If you’ve ever wondered what’s going on in an author’s head, you can get a sense of it by following them on twitter. Here, Jeff Somers waxes eloquent on technology.
See more author tweets after the jump, and click any of them to follow on twitter yourself!
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On the subject of the talented Jim Butcher, we’ve just acquired the last two books in his traditional fantasy series.
The Codex Alera sequence is set in a colourful Roman-esque world, where Alerans fight against the aggressive races that inhabit this world and against each other, helped by their unique bonds with elemental creatures of fire, water, earth and air. It’s a brutal land at times, the action being set against a background of ambition and power as the First Lord of Alera grows old and lacks an heir. Noble houses manoeuvre to place their people in influential positions, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.
Princep’s Fury (book 5) will appear in the UK in December 2009 and First Lord’s Fury (book 6) will be out in May 2010.
And as a reminder, the first four books will appear in Orbit from May this year. There’s plenty of drama to come and click here for more on book one, plus see the fantastic cover art here!
To get you in the mood for the next eagerly-awaited instalment of the Dresden Files, we thought we’d pass on a few sample chapters of Turn Coat, out in hardback in April.
In this latest outing for Harry Dresden, professional wizard, Harry is placed in the unlikely position of helping his long-time nemesis Morgan. This is a man with “hard, steady eyes, and all the comforting, reassuring charm of a dental drill” and all he wants is for Harry to clear his name and save his life. But one false step could spell disaster for Chicago’s leading freelance wizard-for-hire. Needless to say, this is action-packed, completely un-put-downable and contains all the hallmarks of a top-notch urban-fantasy noir.
The summer sun was busy broiling the asphalt from Chicago’s streets, the agony in my head had kept me horizontal for half a day, and some idiot was pounding on my apartment door.
I answered it and Morgan, half his face covered in blood, gasped, “The Wardens are coming. Hide me. Please.”
His eyes rolled back into his skull and he collapsed.
Oh.
Super.
Up until that moment, I’d been labouring under the misapprehension that the splitting pain in my skull would be the worst thing to happen to me today.
I’d been completely wrong.
We have just bought two new books in David Farland’s fabulously imaginative Runelords series, which began with The Sum of all Men. Berserker (Runelords book eight) and Runelords book nine continue the story of a world that was torn into damaged shadows of itself in ages past, creating a multitude of worlds all corrupted by darkness. Fallion, a powerful flameweaver, is trying to banish evils from his world by uniting these broken pieces. But the healing goes badly wrong. Instead of a harmonious binding of many lands, only two worlds are merged, with the greatest ills of each vying for supremacy. Now monstrous beasts known as wyrmlings haunt the nightmares of men.
We plan to publish Berserker in September 2010, and you can catch up on all previous Runelords books by clicking here.
We’ve updated the Orbit UK Schedule page with details of our forthcoming titles for April 2009. The following Orbit books will be available from all good bookstores – high street and online alike – round about April 2nd:
You can also see a preview of Orbit UK’s March 2009 titles, or you can check out our UK publishing schedule for February to April 2009.
Award-winning Night Sessions author Ken Macleod is set to host a discussion on how computer games inform our ideas of evolution at The Drill Hall, Edinburgh this Saturday 7th February 2009.
How life-like are games like Spores and Second Life and what can they teach us about human evolution?
Ken and synthetic biologist Dr Alistair Elfick will be leading this debate, hosted by The Skinny Magazine and the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research forum.
For more information on this free, ticketed event click here.
Some exciting news for all you Prince of Nothing fans! A full chapter one extract of R. Scott Bakker’s The Judging Eye is now available to read:
The tracks between whim and brutality are many and inscrutable in Men, and though they often seem to cut across the impassable terrain of reason, in truth, it is reason that paves their way. Ever do Men argue from want to need and from need to fortuitous warrant. Ever do they think their cause the just cause. Like cats chasing sunlight thrown from a mirror, they never tire of their own delusions.
At the behest of their Holy Aspect-Emperor, the priests of the Thousand Temples harangued their congregations, and the Judges of the Ministrate scoured the land, seeking out and destroying all those who would either dispute the Truth or choose avarice over the mortal demands of the darkness to come. Everyone, whether caste-slave or caste-noble, was taught the Great Chain of Missions, how the words and works of each made possible the words and works of the other. They learned how Men, all Men, warred all the time, whether tilling fields or loving their kin. All lives, no matter how humble, were links that either fortified the Great Chain or impaired it, leading to the First Ring, the link from which the world itself hung: the Holy War against the apocalyptic designs of the Consult …
Or as it came to be called, the Great Ordeal.
Following on from Ken MacLeod‘s excellent showing on last year’s awards shortlists, we’re delighted to announce that 2009 has begun in similar fashion. We’ve just received news that his dark, near-future SF thriller, The Night Sessions, has been shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Novel!
Many congratulations to Ken and thanks to those who nominated The Night Sessions. The award will be presented over the Easter weekend at LX, the 60th National Science Fiction Convention, in Bradford. In the meantime, may I urge you to vote early and vote often!
I am delighted to say that we have just acquired Traitors’ Gate – book three in Kate Elliott’s stunningly atmospheric Crossroads sequence – in addition to the as-yet untitled book four in the series.
This is a fabulous fantasy adventure where a few key individuals play their parts in a violent struggle for land and power, against a colourful backdrop of different cultures and religions. We follow spies, temple-trained assassins and otherworldly Guardians whose function is to administer justice – until corruption turns their powers to dark purposes.
Spirit Gate and Shadow Gate are already out in mass market paperback, and Traitors’ Gate will now follow in large format paperback in September 09.
