Navigating the Chaos

Over at Sci Fi Pulse, videogame designer and Pyr author Erin Hoffman is interviewed about her Chaos Knight series -- Sword of Fire and Sea, Lance of Earth and Sky,and the forthcoming Shield of Sea and Space. They talk about her career in the videogame industry, her novels, advice for young writes, and more. Here is an intriguing taste:

Yanes: Despite more and more women being involved in the creation and consumption of fantasy novels and videogames, both industries are still thought of as a boys club. Do you feel this image is still accurate? And if so, what do you think fans can do to change it?

Hoffman: There is a rather fascinating war going on around this very subject. I think it’s a measure of progress that there can be a war with two sides, whereas before there weren’t enough people fighting for equality to have a measurable impact. I think the image is still more or less accurate, but the balance is shifting rapidly. Fans can help most just by being open-minded in their consumption of media, and being vocal in their demand for more diversity in the market. It’s a lot of work to sensitize yourself to the way cultures other than your own can be marginalized. You have to read, research, listen, and stretch beyond your immediate self-interest. But it is a powerfully rewarding thing and will make you a better person beyond the immediate goal of leveling the playing field. It is so important to chase down and question your assumptions. I worry that “geek culture” is calcifying in its maturity into exactly the thing against which it initially rebelled, binary mainstream ideas of right and wrong. Try something new; it keeps your mind young!

5 Questions to a Great Story

As part of Wake County Public Libraries' Write On @ Your Library series, Vampire Empire authors Clay and Susan Griffith discuss five questions to create a great story.

The Making of The Creative Fire

Over at the collective artists blog, Muddy Colors, John Picacio talks about his inspiration for creating the cover for Brenda Cooper's The Creative Fire (Book One of Ruby's Song). He shows some classic paintings that inspired his piece, as well as rare glimpses into his pencils and early process pieces.

From John's piece:

"All of us are living in a fragile time for our fundamental rights, at least here in America. It seems our news and social feeds are filled with daily attacks on womens' rights. Revolutionary posters have always been rallying cries, and Lou and I felt like we might have a chance to evoke those here, as well as serve the novel's intentions. When I thought about who Ruby was, I thought of the 1940's image of Rosie the Riveter, as imagined by J. Howard Miller and Norman Rockwell (with genius inspiration from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel). I thought of the grace of Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, along with Russian revolution posters, and Howard Chandler Christy's 'Fight or Buy Bonds' painting."

Pyr Podcast Roundtable

Today, episode 61 of Speculate: The Podcast for Writers, Readers and Fans, features a special roundtable podcast with Pyr editorial director Lou Anders, Pyr authors Brenda Cooper (The Creative Fire) and E.C. Myers (Fair Coin and Quantum Coin), and freelance copyeditor Gabrielle Harbowy. They say:


"We set a new record for single episode participation in this show with four distinguished guests: Brenda Cooper and E.C. Myers (authors of The Creative Fire and Quantum Coin, respectively), freelance editor Gabrielle Harbowy, and Pyr Books‘ editorial and art director Lou Anders speak for an hour on what has made Pyr such a successful speculative fiction imprint, where it’s been and where it’s going in the future. This wide ranging discussion also looks at the finer points of how good editors work with good authors, how important a good cover is to an equally good book, and what makes Dragon Con such a scary (and amazing!) event every year. Our shows normally don’t run this long, but we hope you’ll agree the extra discussion we got with all of these fine people was worth the extra time. If you like what you hear, don’t forget to check back next week when we’ll start a new series of shows on the work of Joe Abercrombie. Until then, thanks as always for listening, and please continue to spread the word about the show!"

Resetting Superheroes in a Steampunk World

Over at the Agony Column, Rick Kleffel reviews Andrew P. Mayer's entire trilogy, The Society of Steam, recently completed with the release of book three, Power Under Pressure. Rick says:

"What Mayer has managed in a quite tightly-written trilogy is to reset the superhero story in a steampunk world. These are both genres that feed on fun, that require adventure and reward the reader with a light-hearted look at the darkest of times. Mayer's prose has the feel of the time it is set in, but not so much as to be annoying... and his plotting and pacing keep things lively but not frantic. ....Mayer hits all the right notes; a touch of horror, some high-adventure, heroes and villains who deserve the elaborate contraptions that carry them across a Rube-Goldberg machine landscape, all at a pace that suggests a handcart on the way to hell."

And Andrew himself was recently a guest of the SF in SF reading series, where he read from the novel. Those who haven't yet experienced his mashup of steampunk and superheros can get a taste here or download the Agony Column Podcast on iTunes.

City of Ruins wins 2012 Endeavor Award

Kristine Kathryn Rusch's City of Ruinshas won the 2012 Endeavor Award. The Endeavour Award is given to a novel or single-author collection written by a Pacific Northwest writer and includes an honorarium of $1000.00 and an engraved glass plaque. The 2012 judges for the award were Gregory Benford, Lawrence M. Schoen, and Susan Shwartz. The winner was announced on November 2, 2012 at OryCon 34 in Portland OR.

The finalists were:

City of Ruins, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Pyr)
River Marked, Patricia Briggs (Ace)
Anna Dressed in Blood, Kendare Blake (Tor)
When the Saints, Dave Duncan (Tor)
Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson (Doubleday)

You can read Kristine's acceptance speech on her blog.

Congratulations to Kristine and all the nominees!

RT Book Reviews Nominations for Clay and Susan Griffiith

RT Book Reviews have announced their 2012 Reviewers' Choice Awards and Clay Griffith and Susan Griffith's The Kingmakers (Vampire Empire, Book 3) is on the shortlist for Steampunk Novel!

James Enge Marches Through the Black Gate

This week the SF Signal Podcast has an interview recorded live at WorldCon with John O'Neill, founder of Black Gate magazine, and two of the brightest feathers in his cap, Howard Andrew Jones and our own James Enge. Both sold stories early in their career to O'Neill and went on to sell novels based on those characters. James' of course, are the novels of Morlock Ambrosius, his sword and sorcery hero (the latest of which, A Guile of Dragons (A Tournament of Shadows, Book 1), just came out last month.

Podcast host Patrick Hester talks with the three about Middle Eastern culture and fantasy, Tolkien, European-centric fantasy, Sinbad, Disney movies, the history of Black Gate magazine, sword and sorcery, being a short story editor, critiquing, Worldcon and much, much more. It's well worth checking out - funny and informative as the best podcasts are.

A Fair Amount of Coin

Bookseller Ross Armstrong is a bookseller in Toronto at Indigo's Yorkdale Mall location at 3401 Dufferin St. in north Toronto. He recently popped up on the Fair Coin Facebook page, where he posted the following:

 "I have chosen your book to be my CEO 100 choice. If I can sell 100 copies in three months, I get a certificate and a $50 gift card. To date, I have sold 71 copies of your book, Fair Coin, with 5 weeks to go in the three months. In fact, this week I have sold 23 copies alone. The response had been very positive with many purchasers coming back and saying how much they liked the book. Looking forward to Quantum Coin."

We're grateful for booksellers like Ross, and thrilled so many people love this book. Meanwhile, if you are in the Toronto area, you might consider helping Ross get his certificate and gift card. 

The Blueprint for the Future of Genre Fiction

Yesterday,  Explorations, The BN SciFi and Fantasy blog called the Vampire Empire trilogy "nothing short of the blueprint for the future of genre fiction." Reviewer Paul Goat Allen went on to say that, "And as extraordinary as The Greyfriar and The Rift Walker were, The Kingmakers was arguably the strongest installment of them all: a terrifyingly believable – and brilliantly described –  apocalyptic setting; unforgettable, no, iconic characters; nonstop action and adventure; and, at the heart of it all, one of the most powerful love stories ever written. Clay and Susan Griffith's Vampire Empire trilogy will forever alter the way in which you perceive genre fiction."