Urban Fantasy

Guest Post: “From Funny Book to Fleshy Series: The Finn Fancy Evolution” by Randy Henderson

Civilian Reader Guest Post , , , , , , , ,

HendersonR-AuthorPicWriting a fantasy series is a strange and daunting process. Over the course of transforming a single book into a series, I personally realized that rather than planning a whole series in advance, there were some basic things I could include that would allow a series to create itself.

First, sometimes writers plan ahead. Sometimes, we make s#!te up as we go along. Often we do some combination of the two. This applies to books, but also to entire series I’ve learned.

For Finn Fancy, I didn’t plan to write a series. I wrote some chapters for fun, which got turned into a finished book because an editor expressed interest. That book got purchased as the first in a series. Did I have a series? Not really. I had a book. And a few one sentence concepts I’d written out after finishing that book for potential sequels. Continue reading →

Upcoming: POISON CITY by Paul Crilley (Hodder)

Civilian Reader Upcoming , , , , , , ,

CrilleyP-1-PoisonCityUKThis novel sounds like it could be quite fun. I still don’t read very much urban fantasy, which is strange to me — I love it as a genre of TV show and movie. This has been billed as “Rivers of London meets Zoo City… perfect for grown-up fans of Harry Potter” — that’s a pretty confident boast. If it’s true, though, this novel could be huge. Here’s the synopsis:

The name’s Gideon Tau, but everyone just calls me London. I work for the Delphic Division, the occult investigative unit of the South African Police Service. My life revolves around two things — finding out who killed my daughter and imagining what I’m going to do to the bastard when I catch him.

I have two friends. The first is my boss, Armitage, a fifty-something DCI from Yorkshire who looks more like someone’s mother than a cop. Don’t let that fool you. The second is the dog, my magical spirit guide. He talks, he watches TV all day, and he’s a mean drunk.

Life is pretty routine — I solve crimes, I search for my daughter’s killer. Wash, rinse, repeat. Until the day I’m called out to the murder of a ramanga — a low-key vampire — basically, the tabloid journalist of the vampire world. It looks like an open and shut case. There’s even CCTV footage of the killer.

Except… the face on the CCTV footage? It’s the face of the man who killed my daughter. I’m about to face a tough choice. Catch her killer or save the world? I can’t do both.

It’s not looking good for the world.

Paul Crilley‘s Poison City is due to be published by Hodder in the UK, on August 11th, 2016. For more on Paul’s writing and novels, be sure to check out the author’s website, and follow him on Twitter and Goodreads.

Upcoming: THE WOLF IN THE ATTIC by Paul Kearney (Solaris)

Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming , , , , ,

KearneyP-WolfInTheAtticPaul Kearney is an author whose work I’ve always been familiar with, but not as familiar as I’d like. His novels always sound fantastic. His next book, The Wolf in the Attic, is no different. Here’s the synopsis:

1920s Oxford: home to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien… and Anna Francis, a young Greek refugee looking to escape the grim reality of her new life. The night they cross paths, none suspect the fantastic world at work around them.

Anna Francis lives in a tall old house with her father and her doll Penelope. She is a refugee, a piece of flotsam washed up in England by the tides of the Great War and the chaos that trailed in its wake. Once upon a time, she had a mother and a brother, and they all lived together in the most beautiful city in the world, by the shores of Homer’s wine-dark sea.

But that is all gone now, and only to her doll does she ever speak of it, because her father cannot bear to hear. She sits in the shadows of the tall house and watches the rain on the windows, creating worlds for herself to fill out the loneliness. The house becomes her own little kingdom, an island full of dreams and half-forgotten memories. And then one winter day, she finds an interloper in the topmost, dustiest attic of the house. A boy named Luca with yellow eyes, who is as alone in the world as she is.

That day, she’ll lose everything in her life, and find the only real friend she may ever know.

The Wolf in the Attic is due to be published by Solaris in May 2016.

Upcoming: EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW by Alex White (Solaris)

Civilian Reader Comics, Upcoming , , , , , , ,

WhiteA-EveryMountainMadeLowThe cover for Alex White‘s upcoming Every Mountain Made Low was unveiled a few minutes ago, and it’s a stunner — Jeffrey Alan Love’s style is so eye-catching. The novel, due to be published by Solaris in October 2016, sounds pretty interesting, too:

Loxley Fiddleback can see the dead, but the problem is… the dead can see her.

Ghosts have always been cruel to Loxley Fiddleback, especially the spirit of her only friend, alive only hours before. Loxley isn’t equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as “The Hole,” suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn’t cotton to strangers. Worse still, she’s haunted.

She inherited her ability to see spirits from the women of her family, but the dead see her, too. Ghosts are drawn to her like a bright fire, and their lightest touch leaves her with painful wounds.

Loxley swears to take blood for blood and find her friend’s killer. In doing so, she uncovers a conspiracy that rises all the way to the top of The Hole. As her enemies grow wise to her existence, she becomes the quarry, hunted by a brutal enforcer named Hiram McClintock. In sore need of confederates, Loxley must descend into the strangest depths of the city in order to have the revenge she seeks and, ultimately, her own salvation.

Looking forward to giving this a try.

Guest Post: “Saving the World — With a Little Help From Friends” by Gail Z. Martin

Civilian Reader Guest Post , , , , , , , ,

0061-eWomenNetworkWhen the chips are down and you’ve got monsters on every side and the fate of the world hangs in the balance, you need to know you’ve got good friends watching your back.

And if those friends include two people learning to wield powerful magic and a nearly 600 year-old vampire, your odds of winning — and surviving — just went up.

Welcome to the world of my Deadly Curiosities urban fantasy series including Vendetta, my new novel that just launched December 29. The series is set in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. The main character, Cassidy Kincaide, is a psychometric who can read the history and magic of objects by touching them. She owns Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio shop with a few dangerous secrets. Continue reading →

Quick Review: A SONG FOR NO MAN’S LAND by Andy Remic (Tor.com)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , , , ,

RemicA-WWI1-ASongForNoMansLandA weird, imaginative World War I urban fantasy tale

He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.

But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.

He’ll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn’t exist.

This novella is the first in a projected series by Andy Remic. It is a really interesting, creepy take on the First World War. Told from the perspective of a volunteer, alternating between narrative and diary entries (for the main). The novella recounts the difficulties and horrors of the Front, the and the intense confusion warfare.

Add to this, though, a touch of horror and fantasy myth, and Remic has come up with an original take on war fiction. There were a few times when the story felt a little confusing, but I think that was intentional — our hero doesn’t always know what is actually going on, and the creatures he believes he keeps seeing are monstrous. Is his mind just creating a lie to explain the nature of war? Or is he really faced with monsters from childhood myth and nightmare?

A Song for No Man’s Land is a really interesting start to a new series. This novella is very much setting up the world and premise for the series to come, and ends on quite a tantalizing moment. I think this should have pretty broad appeal. Recommended.

*

Also on CR: Interview with Andy Remic

A Song for No Man’s Land is published by Tor.com next month. The next two novellas in the series — Return of Souls and Iron Beast — will also be published by Tor.com. Here are the covers (provisional, I think):

RemicA-WWISeries1to3

Quick Review: THE IMMORTALS by Jordanna Max Brodsky (Orbit)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , , , , ,

BrodskyJM-TheImmortalsUSThe first must-read novel of 2016

Manhattan has many secrets. Some are older than the city itself. 

The city sleeps. Selene DiSilva walks her dog along the banks of the Hudson. She is alone — just the way she likes it. She doesn’t believe in friends, and she doesn’t speak to her family. Most of them are simply too dangerous.

In the predawn calm, Selene finds the body of a young woman washed ashore, gruesomely mutilated and wreathed in laurel. Her ancient rage returns. And so does the memory of a promise she made long ago — when her name was Artemis.

I read this quite a while ago, and rather stupidly didn’t write the review right away. The Immortals was at the top of my most-anticipated list for 2016 pretty much since I first spotted it on Edelweiss. I was extremely happy, therefore, to receive an advance review copy last year. It absolutely exceeded my expectations. Continue reading →

Interview with PETER McLEAN

Civilian Reader Interview , , , , , , , ,

McLeanP-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Peter McLean?

I’m a married man and grandfather in my 40s, who has been writing for over twenty years, and actually taking it seriously for perhaps the last five years or so. Over the years I’ve also been a kung fu teacher, a Wiccan priest, a Unix technician and a chaos magician, and I am now an IT account manager at a multinational outsourcing corporation.

Your debut novel, Drake, will be published by Angry Robot. It looks pretty cool: How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

Thank you! I guess I’d describe it as “a Guy Ritchie movie with demons in it” – Drake is set in the ganglands of South London, but instead of a cheap gangster my central character is a cheap magician, a hitman who uses his magical abilities and the power of an enslaved Archdemon to summon demons and set them on people. Of course it all goes horribly wrong for him in fairly short order, and that’s when things start to get interesting. Continue reading →

Review: BURNING MIDNIGHT by Will McIntosh (Delacorte Press)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , ,

McIntoshW-BurningMidnightUSsmInteresting, fast-paced YA horror-sci-fi

Sully is a sphere dealer at a flea market. It doesn’t pay much — Alex Holliday’s stores have muscled out most of the independent sellers — but it helps him and his mom make the rent.

No one knows where the brilliant-colored spheres came from. One day they were just there, hidden all over the earth like huge gemstones. Burn a pair and they make you a little better: an inch taller, skilled at math, better-looking. The rarer the sphere, the greater the improvement — and the more expensive the sphere.

When Sully meets Hunter, a girl with a natural talent for finding spheres, the two start searching together. One day they find a Gold — a color no one has ever seen. And when Alex Holliday learns what they have, he will go to any lengths, will use all of his wealth and power, to take it from them.

There’s no question the Gold is priceless, but what does it actually do? None of them is aware of it yet, but the fate of the world rests on this little golden orb. Because all the world fights over the spheres, but no one knows where they come from, what their powers are, or why they’re here.

McIntosh’s first YA novel is a pretty interesting one: set in a world basically the same as our own, save for one rather intriguing difference — the presence of “spheres”. It’s a fast-paced, entertaining read, which I have no doubt many will enjoy. Continue reading →

Interview with MICHAEL R. UNDERWOOD

Civilian Reader Interview , , , , , , , , ,

UnderwoodMR-AuthorPic2Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Michael R. Underwood?

I’m a geek-turned-professional – sales & marketing manager by day (for Angry Robot) and author by night (or really, whenever I can scrape together some spare time), writing books from geeky Urban Fantasy (Geekomancy) to weird fantasy supers (Shield and Crocus) and more. I keep up with my geekdom by reading comics, gaming, and following as many cool TV shows as time permits.

Your next book, Genrenauts: The Absconded Ambassador, will be published by Tor.com. How would you introduce it and the Genrenauts series to a potential reader?

Genreauts is like Leverage-meets-Jasper Fforde – the titular Genrenauts are interdimensional travelers – each world they visit is the home of a narrative genre – Romance, Science Fiction, Western, and so on. They find and fix broken stories in order to protect their own world. If they fail, the dissonance ripples back to their home world and causes disasters. I’m writing the series in novellas – with six episodes per season a la TV. The Absconded Ambassador is the second episode in the series, so I’d suggest readers start with The Shootout Solution. Continue reading →