Archive for All posts

GHOST STORY launch and competition

We’ve been counting the days until we can unleash Jim Butcher’s Ghost Story (UK | ANZ) onto the world — and publication day is at last upon us. And you can catch the first four chapters here before you rush out, waving your arms around, to get the new book!

We also have some great GIVEAWAYS, in the shape of five signed hardback cover proofs and five A3 print-outs of front cover artwork. Full terms/conditions plus pictures of the great stuff itself are here and to enter just fill in the small form below this post and click submit. And it’s for UK residents only! Lastly, if you didn’t catch the great mini interview with Jim Butcher on Harry Dresden, plus rereads of the entire series, these are here.

Early reviews have been rightfully amazing too, and we couldn’t agree more …

The Dresden Files defines all odds by getting better and better … If you love Urban Fantasy drop everything to catch up now. There is no other UF series that comes close”
GavReads.co.uk

“Ghost Story is a wonderful addition to the Dresden Files series … one of the most consistently well-written urban fantasy series in existence”
LoveVampires.com

“This stunning, exciting series entry with its heart-stopping action will shock and thrill”
Library Journal

‘Fans will be gratified … plot twists and high-stakes combat with an assortment of supernatural beings”
Publishers Weekly

 

Cover Launch: The Troupe

The Troupe by Shirley Jackson Award winner Robert Jackson Bennett hits shelves February 2012. When you have an intelligent combination of thriller, horror, and Americana…you end up with a book that stands on its own.

I’m going to write more about the process and how I got to the final design. But since we’re so excited about launching the cover, here it is today!

After the jump see the cover full-size with a teaser…

(more…)

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of comedy

Tom Holt’s comic fantasy Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages (UK | US | ANZ) was published recently and has delighted reviewers already. With some trepidation, we asked Tom the classic author interview question: where the heckers does he get his ideas from?

“One disadvantage I suffer from is that I don’t lead a funny life. Hilarious things don’t happen to me, which means I have to make it all up. Whoever arranges these things sees to it that somebody else gets all the good material – the wrong suitcase picked off the airport carousel, the hilarious mistaken-identity incident, all that – while I’m left with days that go something like –

7.00am: wake up
7.15am: drive to smallholding; feed pigs; feed chickens; feed pigs; feed cows; cut firewood
10.30am – 3.30pm: sit in front of computer trying to think of funny stuff
3.35pm as 7.15am
8.00am – 2.00pm as 10.30am

 And so on, day after day (except in winter, when it’s still as dark as a bag at 7am), with never a hint of a free joke or a spontaneously-occurring outbreak of hilarity that I can pick up, shove under my coat, take home and effortlessly convert into marketable prose. The only break in the routine comes when I have to dispose of the body of the latest person foolish enough to tell me about some comic incident in their own life, with the recommendation (usually the last thing they ever say) that I ought to put it in one of my books. (more…)

The Future of Yesterday

The last ever space shuttle mission landed on Thursday morning in Florida, and it’s in light of this that I post this blog entry.

It’s mostly an excuse to send you to this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II7QBLt36xo

… which is a self-proclaimed love-letter to the wonder that has been the last thirty years of space travel, on which subject I have a proper rant on my own blog: www.kategriffin.net

… and which here provoked me to have a mull about how the past has written about the future!  This is, after all, a place for science fiction and fantasy writers to ramble, and what is this genre for if not to think about The Way Things Might Be?  (more…)

Jim Butcher on Harry Dresden

We are enormously excited that Ghost Story is out THIS THURSDAY and we hope a lot of you are too!!!

To start launch week on a real high note and to keep you going for just a few days longer, we asked Jim Butcher himself a few questions about his biggest creation…

Did you always know Harry’s grizzly fate (thinking of his ghostly nature by Ghost Story) or do his adventures evolve for you organically as you write?

Oh, I knew from the get-go that I was going to kill him at some point — and then make him solve his own murder. That’s just how the universe seems to treat the poor guy. : ) There are some story events that are fixed in my mind — mostly the large-scale stuff, such as the war with the Red Court, the rise of the Fomor, and the oncoming events of the story’s endgame. The fluid organic things tend to be very personal matters — Dresden’s friends, his family, and especially his romantic relationships.

Do you sometimes find yourself slipping into the Harry Dresden character when say at the supermarket? What would he buy?!

Nah, I’m not Harry Dresden and not much like him, except maybe when he’s screwing up somehow. : ) Getting into character is something that happens after several minutes at the keyboard, and it doesn’t really intrude on the rest of my life.

Dresden buys bachelor chow — things you can prepare by popping in the oven for a few minutes, or maybe by boiling a little water — and which are not too expensive. He’s never really had an expansive budget. : )

Who is your favourite minor character and why?

Butters, I think. He was supposed to be a one-off character when I first designed him, a kind of wacky ME that provided a little color and humor while I was dishing out some grisly details about a murder. But I liked the guy so much, I had to give him a job, and now he’s become part of the regular cast. Butters is such a contrast of clueless and spooky-smart, and while he’s never going to be a studly hero, he’s never going to leave a friend in the lurch, either. I just like the guy.

What’s the strangest question you’ve ever been asked about the Dresden Files series?

“How do I get in touch with the real White Council?”

Followed closely by a statement: “I’m from the real White Council, and we aren’t pleased with what you’re doing.”

Finally, could you give us one little-known fact about Harry and his world?

Harry loves horses! He doesn’t get to ride much anymore, but when he was living with Ebenezar on his farm in the Ozarks, they went riding all the time. Granted, given his size, it might be fair to say that horses don’t like him nearly as much as he likes them, but I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous about the opinions of Equine-Americans.

Thanks Jim!

Jim Butcher’s all-new Dresden Files novel is out this week (27th July). If you haven’t already met Harry Dresden, check out our quick rereads to the rest of the series below:

STORM FRONT
FOOL MOON
GRAVE PERIL
SUMMER KNIGHT
DEATH MASKS
BLOOD RITES
DEAD BEAT
PROVEN GUILTY
WHITE NIGHT
SMALL FAVOUR
TURN COAT
CHANGES

CHANGES 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 Ghost Story at the end of July.
*************************************************************************************

Changes: a Dresden Files novel by Jim Butcher.

Here is, as the title would suggest, where everything changes. This is the Dresden equivalent of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, or of the Battle of Minas Tirith. This is one where Jim rips up what has gone before, and makes, in many ways, a fresh start. Many of our previous reference points are removed here — this book really does transform things in the Dresden world.

As I’ve said before, the Dresden books have a reputation of starting with a bang. This one is pretty outstanding:
‘I answered the phone, no big deal, until I heard the message: ‘They’ve taken our daughter.’

The phone call is from Susan Rodriguez, his ex-girlfriend who was turned into a vampire by the Red Court back in Death Masks. Harry is told about the daughter he didn’t know, Maggie, kept in secret from Harry for her protection. And then that Arianna Ortega, Duchess of the Red Court, has found out about her, kidnapped her and plans to use Maggie against Harry. Arianna is out for revenge following the death of her husband, an action precipitated by Harry.

Over the next three days Harry’s task, with Susan and half-vampire Martin, is to find his daughter and save her from Queen Arianna and the evil vampires!

Simple? Well, when Arianna initiates the kidnapping, she also simultaneously proposes a peace settlement between the vampire Red Court and the Wizards: something that would be greatly desired by the exhausted Wizard Council. Thus given a choice of saving Harry’s daughter or ending the war, the Wizards’ activities seem most concerned with ending the War – exactly Arianna’s point. (more…)

San Diego Comic Con!

It’s here – the annual crush of awesome that is San Diego Comic Con. This year Orbit is hunkering down in booth #1116, right across from the fabulous Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. After the jump you’ll find some Orbit events and programs you won’t want to miss.  And be sure to come by the Orbit booth #1116 to say hello – we’ve got lots of fun stuff to share!
(more…)

A look behind the cover art of THE KEY TO CREATION

THE KEY TO CREATION has now been released in trade paperback, completing Kevin J. Anderson’s TERRA INCOGNITA trilogy – which in Kevin’s own words is “A complex and sprawling tale of sailing ships and sea monsters, intrepid explorers voyaging to uncharted lands, and a religious war that has thrown two continents against each other.”

If that doesn’t sound extremely cool, we don’t know what does. If you’re itching for some exciting swords-and-sails action, then rejoice because the first two books in the trilogy – THE EDGE OF THE WORLD and THE MAP OF ALL THINGS – are readily available in mass market paperback. So if you like your sea monsters, quite frankly you’ve got no excuse.

To mark the completion of the TERRA INCOGNITA trilogy, we asked cover artist Lee Gibbons a few questions about the wonderful illustrations he came up with for the books.

Can you tell us a little about the way you approached illustrating the TERRA INCOGNITA series? Were there any particular influences that you drew upon?

When I was first commissioned to produce these illustrations, Peter Cotton the designer had already decided on the layout he wanted: two elements separated by the type. It was always planned to have a scene at the bottom of the page and a close up of a piece of shiny navigational equipment at the top, linked by the map in the background.

Two things I had to bear in mind from the brief were that this had to appeal to both the UK and US markets and also to downplay the fantasy elements in the maritime scene, instead emphasising exploration and adventure. To this end, I drew on the influence of Victorian maritime paintings, which I have always had a soft spot for.

By the time we arrived at book two things had got a bit free and easy as regards the fantasy content! I was keen to have the map background continue across the three covers, but have to admit that with the type in place you would be hard pressed to notice that on the final printed covers. (more…)

Swearing, Sex and Fantasy Ale

“Phat off, you molking bucket of steaming clang!” Right. So what’s that all about, then?

My first fantasy novel Dusk (published by Bantam in the USA, and winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2007), polarised opinion. I think that’s a good thing – I’d rather have people love or hate my books, as opposed to being mostly indifferent. And some of the criticism about the book focussed on the sex and swearing it contained. It was suggested that, because it was a fantasy, I should have thought up new swearwords. But I argued that if that were the case, I’d also have to think up new words for hill, and saddle, and kidney.

I stick by that now, and though Echo City is, of course, a purely imaginary world, it’s inhabited by very human characters. A fantasy novel needs distinctly human characters to make it work. So they drink Mino Mont ale and, if they can afford/steal it, Marcellan wine; they swear when they’re angry or scared; and they have sex. Indeed, it’s not glib to say that there’s a hand-job in the novel that is a pivotal plot-point. So watch out for that one when you’re reading it.

I love swearing. It’s effective in real life and in my writing, and can be cathartic, a venting of angry steam. I love ale – dark, light, summer ales, heavy winter warmers. And I love … well, doesn’t everyone?

So in order to create characters that feel human to the human readers of Echo City, I wanted them to come across as people you could almost know. Admittedly, some of the inhabitants of Echo City wouldn’t look at home anywhere we know. But I’d really like to sit down for a beer with Nadielle, and Malia, and Gorham. We’d put the worlds to rights, both mine and theirs. I’d talk about “f**king phone hackers”, and they’d talk about “bastard border spites and Marcellans”. And in ale and swearing, we’d find a common language.

Cover Launch: EXOGENE by T. C. McCarthy

Mid-series covers are at the same time a relief and a challenge. On one hand you already have the general look and feel of the art established, so a lot of the trial and error is skipped. Unless something has gone terribly wrong you are usually commissioning art from the same artist, and they start working a lot closer to the target. The type style is usually set, and overall it’s kind of fun to be able to play within those constraints. However you also can’t play it too safe and end up with boring art, or at least, art that isn’t pushed to its full potential. Because sometimes, especially in the case of a new author, the second cover is even more important than the first—you want to really show this author is establishing a strong series and the world is something you want to be drawn into. I know a lot of people—in fact, I am married to one—that won’t start a series if just the first book is out. (For example, he’s recently got into Game of Thrones on HBO and was really interested in reading the books until he heard it wasn’t a completed series…and yes, these are the fights that go on in my house) Thus, it’s really important to make mid-series covers as awesome, if not MORE awesome, than the first cover.

This brings me to Exogene, the next book in T. C. McCarthy’s Subterrene War series (Germline is the first, which just came out and is getting great reviews). Steve Stone did a fabulous job on the Germline cover – it was the perfect tone – obviously military SF but the attitude tells you there is something deeper going on here. Of course, this makes the Exogene cover harder. For one, a female lead character which means you are immediately fighting certain clichés, and (I don’t want to give away anything here) she is a character full of contradictions. We wanted to capture her maybe right on the edge between blind belief and doubt. A soldier still heroic, but perhaps with just the slightest uncertainty beginning to show on her face. And add to that delicate proposition the fact that it’s a beautiful young woman who also happens to be bald. And then make her look like a convincing soldier. Not an easy task. But in my opinion, yet again, he nailed it.

After the jump, see the cover next to Germline and get a teaser…. (more…)