the top three Star-Influence-Free lovers in the whole contemporary-fantasy genre. How was I going to bring him into a story with a theme like that?

Answer: Get him into the thick of things next to Murphy when seemingly random love spells are running amok through the city. After that, all I had to do was apply his usual streak of luck and cackle madly to myself while typing. The title of the anthology changed to Songs of Love and Death after I had written the story, which is probably a good thing. Otherwise, I may have tried to find a way to fit a death-metal battle of the bands into the margins somewhere. No one deserves that.

How-To Video: Equations of Life Poster

So I have written before about how I love the Simon Morden trilogy that has started hitting shelves. Samuil Petrovitch is my favorite kind of snarling sarcastic anti-hero, and a genius rocket scientist to boot. My kind of guy. And I especially love Orbit for letting me be a bit daring with the cover design and rock these really graphic optical illusion covers.

So what you don’t know is that the initial design was even crazier. I wanted to hide the cover text IN the optical illusions. Slight legibility problem, I admit, for a teeny book cover…but FABULOUS for a poster. And since I know you guys love these how-to videos, I screen-captured my process so you too can make your own Editable-Text Optical Illusion Poster…and melt the retinas of all your friends. After the jump you can even download the Illustrator file I used, and add your own text. (more…)

Something Borrowed

Something Borrowed is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, edited by P.N. Elrod). The story takes place between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty.

I wrote this for the very first anthology in which I’d ever been invited to participate. I’d met Pat Elrod at a convention and thought she was quite a cool person, and when she asked me to take part in her anthology, I was more than happy to do so.

When I wrote this story, I was thinking that the Alphas (a group of werewolves who often provide great backup for Harry at difficult moments) hadn’t gotten nearly enough stage time in the series thus far. It therefore seemed like a good opportunity to give them some more attention, while at the same time showing the progression of their lives since their college days, which I felt was best demonstrated by Billy and Georgia’s wedding.

Inane trivia: While I was in school writing the first three books of the Dresden Files, my wife, Shannon, watched Ally McBeal in the evenings, often while I was plunking away at a keyboard. I didn’t pay too much attention to the show, and it took me years to realize I had unconsciously named Billy and Georgia after those characters in Ally McBeal. Who knew? TV really does rot your brain!