What? Three covers at once?! Yes, we’re doing another 3-in-3-months release starting this October, and the series is awesome. The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, and The Spirit Eater are the first three books in the Legend of Eli Monpress series by Rachel Aaron, and be prepared, this story is seriously habit-forming. And we’re super excited to be giving you a big dose of Eli Monpress and his misfit crew all at once. (more…)
I made my first trip to the UK at the end of March. Before the volcanic ash problems, but during the British Airways strike. Is it always so hard to get into (and out of) the UK? I hope not, because I really would like to return! (more…)
It’s nice to be at the cutting edge. Well, of my own progress as an SF writer, at least. One of the great strengths of the SF field is the way concepts and tropes are in constant flux, being shared and tweaked, refurbed and upgraded, modded and galvanised, rivetted for the steampunk milieu, or even just given go-faster stripes. Of course, some carping cynics will say that this is also a major weakness since it encourages lazy writing and a lack of speculative rigour, and I have to say that there’s a lot to that.
For my own part I must admit culpability in employing certain well-known, off-the-shelf notions like AIs, FTL drives, colony worlds, ancient aliens and so forth. But I do like to think that I have contributed something new with my own take on hyperspace. This is where hyperspace (as well as being a contiguous plenum which permits FTL travel) consists of levels upon levels upon deeper levels, each one being the compacted remains of an entire universe, piled one on top of another, sedimentary layers of dead universes that descend into the primal depths of reality.
(more…)
I know all of you are scifi/fantasy geeks (or else why are you here, really), but not all of you are art geeks as well, so you may not have heard of Spectrum, the annual competition for contemporary scifi/fantasy/horror art…but to those of us you might classify as “geek artists”, inclusion in the Spectrum annual is a big deal. So I am thrilled to announce that 3 of our books made the annual:
Black Ships by Jo Graham (painting by John Jude Palencar)
Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler (digital illustration by Sharon Tancredi)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (digital illustration by Cliff Nielsen)
There’s an interesting post by Roger Ebert about how video games can never be art over here. I generally find Ebert to be pretty dependable when it comes to a lot of artistic matters, and back when he was in his prime it often felt he had no peer. But there are a lot of reasons to doubt his position on this: he seems to think video games haven’t evolved past 1989, and are still mostly flashing lights with attack moves and points, and he apparently doesn’t hold much interest in the medium as a whole. I’m not sensing a lot of willingness in his argument to explore the potential and possibilities of what he’s attacking.
More to the point, I think that any attempt to label any medium (or substance, or tool) as validating or invalidating its product as art is flawed from the start. Art’s an inherently subjective and personal thing. We’re all hearing different frequencies. While one person might listen to a stool scraping across a linoleum floor and hear only an irritating whine, another might hear a lonely moan that’s reminiscent of a car’s brakes on a night street. (more…)
So I was reading entries on some website or other a while ago, writing advice, you know – all these detailed posts about developing the world and the characters. The advice concerned making out these detailed character sketches – not just notes about hair color and love interests and pets, but all this stuff about past and present conflicts and insecurities and on and on. Hmm, I said. Should I be doing that? (more…)
This lovely Monday we have an awesome cover for a book I really enjoyed reading and working on, The Fallen Blade, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. The fabulous Larry Rostant provided the very atmospheric imagery, and I had obvious fun playing with the type. With both the image and the type, we wanted to clearly evoke renaissance Venice, but portray the strong main character and dark adventure of the story.
The Fallen Blade is the best of both worlds: an alternative historic fiction set in a renaissance Venice at the height of her power, populated by supernatural creatures and backstabbing political intrigue, AND a fast-moving fantasy adventure tale of vampires, werewolves, assassins, and pirates. Jon Courtenay Grimwood does such a fantastic job of describing Venice that you feel a really strong sense of geography and atmosphere. I was just in Venice in January and I was really impressed with how true the historical and geographical details felt, and it makes following the characters and story weaved around this framework all the more immediate. I can’t wait to see where the story is going to go in the next book.
I’ve written seven published novels. Even though my novels are short by modern standards, that’s still a lot of pages, a lot of characters, a lot of worlds and ideas. Inevitably, it leads people to remark on my creativity. “How do you think of this stuff?” they’ll ask, usually incredulous and in awe of my amazing talents. My response usually goes something like this:
“Avert your eyes, mortal. For I am a blessed demigod with muses whispering sweetly in my ears.” Then I usually throw a smoke bomb, ninja-style, and vanish, leaving the questioners to ponder the imponderable. Sometimes, if I’m in the proper mood, I’ll leave a haiku poem folded in a paper crane and maybe an autographed photo emblazoned with the wise words, keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars! I’m cool like that. (more…)
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Kevin J. Anderson has been announced as a finalist in the Colorado Book Awards. The promotional poster (at left) clearly shows THE EDGE OF THE WORLD on top. Not only that, but the two big mountains in the background – we’re assured – are the Maroon Bells, and Kevin has climbed both of them. (Note that in real life these mountains are far taller than a pile of books.)
Congratulations to Kevin, and for everyone who enjoyed THE EDGE OF THE WORLD don’t miss the sequel, THE MAP OF ALL THINGS, coming in June.
When Harlan Ellison was asked “Where do you get your ideas from?” he famously answered “Schenectady.” Ellison was commenting on the absurdity of pinning down a process as ephemeral, multi-dimensional and just plain murky as the origin of an idea. However, if the question had been modified to exclude the final word from the sentence then Ellison’s answer would work for me.
I’ve lived in Schenectady. It’s an industrial city on the Mohawk River in Upstate New York. It’s famous for being the site of the Schenectady Massacre of 1690, where French and Native American forces attacked the fledgling settlement at midnight, burning it to the ground and slaying sixty men, women and children who were still in their bedclothes, and also for being the place where Thomas Edison chose to headquarter his fledgling General Electric Company. Schenectady is built on land that was once the territory of the Mohawk nation, and its name comes from the Mohawk phrase, “over the pine plains.”
I wrote a great chunk of Watcher of the Dead within the city’s limits. And as the answer to the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” is always “Where I was physically located at that moment the idea occurred to me,” then my ideas are officially from Schenectady. (more…)
