Archive for November, 2010
author post
Jesse Petersen is the author of MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES and the forthcoming FLIP THIS ZOMBIE. Like many of us here at Orbit HQ, she’s also a fan of The Walking Dead on AMC. She’ll be offering recaps of each week’s episode here every Monday. This post will contain SPOILERS (also zombies) after the jump. For previous recaps see 1.01 Read the rest of this entry »
by Jesse Petersen •2 Comments • Posted in: Guest Post, Orbit US, Syndicate
- The Orbit Team - November 5th, 2010
Greg Bear, author of the upcoming Hull Zero Three, talks about the relationship between videogames and writing over on kotaku.com. And, he settles the age old debate (that age being about five years ago) “are games art?”
Roger Ebert has said that video games cannot be art. Similar judgments have been made over the decades and centuries about novels, plays, movies, television, comic books, and of course science fiction.Now, videogames are up in front of the Supreme Court. Once again a new and innovative form of art and entertainment is being put through an almost ritualized process of legal justification.
My take? The Supreme Court will decide video games are protected speech. And video games are definitely capable of being art.
It’s definitely worth the read and includes some interesting tidbits about the upcoming book. Check it out!
Hull Zero Three will be available on November 22.
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Uncategorized
- Lauren Panepinto - November 5th, 2010
photo by Jeffery Scott
Parasol Protectorate fans, I have a special treat for you today. I have the face of Alexia Tarabotti herself, Donna Ricci, here to give some critiques and comments on the Parasol Protectorate cover finalists. We’ve talked about Donna’s role in the covers before, but I love talking about what a great team-up these covers have been. Donna is the proprietress of Clockwork Couture, which, in my opinion, has the best selection of Steampunk clothing and accessories on the web. She’s also a professional model, a writer on Steampunk fashion, and a champion of beasts great and small. I can’t think of a more fitting person to be our Alexia. And as an extra treat, I’m going to post the images below that became our Parasol Protectorate covers, before and after I did all the photoshop magic to them. You’ll see Donna needs very little retouching!
Before I hand it over, however, I just want to update you guys. We’re going to leave voting open over the whole weekend, and I’ll be tallying votes sometime Monday (after my first coffee, at least) and announcing the winner. N0w remember guys, one vote per email address please…that means you, mom-of-Doubtless! haha.
Ok, here’s the original images of Donna, next to the cover images of without the text, as a bit of a cover “evolution” shot:
original photo by Derek Caballero, background image from Getty Images
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by Lauren Panepinto • 3 Comments • Posted in: Art, Contests, Covers, Orbit US
- The Orbit Team - November 4th, 2010
It’s November, which means thousands of aspiring writers are telling their friends and family to go amuse themselves for a while. They’ve got a novel to write.
But, it’s been a bit of a rocky start for the NaNoWriMo crowd. For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month is that special time of year where anyone who likes makes a run at writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s like, 1700 words a day. Which is like, 3-4 pages. Every day. It’s a monumental task, especially when you consider that most of these people aren’t professional writers and mostly have day jobs, families, social obligations… It’s one thing for the pros who participate (who all seem to finish early) but your average aspiring writer is missing that most precious commodity… time.
Which is why Laura Miller’s post on Salon is so… puzzling. She basically goes after NaNoWriMo with both barrels– I’ll get to specifics of her argument in a moment. In addition to her high-profile attack, I get the sense that there’s a bit of push back in the air this year. Galleycat this morning went after first time fantasy novelists with a funny post about what not to do. It’s hard to argue with a lot of the points, but something about the principle just seemed off to me.
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by The Orbit Team • 11 Comments • Posted in: All posts, Commentary, Orbit US, Syndicate
- Lauren Panepinto - November 4th, 2010
Ay-leen's photo by Anna Fischer
The competition is fierce and the comments are flying over at the finalist round for the Parasol Protectorate cover contest, and I thought it would be fun to have some “Steampunk Experts” give us some professional opinions of the finalists ensembles and posing. First up is the Ay-leen the Peacemaker, mistress of the fabulous blog Beyond Victoriana, who also contributes to other blogs and projects on retro-futurism. Beyond Victoriana focuses on multiculturalism in Steampunk and retro-futurism, and just won a Last Drink Bird Head Award.
I really enjoy reading Ay-leen’s essays because it’s good to remember that although there is a huge Victorian Age element to Steampunk, that does not mean that it has to be solely Victorian England. I’m really into the idea that a lot of the fun of retro-futurism is that you can really make it personal in style, and that can include your own family and cultural heritage. For example, check out the costume in the Careless cover below, which kind of has an awesome eastern/turkish element to it.
Anyway, enough about what I think…on to Ayleen’s comments…
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by Lauren Panepinto • Post a Comment • Posted in: Art, Contests, Covers, Orbit US
author post
Jesse Petersen is the author of MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES and the forthcoming FLIP THIS ZOMBIE. Like many of us here at Orbit HQ, she’s also a fan of The Walking Dead on AMC. She’ll be offering recaps of each week’s episode here every Monday (she’s a few days late this week because she just returned from ZOMBCON, which takes a bit out of a girl, what with all the zombie action.) It should go without saying that this post has a giant SPOILER ALERT!
For months I’ve been salivating for the start of “The Walking Dead”, the new series on AMC that is based on the fantastic graphic novels by Robert Kirkman. So when Orbit asked me if I’d like to recap and review each episode here on the blog, the question hadn’t even been completely asked when I answered, “Yes… Yes… Yes… YES!!!” There shall be spoilers, so be aware. And my grade at the end, along with my comments. And so I give you, “The Walking Dead”:
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by Jesse Petersen •7 Comments • Posted in: Guest Post, Orbit US, Syndicate
- Tim Holman - November 3rd, 2010
There are an awful lot of words on the internet, and a number of them have been used in the brilliant reviews for SURFACE DETAIL – the new Culture novel from Iain M. Banks, out everywhere now. Thanks to worldle.net, we’ve been able to squish them together!
Connect the words to start building your very own Iain M. Banks review:
“lavish horror weapons” – yes!
“fast-paced glory novel” – you bet!
“vast reader fans Banks” … eh?
by Tim Holman • Post a Comment • Posted in: All posts, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US, Syndicate
- The Orbit Team - November 3rd, 2010
This past weekend Jesse Petersen, author of MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES attended Seattle’s ZomBCon, the first Zombie-centric convention for fans. She took pictures. She participated in panels. She spread the word about her forthcoming novel, FLIP THIS ZOMBIE (Jan). And, she steered clear of the most active brain-chompers and survived to give us her report.
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Conventions, Orbit US, Syndicate
- Lauren Panepinto - November 3rd, 2010
Voting is now open for the finals of the Parasol Protectorate cover contest! The competition was fierce, and after 5 rounds of intense voting, here are your finalists. You’ll have all this week to vote. On Monday I will again tally the votes and name the winner and new Team Captain for the Parasol Protectorate Class of 2010…or is that 1910?
You might notice there are 6 finalists, and that’s because there was a bit of suspicious voting in Round One. So let me make the rules clear once more. Only vote once. I can see your email addresses so if there are two votes coming from the same account (that aren’t an obvious computer error) then all the votes from that account will be disqualified. To vote, please state clearly in the comments which cover (by title) you are voting for. DON’T say “#3″ and don’t say you’re stuck between Sugarless and Hairless, because neither will count as a vote. DO feel free to applaud, praise, or heckle other finalists in the comments as well. DO feel free to vote for yourself. And most of all DO remember that you are voting on the person’s costume and pose. And poise. Not the title, cover layout, or background, which were all entirely my doing.
Over the next few days I will have some Steampunk and fashion experts weighing in on the finalists, so stay tuned! The finalist covers are after the jump…
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by Lauren Panepinto • 190 Comments • Posted in: Art, Contests, Covers, Orbit US, Uncategorized
- The Orbit Team - November 2nd, 2010
Wheel of Time time
The penultimate volume of this legendary fantasy series is finally here.
Let the Towers of Midnight reading begin!
Start now with chapter one, or get a quick catch up from Brandon Sanderson on the story so far.
by The Orbit Team • 8 Comments • Posted in: Extracts, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
