Reminder for Dragon*Con

Dragon*Con is a week away! Many of our authors will be joining us at the Pyr Booth (709/711 in the Marriott Marquis Ballroom,) and of course, we'll have books.

Just a reminder to anyone wondering whether you'd like a book, we have sample chapters available on our website. The books the chapters are from are listed on the right sidebar.

Happy reading! I hope to see you in Atlanta.

Free on Kindle: Joel Shepherd's Sasha (A Trial of Blood & Steel)

Reminder that the first book in Joel Shepherd's A Trial of Blood & Steel quartet, Sasha, is now Free on Kinde. Shepherd's series, which is complete now with the publication of Haven, is a complex, gritty, realistic fantasy that drawns numerous comparisons to a certain other series. Here's what they're saying:

"...quite engrossing... this heroic fantasy should please fans of, say, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels." Booklist

"Shepherd has created a court fantasy similar to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire....a good epic fantasy that focuses more on the epic than the fantasy. Sasha is excellent reading for fans of character driven stories. I recommend it." Grasping for the Wind

"Sasha was excellent, especially given that this is Joel Shepherd’s first fantasy novel. It offers a huge fantasy world, a fascinating heroine, heart-pounding descriptions of both small-scale sword fights and full-on warfare, several characters that genuinely grow and change, and — maybe most importantly — the hint that this is just the start of what could become a great series. While I wouldn't rank it quite as high as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, I think Sasha will go down very well with fans of that series because it shares some of its characteristics, including its huge scope and cast, its focus on politics and noble intrigue, and (at least in the early novels of ASoIaF) the almost complete absence of magic and mystical creatures. " Fantasy Literature

“I liked [Sasha]. She’s fierce, strong and courageous. She’s also a bit tempermental and stubborn, but in my opinion these qualities make her even more likeable… This book could have some profound and lasting effects on a female reader by instilling within her a fighter’s spirit and the idea that one can accomplish anything regardless of one’s gender. Think about this: how many female sword fighters so we see in such books like Shepherd’s Sasha? I am willing to guess not many… In this book, a woman is the warrior who leads others in a large battle. The cover alone is telling.”  -Femspec, Volume 11, Issue 1, 2010 

Cowboy Angels: Sample Up at io9

io9 is very kindly hosting a three chapter excerpt from Paul McAuley's Cowboy Angels. Check it out!

The first Turing gate, a mere hundred nanometers across, is forced open in 1963, at the high-energy physics laboratory in Brookhaven; three years later, the first man to travel to an alternate history takes his momentous step, and an empire is born.
For fifteen years, the version of America that calls itself the Real has used its Turing gate technology to infiltrate a wide variety of alternate Americas, rebuilding those wrecked by nuclear war, fomenting revolutions and waging war to free others from communist or fascist rule, and establishing a Pan-American Alliance. Then a nation exhausted by endless strife elects Jimmy Carter on a reconstruction and reconciliation ticket, the CIA's covert operations are wound down, and the Real begins to wage peace rather than war.
But some people believe that it is the Real's manifest destiny to impose its idea of truth, justice, and the American way in every known alternate history, and they're prepared to do anything to reverse Carter's peacenik doctrine. When Adam Stone, a former CIA field officer, one of the Cowboy Angels who worked covertly in other histories, volunteers for reactivation after an old friend begins a killing spree across alternate histories, his mission uncovers a startling secret about the operation of the Turing gates and leads him into the heart of an audicious conspiracy to change the history of every America in the multiverse-including our own.
Cowboy Angels is a vivid, helter-skelter thriller in which one version of America discovers the true cost of empire building, and one man discovers that an individual really can make a difference.

Free ePub Novelette Celebrates Milestone: Enjoy James Enge's "Travellers' Rest"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 6, 2010
CONTACT: Jill Maxick, 800-853-7545
jmaxick@prometheusbooks.com

Pyr Publishes Its 100th Title and Offers
Free Exclusive ePub Novelette in Celebration
Milestone Reached with James Enge’s The Wolf Age

Click here to download "Travellers' Rest" in epub

Amherst, New York – In March of this year, Pyr, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books, celebrated its fifth anniversary. In November, Pyr reached another milestone: publishing its one-hundredth title, The Wolf Age, by James Enge.

The Wolf Age is the third novel to feature Enge’s character Morlock Ambrosius, a wandering swordsman, an exile, and a drunk. Blood of Ambrose, Enge’s first Morlock novel, was on the Locus Recommended Reading list and a World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Novel.

“I'm honored to be Pyr’s centenarian (or centurion?),” Enge says. “Between that distinction and the World Fantasy Award nomination for Blood of Ambrose, it's been a pretty cool fall. Both the WFA nominees and the authors on the Pyr list are pretty impressive company; it's a privilege to be counted among them.”

Publishers Weekly gave The Wolf Age a starred review, calling it “harrowing and beautiful” and noting that “Enge's elegant prose perfectly captures Morlock's terse and morbid nature, which thrives in the vicious, honorable werewolf nation. Numerous intimate, complicated, and contentious relationships provide depth and gravity to the grim tale, which will enthrall fans of the dark and sinister.”

All of Enge’s Morlock Ambrosius novels and stories can be read independently, but—as Tim Pratt recently pointed out in his Locus review of The Wolf Age—reading one will make you want to seek out the others. Calling The Wolf Age “inventive and delightful,” Pratt “promptly tracked down the earlier titles, Blood of Ambrose and This Crooked Way, because I enjoyed this one so much.” He added, “Enge is one of the most engaging of the new sword and sorcery authors, and I hope we get to follow Morlock's exploits for a long time to come.”

In honor of this burgeoning Morlock fan base, and to commemorate The Wolf Age’s status as Pyr’s one-hundredth title, Pyr is issuing a free, exclusive, ePub novelette called "Travellers' Rest." Featuring a cover by artist Chuck Lukacs, “Travellers' Rest” is an 8,500 word original novelette, written for Pyr, which takes place before the events of Blood of Ambrose. It is available on the Pyr website, http://www.pyrsf.com, as a free download in ePub format and will also be available via Kindle. (Two previously published Morlock short stories that take place many decades after the events of The Wolf Age—“A Book of Silences” and “Fire and Sleet” —are available on the Sample Chapters section of the Pyr website.)

Enge describes “Traveller's Rest” as “a story that's been trying to chew its way out of my head for a while now, and this seemed like a good time to release it as an introduction to Morlock. Also, Morlock’s apprentice Wyrth has a small but discerning fan base, and ‘Traveller's Rest’ gives them a chance to encounter him again.”

Enge's highly imaginative sword and sorcery mixes humor and darkness in equal measures. His writing has been compared favorably to Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, David Eddings, and, interestingly, Raymond Chandler. Lev Grossman, the New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians, finds Enge “thrilling, funny, and mysteriously moving. . . I could read him forever and never get bored.”

Pyr has been called “one of the most exciting publishers in the business” by Black Gate magazine. It was launched in March of 2005 by Prometheus Books, an independent publisher of quality nonfiction based in Amherst, New York.

# # #

Free Online Reading: James Enge's "A Book of Silences"

April will see the release of James Enge's swords & sorcery novel, Blood of Ambrose,an epic work featuring Morlock Ambrosius, wandering swordsman and master of all magical makers. The book is a stand-alone adventure, but Morlock returns in the (already-delivered) follow-up, This Crooked Way, and we've just signed for a third Morlock novel, the wonderfully-titled The Wolf Age. But Morlock Ambrosius already has a significant following, as Enge has been chronicling his adventures in short fiction for some time prior to his novel debut. One such tale,"A Book of Silences," first appeared in the pages of Black Gate magazine. We are pleased to reprint it in its entirety at the Pyr Sample Chapters page. What's more, we will shortly be presenting "Fire and Sleet," which follows directly on the events of "A Book of Silences" and is an original novelette that will debut at the Pyr website for the first time anywhere. So, read and enjoy!

Free Ebook: Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter

As you've probably already heard on Boing Boing or SF Signal or Bookspot Central, and as I've already Tweeted and Facebooked:

For the first time ever, Pyr Books is making one of our novels available for free as an eBook. Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One is available now, in its entirety, as a PDF.

When mirror twins Seth and Hadrian Castillo travel to Europe on holidays, they don’t expect the end of the world to follow them. Seth’s murder, however, puts exactly that into motion.

From opposite sides of death, the Castillo twins grapple with a reality neither of them suspected, although it has been encoded in myths and legends for millennia. The Earth we know is just one of many “realms”, three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives. And their afterlives...

In the tradition of Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin and inspired by numerous arcane sources, the Books of the Cataclysm begin in the present world but soon propel the reader to a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic.

See why SFFWorld said:

"[E]xplores the nature of life, death, and reality. Big subjects, but with the precision of an archaeological expert, Williams is more than up to the task. There is a lot to admire in Williams' epic fantasy, the wide range of global religions and myths of which his afterlife is comprised, to the characterization of the protagonists. The story has the mythic resonance of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and American Gods, the dark fantasy/horror one might associate with something like Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga, the multiple universes/realities of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion mythos, and the strange, weird creatures one might associate with China Miéville’s Bas-lag novels. Williams imagined world is equal part those novels which preceded his, but fortunately, there is enough newness to both the approach and vision to make this the work of a singular vision...." [R]eading many of the other titles Lou Anders has published with Pyr, I shouldn’t have been surprised with both the quality of the writing and the breadth of Williams’ imagination. Like a lot of the other books published by Pyr, Williams captures what makes a tried and true genre like Epic Fantasy so popular and enjoyable of a genre and spins a tale with his unique voice. This is the type of book you finish and can’t wait to read the sequel."

Download your copy here, and thanks for helping us spread the word!

The Stormcaller - Free Online Reading

Check out this enormous excerpt from the soon-to-be-released fantasy epic, The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reignby Tom Lloyd.

I am really excited about this book. I'm not the only one:

"Magical creatures and high speed action scenes... packed with detail without being too heavy. The Stormcaller shows how high the bar has been raised with its sheer vision and inventiveness." —SFX

Starship: Mercenary Marches Forth

Mike Resnick's Starship: Mercenary is starting to appear on shelves both real and virtual. I see that Powell's and Barnes & Noble lists it as in stock, and suspect Amazon will soon follow. Books left our warehouse in two shipments, this week and last, so it should be hitting stores soon(ish) too and may already be in a few.

Like the two previous Starship books, Mercenary features the usual appendices. This time Deborah Oakes supplies floor plans of "Duke's Place," a spacestation casino that factors heavily in the story's events.

Meanwhile, we've posted sample chapters of what is my favorite Starship book to date online for you to peruse, along with a swanky banner courtesy of Prometheus' Amy Greenan. (Feel free to swipe it and post it everywhere.) And in tomorrow's Pyr Newsletter illustrator John Picacio has some exclusive words for our readers on how he created the cover for one of the best looking books we've done to date.

A Wealth of Online Reading

We've just uploaded a massive amount of sample pages to the Pyr website, some of them quite substantial excerpts (around 50 pages of text or so each). Generally about 3 or 4 chapters per book, but I try to pick good stopping points so it varies. Now, after all this work, it occurs to me that a lot of people may not realize what all is online, and since we've labored long and hard on our Funky New Format, please do follow the links below. Plus, each of the new format pages has a really cool custom banner ad. Collect them all!

First, there are two entire short stories online:
Paul Di Filippo's Fast Forward 1 contribution, "Wikiworld"
Sean Williams' The Resurrected Man inspiration, "A View Before Dying" (old format)

Then these twelve excerpts all recently uploaded, all in our Funky New Format:
Jack Dann's The Man Who Melted. Also, a new interview.
Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky
Ian McDonald's Brasyl
Mike Resnick's Starship: Mutiny and Starship: Pirate
Adam Robert's Gradisil
Justina Robson's Keeping It Real (along with music and other extras)
Joel Shepherd's Crossover and Breakaway
Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter, The Blood Debt, and The Hanging Mountains

We'll be adding more as we go, and converting some of the old ones across to the new look, but meanwhile, these excerpts are still available in the Old Format:
Michael Blumlein's The Healer
Gardner Dozoi's Galileo's Children introduction
Charles Coleman Finlay's The Prodigal Troll
Scott MacKay's Tides
Ian McDonald's River of Gods
John Meaney's Paradox, Context, Resolution
Michael Moorcock & Storm Constantine's Silverheart
Chris Roberson's Here, There & Everywhere
Justina Robson's Silver Screen
Robert Silverberg's Star of Gypsies
Martin Sketchley's The Destiny Mask

Elsewhere on the web, you can find:
Chris Roberson's Paragaea, and an entire prequel novel, Set the Seas on Fire
David Louis Edelman's Infoquake (Chapters 1 - 7), also four Audio chapters.
Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky at InfinityPlus
My own introduction to Fast Forward 1, "Welcome to the Future"

And that should be enough to keep anyone busy!