Author Archive

Event Schedule for San Diego Comic-Con 2012

It’s time for the 2012 Comic-Con International convention in San Diego!

You’ll find Orbit Books at booth #1118.   Mira Grant, Gail Carriger and N.K. Jemisin will also be in attendance this year.  See below for a full list of their panels and signings.

In addition to these events, there will be giveaways at the booth throughout the weekend. So stop on by  to say hello and pick up some awesome buttons, posters, and books while supplies last.

THURSDAY

Panel: Witty Women of Steampunk with Gail Carriger
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM in Room 5AB

Panel: creating Spaces for Diverse Characters and Representations with N.K Jemisin
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM in Room 23ABC

Spotlight Panel: N.K. Jemisin
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM in Room 7AB

Panel: Not With A Bang, With A Bite with Mira Grant
1:15 PM – 2:15 PM in Room 6A

Signing: Mira Grant
2:30 PM – 3:30 PM in Autograph Area (AA09)

FRIDAY

Panel: Epic Fantasy War with N.K. Jemisin
3:30 PM – 4:30 PM in Room 6A

Signing:  Mira Grant
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM at the Orbit Booth, #1118
Complimentary Books While Supplies Last

SATURDAY

Panel: Urban Fantasy w/ Mira Grant (As Seanan McGuire)
10:30 AM – 11:30 in Room 5AB

Signing: N.K. Jemisin
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM at the Orbit Booth, #1118
Complimentary Books While Supplies Last

Spotlight Panel: Gail Carriger
1:30 – 2:30 pm in Room 5AB

Signing: Gail Carriger
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM in the Autograph Area

SUNDAY

Panel: Foes with Fur and Fangs with Gail Carriger
1:45 PM – 2:45 in Room 5AB

Signing: Gail Carriger
3:00 PM – 4:oo PM in Autograph Area AA19

 

 

Get To Know K.J. Parker

Sharps, a fantasy novel by K. J. Parker. Cover shows a fencer standing on cobbled streets, pooled with bloodEn garde! SHARPS (US | UK | AUS) is  a new novel by the K.J. Parker featuring a high-stakes competition that will topple kingdoms. You won’t see action like this in the summer Olympics that’s for sure.

Publishers Weekly described it as “a ripping good adventure yarn, laced with frequent barbed witticisms and ace sword fighting… Parker’s settings and characterizations never miss a beat, and the intricate political interplay of intrigue is suspenseful almost to the last page.”

Collected here are five spoiler-free interviews with K.J. Parker about SHARPS and some of Parker’s earlier novels.

Pornokitsch | Staffer’s Musings | Fantasy Book Cafe | Fantasy Book Critic | Book Worm Blues

 

What if things had ended…differently? FED by Mira Grant

BLACKOUT (US | UK | AUS) released yesterday and I’m sure by now many of have heard the news that the film rights of FEED (US | UK | AUS) have been optioned. So what else can go right for the hordes of Newsflesh fans shambling towards their local bookstores? Check out FED by Mira Grant — an alternate ending to FEED.

Be advised there are major spoilers for FEED contained therein.  If you haven’t read FEED yet, don’t go any further.  These books are fantastic as the many Newsflesh fans will tell you. You’ll want to enjoy every surprising twist and turn on what has been one wild ride for the Mason siblings.

But if the crew of After the End Times are old friends of yours, then by all means continue and read FED beneath the cut or download a pdf.

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2312: We have liftoff!

It is appropriate that on the launch day of 2312 (US | UK | AUS) by KIM STANLEY ROBINSON, we also celebrate the unmanned flight of SpaceX’s Dragon shuttle aboard the Falcon 9 rocket. But until room opens up on those shuttles for the rest of us, pick up 2312 and travel to the future today.

The response to this book has been wonderful, and there have been a few recent news items that were too good not to share. The Wall Street Journal reviewed 2312 over the weekend saying,

“2312” does what sci-fi is supposed to do: combine enthralling scientific sweep with envy-inducing human interest.

Kim Stanley Robinson also recently sat down with Space.com to dig down into the gritty details of terraforming planetary objects for space colonization in a special two part interview:

Part 1  |  Part 2

And if you thought that was interesting, just wait. Next you can walk-through the same steps and build your own “Terraria” from an asteroid – like those in 2312! Remember a home is what you make of it.

What is remarkable about 2312 is how topical this book is to the present day. It was a month ago that Planetary Resources announced their plans to mine near-earth objects to world-wide enthusiasm.   Over 2,000 engineers have already applied to work on the project. Working together like this, a future such as the one laid out by Kim Stanley Robinson in 2312 is more than possible.

Read a sample from BLUE-BLOODED VAMP

Blue-Blooded Vamp by Jaye WellsIn just a few short weeks BLUE-BLOODED VAMP (US | UK | AUS), the fifth and final volume of the Sabina Kane series, will be released!

Sabina and friends set off for Italy hunting for the means to defeat Cain, the father of all vampires and the man who murdered her family. Revenge may finally be within reach unless Cain finds her first. It all comes to a head in this dramatic series conclusion.

Check out this excerpt from BLUE-BLOODED VAMP or start the series from the beginning with RED-HEADED STEPCHILD (US | UK | AUS).

The St. Charles streetcar lumbered its way toward the Garden District like a mourner in a funeral procession. The rocking motion should have soothed me, but I was pretty sure I was beyond ever relaxing again.

Adam sat next me. His warm hand on my leg helped dispel some of the chill. He wore his trademark brown duster and heavy boots. The goatee and muscled frame added to his general air of menace, but the mage’s real danger lay in his ability to wield magical weapons.

In addition to being my partner, he was also my . . . boyfriend? No, too high school. Lover? Ugh. Consort? Meh.

I guess when it came down to it, he was just my mancy, plain and simple. And his presence had become as critical to my equilibrium as gravity or blood.

Read More

Cracked the BLACKOUT code?

It has been over a week since a group of intrepid bloggers hacked into the CDC’s Central Archives and found the encrypdated data which unlocked an extended excerpt from Mira Grant’s upcoming novel, BLACKOUT – the third and final volume of the Newsflesh Trilogy.

Were you able to figure out the passwords? You can still play along by going here; however, you can also just skip straight to the answers beneath the cut.

Chapter One of BLACKOUT was previously released on io9. You’re going to want to read that before continuing with our extended excerpt. If you’ve never read any of the Newsflesh books, be warned – there are jaw-dropping spoilers to be found in these excerpts.

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Read an excerpt from THE KING’S BLOOD

When an act of harrowing betrayal threatens to set the cities afire, all certainties are called into question. The high and powerful will fall, the despised and broken shall rise up, and everything will be remade. 

The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham

THE KING’S BLOOD (US | UK | ANZ) is the next chapter in The Dagger and Coin series.  Read an excerpt from this thrilling fantasy by Daniel Abraham.

“With a deft and light hand, Abraham questions and explores the fantasy-world assumptions that most authors take for granted, telling an enjoyable and genuinely innovative adventure story along the way” — Publishers Weekly, starred review. If you haven’t read THE DRAGON’S PATH (US | UK | ANZ) now is a great time to start.

“The apostate, called Kitap rol Keshmet among other things, stood in the soft city rain, the taint in his blood pressing at him, goading him, but being ignored. Fear and dread welled up in his throat.

In any of the cities and villages of the Keshet or Borja or Put, the temple would have been the central fact of the community, a point of pride and honor, and the axis about which all life turned. In the vast glory of Camnipol, it was only another of a thousand such structures, awe-​inspiring in its scope, beauty, and grandeur, and rendered unremarkable by its company.

The city was the heart of Imperial Antea as Imperial Antea was the heart of Firstblood power in the world, but Camnipol was older than the kingdom it ruled. Every age had left its mark here, every generation growing on the ruins of the old until the earth below the dark-​cobbled streets was not soil, but the wreckage of what had come before. It was a city of black and gold, of wealth and desperate poverty. Its walls rose around it like a boast of invulnerability, and its noble quarters displayed great mansions and towers and temples casually, as if the grandeur was trivial, normal, and mundane. Had Camnipol been a knight, he would have worn black-​enameled armor and a cloak of fine-​worked wool. Had it been a woman, she would have been too handsome to look away from and too intimidating to speak with. Instead, it was a city, and it was Camnipol.”

Click to read more

Read an excerpt from VENGEANCE

Ten years ago, two children witnessed a murder that still haunts them as adults. Now a chance meeting brings these two strangers together to uncover the secrets of a kingdom and evil that will throw the land into chaos.

Vengeance by Ian IrvineVENGEANCE (US | UK | AUS)  is an epic tale of revenge and redemption from Ian Irvine, one of fantasy’s finest storytellers. Read an excerpt from the first book of The Tainted Realms series.

“Matriarch Ady, can I check the Solaces for you?” said Wil, staring at the locked basalt door behind her. “Can I, please?”

Ady frowned at the quivering, cross-eyed youth, then laid her scribing tool beside the partly engraved sheet of spelter and flexed her aching fingers. “The Solaces are for the matriarchs’ eyes only. Go and polish the clangours.”

Wil, who was neither handsome nor clever, knew that Ady only kept him around because he worked hard. And because, years ago, he had revealed a gift for shillilar, morrow-sight. Having been robbed of their past, the matriarchs used even their weakest tools to protect Cython’s future.

Though Wil was so lowly that he might never earn a tattoo, he desperately wanted to be special, to matter. But he had another reason for wanting to look at the Solaces, one he dared not mention to anyone. A later shillilar had told him that there was something wrong, something the matriarchs weren’t telling them. Perhaps—heretical thought—something they didn’t know.

Click to read more

Read an excerpt from CALIBAN’S WAR

Return to the Expanse with James S. A. Corey and read an excerpt from CALIBAN’S WAR (US | UK), the follow up to the critically acclaimed LEVIATHAN WAKES (US | UK) which The Wall Street Journal called “…the future the way it was supposed to be.”

“Snoopy’s out again,” Private Hillman said. “I think his CO must be pissed at him.”

Gunnery Sergeant Roberta Draper of the Martian Marine Corps upped the magnification on her armor’s heads‑up display and looked in the direction Hillman was pointing. Twenty-five hundred meters away, a squad of four United Nations Marines were tromping around their outpost, backlit by the giant greenhouse dome they were guarding. A greenhouse dome identical in nearly all respects to the dome her own squad was currently guarding.

One of the four UN Marines had black smudges on the sides of his helmet that looked like beagle ears.

“Yep, that’s Snoopy,” Bobbie said. “Been on every patrol detail so far today. Wonder what he did.”

Guard duty around the greenhouses on Ganymede meant doing what you could to keep your mind occupied. Including speculating on the lives of the Marines on the other side.

Click to read more

Two new short stories from Orbit Short Fiction

We’re shaking things up this March by publishing TWO new pieces of short fiction for fantasy and science fiction readers alike. Whether you like swords or railguns, Orbit Short Fiction has something to suit your fancy.

STRANGE DAYS IN OLD YANDRISSA by John. R. Fultz: In an age of untamed miracles and curses, a mad vagabond may solve the mystery of a king’s dilemma. Yet in a world gone mad, the only wise man is a fool. This is a great story for readers who enjoy new voices in epic fantasy. John R. Fultz’s short fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Weird Tales, Lightspeed, and Space & Time.

A PEOPLE’S ARMY by T.C. McCarthy: In the distant future, on an ice-bound world, Choi Chung Ho is a loyal soldier in the Dear Leader’s army. Stuck in a damaged tank with the American advance quickly approaching, he must find a way to survive. Survive the Americans, the blindly patriotic members of his own crew, and, most dangerous of all, the shifting politics of the North Korean military. T.C. McCarthy  explores the nature of military and political conflict in vivid and graphic detail in a futuristic world war like no other.

If this is your first time reading the work of either author, be sure and check out their full-length novels too.

Praise for SEVEN PRINCES:

“A stand-out fantasy series from an author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building.” — Library Journal (Starred Review)

“What Seven Princes [offers] is breakneck pacing and nonstop insanity. It’s epic with a capital EPIC.”
— io9.com, 2012

Praise for GERMLINE and EXOGENE

“Simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant.”
— Publishers Weekly, 2012  (Starred Review)

“This exciting and thoughtful story marks McCarthy as one of sci-fi’s most promising new talents.”
— Kirkus, 2012  (Starred Review)