Win a Bite of Once Bitten…
Scifichick.com is hosting a giveaway of Jennifer Rardin’s Once Bitten, Twice Shy. Stop by for a chance to win.
Author Archive
Dystopian Dreamin’
Over at BN.com, Paul Di Filippo writes about the history of SF dystopias, and says of The Electric Church:
Somers’ strategy of blending Invasion of the Body Snatchers with allusions to contemporary cults coats this profane, kickass thriller with a veneer of social commentary reminiscent of some Galaxy-era novel reinterpreted by Warren Ellis.
Orbit Authors Open up About Vampires, Iron Maiden.
Jennifer Rardin talks about her urban fantasy debut Once Bitten, Twice Shy over at Scifichick.com (The scifichick.com review is here.)
And Jeff Somers appears as part of Largehearted Boy’s “Book Notes” series with a soundtrack to The Electric Church.
Iron Maiden, Two Minutes to Midnight
The greatest. Song. Ever. Bar none. You can write action sequences to this endless dual-lead-guitar gem until your hands fall off. Fun fact: Every movie fight sequence ever filmed can be synchronized to this song. Go ahead, try it. You might need to drink a little first. It seems to help.
Unfiction Unanimous
Over at the Unfiction message board a team of players just solved the last puzzle on The Electric Church Website: unlocking the story hidden in the site, saving Ty’s old friend, and learning the secret ingredient in author Jeff Somers’ homemade moonshine. If you were one of the players at Unfiction, drop us a line at the email listed at the finish line, we’d love to hear from you. And thanks to everyone for playing!
If you haven’t poked around the site, you can still play the game – and if you get stuck, Unfiction provides a lively walkthrough.
This is our first attempt at building an ARG for a book promotion, and it was a lot of fun to put together. We’d love to know what you thought – what we did right, what we did wrong, and how we can improve next time.
For posterity, (and any players who need to find the penultimate password ) the blogad is here.
Church is Out
Thanks to everyone who trekked out to distant Red Hook last night to hear Jeff Somers reading from The Electric Church. Here’s Jeff, along with publicist Carolyn O’Keefe and editor Devi Pillai.
In other Church news, if you’ve been surfing blogs you may have spotted the ads for the book with a mysterious flashing bar code. Adrants posted about the campaign – which includes devious puzzles, Pandora chatbots, and hidden narratives – here.
Join us for Church this evening
If you’re in Brooklyn this evening, come join us down in Red Hook at Rocky Sullivan’s (gmap) to hear Jeff Somers read from The Electric Church. Jeff’s a great reader, Rocky Sullivan’s is a fun bar, and you’ll have significantly more fun than you would at yet another panel on the state of book reviewing.
8:00 PM on Monday, Sept. 24
Rocky Sullivan’s
34 Van Dyke St. (corner of Dwight St.)
Redhook, Brooklyn
718-246-8050
New Converts to The Electric Church
Bookgasm digs The Electric Church in a big way. Reviewer Bruce Grossman calls the book “an action movie for the literary set”, but suggests that we got the blurb wrong on the galley.
Don’t believe the back-cover blurb that pegs Jeff Somers’ THE ELECTRIC CHURCH as “BLADE RUNNER meets KILL BILL.” They got one of the movies wrong, in my opinion. It should read “BLADE RUNNER meets THE DIRTY DOZEN, with a dash of Sergio Leone.
(Our crack researchers find that The Dirty Dozen’s Jim Brown appeared in Mars Attacks with Pam Grier, who starred in Jackie Brown which connects in about a dozen ways to Kill Bill, so we’re calling it square.)
But Bruce gets to the heart of what we all find so exciting about The Electric Church — it’s smart, fast-paced, SF that evokes Bladerunner plus your favorite action movie.
Over at Scifichick, Angela calls the book “ a dark, intense and suspenseful novel that had me on the edge of my seat.”
Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, chatted with Jeff about the book and the publishing process.
And if you haven’t visited the-electric-church.com yet, now’s a good time. Enterprising readers around the web have already started unraveling the mysteries of the site, so if you get stuck, some clever googling should yield some hints.
Do not joke with Brian Ruckley about haggis.
Over at Nethspace, Brian Ruckley responds gamely and hilariously to the “Haggis Question.”
“You do know every year in Scotland several tourists who are flippant about haggis get hunted down and slaughtered like curs by howling, kilt-clad, claymore-wielding mobs, don’t you? It’s virtually a national sport.”
Read the whole interview here.
Though the world of Winterbirth was partly inspired by Brian’s native Scottish Highlands, it is (so far, at least) haggis-free.
Over at Fantasy Book Critic US readers can enter for a chance to win a copy of Winterbirth, along with a set of Orbit US launch month titles.
Cliffhanging
Bookgasm.com just posted a fantastic review of Karen Miller’s The Innocent Mage.
It’s a rare book indeed that after 640 pages, it ends on a cliffhanger, and you sit back and go, “Damn, I wish I had the second book in the series to start.” But that’s exactly what I thought after plowing through Karen Miller’s marvelous The Innocent Mage… read more >>
To all you readers dangling from the edge of that cliff, we cry from below: hold on! The second book in the series, The Awakened Mage, will be in stores this October. If you haven’t read the book yet, you can find chapter one right here.
Introducing The Electric Church
We’ve told you about Jeff Somers’ compulsory blog (*), now check out the-electric-church.com , a front for the actual Electric Church that purports to be an “official” book site. The site includes a puzzle of such devious design most of the Orbit team is convinced no one will solve it. (Jeff and I have more faith in the amateur codebreakers out there) Visit the site to take a crack at it. Or just poke around and chat with a Monk-bot to learn more about Dennis Squalor. You can also read the first chapter of The Electric Church here.
(*) Jeff Somers’ blog is not actually compulsory (but then we would say that, wouldn’t we.)