Ask ten writers how music influences their writing and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Some might say they don’t listen to music at all. Some will say they can’t write without it. Might even tell you that entire books were influenced by a particular song or album.
I fall into the can’t-write-without-it-camp. Music not only helps me get into the right headspace to write particular scenes, but specific lyrics have helped me figure out the themes of entire books.
I thought since the latest book in my Sabina Kane series, GREEN EYED DEMON, comes out in the UK on February 3 (and March 1 in the US), I’d share my playlist for the book, as well as some notes about why each was included. Read the rest of this entry »
They will also both be at the SFX Weekender in Camber Sands for panels on Saturday 5th Feb. Here’s their schedule:
11am: Main Void - Essential SF, fantasy and horror classics - with Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Joe Abercrombie, David Wingrove, Peter F Hamilton, Adrian Tchaicovsky and Kevin J Anderson.
11.45: Screening Zone - Dual Brittania: creating alternate Englands - with Kate Griffin, China Mieville, Al Ewing and Stephen Baxter.
12.30: Main Void - What’s next for TV vampires? Pitching a new vampire show - with Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Toby Whithouse and Sarah Pinborough.
(Exact schedule and line-ups all subject to possible change)
Hot news – Orbit has acquired three new Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher! This means we’ll be able to bring you even more of the inimitable Harry Dresden P.I., the only wizard in the Chicago phonebook.
The ever-popular Dresden Files are getting even better with every new adventure. So if you love urban fantasy or crime noir, and haven’t tried these yet, what are you waiting for?!
The first of the new books will be published in Summer 2012, but in the meantime we have a bumper crop of Dresden Files coming up. We start with Changes in paperback in March, beautifully arrayed in our brand new Dresden Files cover style. This combines Chris McGrath’s great illustration with designer Peter Cotton’s design and layout. Then in April we have Side Jobs (Dresden Files short stories), followed in May by our fabulous-looking Dresden Files reissueswith new cover designs. Then to really add to the treat pile, we have Ghost Storyin hardback in the summer.
Hope you’ve got some reading time set aside, you know it’s worth it!
Now up at A Dribble of Ink — the prologue from what we are sure will be one of the major fantasy titles of the year, Daniel Abraham’sTHE DRAGON’S PATH. The book itself will be on-sale April 7 but in the meantime, whet your appetite for the rest of this epic, unforgettable narrative. And don’t just take our word for it:
“Daniel Abraham gets better with every book” — George R.R.Martin
“Intricate, elegant, and almost hypnotically told — to call Daniel Abraham an exciting new author is to wildly understate the case” — Connie Willis
“Welcome to Daniel Abraham. If you are meeting him for the first time, I envy you: you are in for a remarkable journey” — Junot Diaz
We’ve now received the shiny new cover flat for Tim Lebbon’sEcho City from our production department, so there was much excitement on the Orbit bench. It’s always seems so much more real and nearly-there than when you just print it on regular paper, but here’s the next best thing here on the interweb …
I think Lee Gibbon’s illustration is terrifically atmospheric and designer Peter Cotton has done a great job putting this together for us. It really portrays the desolate feel of a city stranded in a hosile desert, its dwellers believing there is no other life in their world – until a stranger arrives from across the toxic wastes …
Steven Erikson had this to say about this darkly fantastical novel — so look out for it in July if you’re after something to read on the beach. Or maybe not the beach, if you’ve a particularly vivid imagination:
Brilliantly conceived and exquisitely well written by one of the genre’s most original and inventive writers. Tim Lebbon is one of the few fantasy authors whose new works I eagerly antcipate’ Steven Erikson
Jon Courtenay Grimwoodwas recently described in the Guardian as making ‘the fusion of genre energy and literary depth his calling card,’ and his latest book certainly fits such a description. If you’ve read his posts this week, you may already suspect this truth: The Fallen Blade is probably unlike anything you would have read before. This is a novel that simultaneously reclaims the vampire myth, crafts a thrilling political landscape, fits in both romance and brutal violence and portrays a fifteenth century Venice so vividly that you’ll swear you’ve been there (and then!).
So in this trailer for The Fallen Blade, we’re taking you there…
My favourite mention of The Fallen Blade so far calls it, ‘Two books occupying the same page space.’ And describes those as, ‘An adventure fantasy with a smidgeon of romance, great hordes of vampires and werewolves and, of course, plenty of swordplay.’ Mixed with, ‘A fantastic evocation of Renaissance Venice… the beauty of the culture it gave birth to and the merciless, brutally violent and Machiavellian politics that ran alongside it.’ [Guardian, UK]
My favourite, simply because that’s *precisely* what I was aiming to do.
When a reader commented on Facebook that the only thing the review missed was the, ‘Shakespeare casserole… delicious, and not too filling,’ it was time to crack open a cold beer. Because riffing off the first half of Othello was part of the fun. And I’m already enjoying myself riffing off the second half (and the first half of Hamlet) in the second book, which I’m now editing.
When I told my brother-in-law I was going to set my next book in Venice he looked at me and said, ‘My, that’s original.’ (Management consultants like stating the obvious). And, obviously, Venice has been the setting for so many novels and poems and plays and films it seem impossible that anyone could find anything new to say. But the point is, everyone who goes sees a different city.
The Fallen Blade came out of a single image in my head of an impossibly-beautiful boy chained naked in darkness to the bulkhead of a ship. He snapped awake to reveal amber-flecked and inhuman eyes. The ship was in the Venetian lagoon and I realised the boy knew no more about himself than I did.
That gave me Tycho, although I didn’t then know what species of inhuman he was or what origin story lead him to being the first Vampire into Europe and the survivor of the last Viking outpost in North America.
After ten SF novels I realised I was about to write fantasy!
Venetian first, Christian second…The Venetians had no hesitation living up to that maxim. They transported Crusaders to the Middle East, but called ahead to protect their Middle Eastern trade deals by telling those living there that the western armies were coming. Half of Venice is built from bits looted from elsewhere. The Duke’s palace and cathedral alone use pillars stolen from mosques, synagogues and other churches. As a people the Venetians were treacherous, avaricious and two-faced and proud of it! You don’t get to build a thousand year empire and become the richest trading power in the Mediterranean by playing nice.
It’s cliché to say Venice is a fantasy in itself and there’s something unworldly about its atmosphere, that it’s a city of sex and death hiding its darkness under all that glitz and glitter, but it really is. The damn thing’s been standing in that lagoon for centuries and dying and fighting a watery death for every one of them. And I defy anyone to go there and not feel ghosts are watching.
People have asked over the years how I write and I’ve replied with everything from 200 word bullet-point heavy ‘This-Is-How-I-Do-Its’, to 5000 words academic walk throughs covering initial inspiration to delivered script.
Every writer is different. A friend of mine writes 500 perfect words a day and never revises or goes back. No idea how he does it and wouldn’t want to try. Another friend is cross because she can’t get her output up from two novels a year to three. (I work seven day weeks to manage one).
Basically:
All my books come out of a single image. In The Fallen Blade it was Tycho chained naked to the bulkhead of a ship. He opened his eyes and proved he wasn’t human. After that, it was a simply a case of working back to see where he’d come from and working forward to see where he was going. When writing I see the places in my head and hear the words spoken. Without that I couldn’t do it. Read the rest of this entry »
- - January 31st, 2011
inimitable Harry Dresden P.I., the only wizard in the Chicago phonebook.
My favourite mention of The Fallen Blade so far calls it, ‘Two books occupying the same page space.’ And describes those as, ‘An adventure fantasy with a smidgeon of romance, great hordes of vampires and werewolves and, of course, plenty of swordplay.’ Mixed with, ‘A fantastic evocation of Renaissance Venice… the beauty of the culture it gave birth to and the merciless, brutally violent and Machiavellian politics that ran alongside it.’ [Guardian, UK]
