There are three books on my desk as I write this, stacked neatly one atop the other. They’re to the left of my laptop, just in my eyeline. I placed them there yesterday in a moment of pride, as well as expectation that they would be a useful prompt for the writing I need to do today; but I’m beginning to suspect that their presence may not be entirely helpful. There’s a tension about them I didn’t expect, a suspensefulness despite their familiarity. They are the books of the ®Evolution: Gemsigns, Binary and Regeneration. They’re my books: I wrote them, and these are my precious first edition trade copies, with which I will never part. Continue reading
Jo Fletcher Books
New Books (June-July)
Featuring: John Joseph Adams, Andy Abramowitz, Edgar Cantero, Joshua Cohen, Bennett R. Coles, Ctein, Dennis Dunaway, Matthew Dunn, Vaughn Entwhistle, Michael R. Fletcher, Teresa Frohock, Caseen Gaines, John Gilstrap, Ed Greenwood, Janet Groth, Paul Kane, Marshall Ryan Maresca, John Niven, Tom Pollock, Ronda Rousey, John Sandford, Charles Stross, Neely Tucker, Jon Wallace, Fran Wilde, Daniel H. Wilson Continue reading
Guest Post: “The Undertaking” by Snorri Kristjansson
Have you ever done something you kind of didn‘t quite believe you would manage to do, even while you were doing it? Finished a marathon, wrestled a crocodile, asked someone out in sixth grade? These are the achievements that will come to define your life. We all have them – times when we’ve pushed ourselves to the limit of what we thought we could do, and pushed so hard that we popped out on the other side. Sometimes, of course, it ends in screaming and loss of limbs – but occasionally you actually succeed. Calibrating slightly for levels of adrenaline and fear of immediate death when attempting these feats, underneath is the same feeling of detached wonder and “Whoa. This is happening” – and it starts like this. Continue reading
Guest Post: “On Writing – I do it My Way” by Sue Tingey
I would imagine if you ask half a dozen writers about how they get their ideas and how they go about putting them down on paper you would get a half a dozen different answers. For me, it changes from project to project. On the whole though, there are certain definites to my writing regime and process.
I try to be disciplined about my writing as that’s the only way it works for me. I write every weekday morning without fail from 7 a.m. until 8.30 a.m., and sometimes later when I’ve got caught up in a scene and forgotten the time. Fortunately I have a very supportive boss – at least he hasn’t sacked me yet! In these one and a half hours I re-read and edit the work I wrote the previous day to get me back into the flow and then I aim for a count of between 700 and 1000 words. If I manage more, I’m happy. If I write less than 700 – well, let’s not go there. Meeting the daily word count keeps me focused and if I wasn’t so strict on myself I would probably flounder and not get anything finished. Continue reading
Guest Post: “Juggling YA and Adult Fantasy Writing” by David Hair
I read a bit of everything (except romance), but fantasy has always been my big love. I blame that on my introduction to Tolkien at an impressionable (teen-)age. Since then, I’ve been through all of the usual suspects as I explored this amazing genre. I knew I wanted to write a genre novel, but it took a while to overcome a lack of confidence, and a lack of time.
What excited me most were epic fantasies: big juicy stories with apocalyptic plot-lines, huge casts and many complex threads, and a whole imagined world to explore. When I did find time to write however, my best idea happened to be better suited to a teenage/YA audience. Growing up in New Zealand, the son of a truck driver who thought nothing of driving his family for hours to visit friends and relatives, I saw a lot of the countryside. Being enamoured of mythology and history, as I stared out of the windows, I began to populate the landscape with historical places and mythic creatures. The result was The Bone Tiki, which won Best First Book at the New Zealand Children’s Book awards in 2009, and had some commercial success. That opened up the opportunity for me to write sequels, the sum of which (six books) collectively became known as The Aotearoa Series. I wrote most of those books while living in New Delhi, India. My wife works for Immigration New Zealand, and was posted to India for four years. Whilst there, I also wrote The Return of Ravana, a four book YA series set in India. Continue reading
Guest Review: TRAITOR’S BLADE by Sebastien de Castell (Jo Fletcher Books)
Another perspective on the first Greatcoats novel
The King is dead, the Greatcoats have been disbanded, and Falcio Val Mond and his fellow magistrates Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as bodyguards for a nobleman who refuses to pay them. Things could be worse, of course. Their employer could be lying dead on the floor while they are forced to watch the killer plant evidence framing them for the murder. Oh wait, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Now a royal conspiracy is about to unfold in the most corrupt city in the world. A carefully orchestrated series of murders that began with the overthrow of an idealistic young king will end with the death of an orphaned girl and the ruin of everything that Falcio, Kest, and Brasti have fought for. But if the trio want to foil the conspiracy, save the girl, and reunite the Greatcoats, they’ll have to do it with nothing but the tattered coats on their backs and the swords in their hands, because these days every noble is a tyrant, every knight is a thug, and the only thing you can really trust is a traitor’s blade.
Reviewed by Ryan Frye
I began reading Sebastien De Castell’s Traitor’s Blade late one night and the next thing I knew, it was even later, and I was already a fair chunk into the book. This is one of those books that grabbed my attention immediately and made it easy for me to submerse myself into this new fantasy world and all its trappings. De Castell does this with quick, action packed pacing and a first person narrative voice that makes the story easy to fall into. From page one, there’s great, witty dialog and a dragon’s horde of action. These two elements were the driving forces that kept me reading of Traitor’s Blade as I found some areas where I struggled with the novel. Continue reading
An Interview with SUE TINGEY
Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Sue Tingey?
Hi Stefan, thank you for inviting me to be interviewed.
Who is Sue Tingey? That is actually rather a deep question and I’m probably the last person you should ask, but I’ll have a go at giving a sensible and possibly truthful reply:
I’m a book and animal lover. Married with no pets at the moment except for some Koi carp. I’m slightly obsessive about things that matter and couldn’t really give a damn about things that don’t (though this has taken years to perfect – I used to be a natural born worrier). I love horror films but only if viewed from behind a cushion or, if no cushion available, from between my fingers. I hate animal films because I spend the whole hour and a half sobbing. I put it down to being traumatised by Disney’s Old Yella when I was a child. As for Marley and Me – don’t even go there.
Your debut novel, Marked, will be published by Jo Fletcher Books. It looks rather fabulous: How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?
Thank you kind sir. Marked is the first book of the Soulseer Chronicles and is about Lucky de Salle, a young woman who, for as long as she can remember, has been able to converse with the dead. Even her best – and only – friend Kayla is a ghost. The book starts when Lucky reluctantly returns to her old school, from which she was expelled fifteen years earlier, to help with a haunting brought about by three boarders playing with a Ouija board. As it happens her instincts are correct: ghosts are the least of her worries – the schoolgirls have called up a daemon and he has a message for Kayla. From this point on Lucky finds that no one she meets is who they say they are and even her best friend has been keeping secrets. Soon she’s caught up in the political intrigues of a world she never knew existed, and her already weird life gets weirder by the moment. Continue reading
Excerpt: MARKED by Sue Tingey (Jo Fletcher Books)
Today we have an excerpt from the first chapter of Sue Tingey‘s debut novel, Marked. The first book the author’s Soulseer Chronicles series, it is published by Jo Fletcher Books in the UK. Here’s the synopsis…
Lucky De Salle can see ghosts, but it’s daemons she’s really got to worry about . . .
With no family and very few friends, Lucky’s psychic ability has always made her an outcast. The only person she can rely on is Kayla, the ghost girl who has been with her since she was born.
But Kayla is not all that she appears.
And when Lucky is visited by a demonic assassin with a message for her friend, she finds herself dragged into the Underlands – and the political fight for the daemon king’s throne.
Trapped in the daemon world, Lucky is determined to find her way home . . . until she finds herself caught between the charms of the guardian Jamie, the charismatic daemon of death Jinx – and the lure of finding out who she really is.
Read on for the excerpt…
Upcoming: CITY OF BLADES by Robert Jackson Bennett
I loved the first novel in Robert Jackson Bennett‘s new series, City of Stairs. Not long ago, Bennett’s US publisher Crown unveiled their cover for the sequel, City of Blades:
Today, though, I spotted the UK cover for City of Blades over on Quercus’s website (below). Sadly, fans of the series will have a bit of a wait — the novel is not due to be published until January 2016.
Here’s the synopsis (from Goodreads):
The city of Voortyashtan was once the domain of the goddess of death, war, and destruction, but now it’s little more than a ruin. General Turyin Mulaghesh is called out of retirement and sent to this hellish place to try to find a Saypuri secret agent who’s gone missing in the middle of a mission, but the city of war offers countless threats: not only have the ghosts of her own past battles followed her here, but she soon finds herself wondering what happened to all the souls that were trapped in the afterlife when the Divinities vanished. Do the dead sleep soundly in the land of death? Or do they have plans of their own?
Also on CR: Interview with Robert Jackson Bennett; Guest post on “City of Stairs & the Super Tropey Fantasy Checklist”; Reviews of City of Stairs and The Company Man
An Interview with STEPHANIE SAULTER
Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Stephanie Saulter?
She’s Jamaican-born, American-educated, a Londoner by choice. A good cook and a bad singer. Possessor of a career that’s had at least as much to do with what could be learned as what could be earned. The person who never ends up seeing the films that everyone else is talking about, because she stayed home and read a book.
Your novel Binary is due to be published in the US by Quercus in May 2015. It’s the second in your ®Evolution series – how would you introduce the series to a new reader, and what can fans expect from book two?
The ®Evolution trilogy is set in a London of the near future, around a hundred years after a technologically-caused pandemic known as the Syndrome came close to wiping out the entire human species. Genetic engineering of embryos eventually provided immunity and prevented extinction, but with some babies it was taken further, creating a servant class of genetically modified humans known as gems. This continued for generations, until the indenture system was abolished and gems were acknowledged to have at least some of the rights of other humans. The first book, Gemsigns, takes place against the backdrop of the upheaval that follows this decision. The gemtechs are trying to overturn it and reclaim the people they think of as their property; those people are living in freedom for the first time, and fighting to preserve it; there are progressives who want to help them, and religious extremists who want to wipe them out; the norm majority are conflicted, fearful and easily manipulated. It’s an explosive mix. Events pivot around the gems’ charismatic leader, Aryel Morningstar – a woman whose origins and abilities are shrouded in mystery, and who is loved and feared in equal measure. Continue reading
Civilian Reader 