Congratulations to Karen Miller, whose second novel, The Awakened Mage (out this week), has charged straight to the top of the SFF paperback bestseller charts in the UK. In the US, both The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage are among the Top 5 mass-market fantasy bestsellers. Karen is very happy — and so are we!
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.
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.
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.
Scifichick has just posted a fabulous review for Once Bitten, Twice Shy, out from Orbit next month in the US and the UK.
“Blending some of my favorite elements: fantasy, espionage, mystery, action, and just a touch of romance, makes a recipe for one extremely entertaining story.” more…
The love for Jaz Parks doesn’t stop there, though. Be sure to check out Living Read Girl, who calls Jennifer Rardin “a new scream queen on the scene.”
And check out Jennifer’s blog at www.jenniferrardin.com
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.
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
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.
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.
Orbit’s first two releases in the US, Lilith Saintcrow’s The Devil’s Right Hand and Karen Miller’s The Innocent Mage, have charged up the fantasy mass-market bestseller lists to #3 and #4 respectively. A great start — and great excitement at Orbit HQ!
