Author Archive

November is the Cruelest Month…

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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The Walking Dead with Jesse Petersen

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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Blind artists, Rogue Gods. and Murder

N. K. Jemisin burst onto the scene this year with her much praised novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  For those that didn’t get a chance to read it, it’s now in mass market paperback.  And with it, we are also releasing the second book in the Inhertiance Trilogy, The Broken Kingdoms.

It is the story of Oree Shoth, a blind artist who takes home a homeless man she finds in the rubbish heap. This one act of kindness will drag her in a nightmarish conspiracy.  I found it to be a fabulous read and I hope you will too.

“The very best kind of sequel: as lush and evocative and true as the first, with all the same sense of mystery, giving us the world and characters we already love, and yet with a new story and a wonderfully new perspective on the whole dazzling world and pantheon the author has built.”
—Naomi Novik

“A decade after the events of March 2010’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, artist Oree, blind to reality but able to see magic, sells trinkets to tourists in Sky, a city filled with supernatural entities and happenings in a world slowly emerging from doctrinaire authoritarianism.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Told from Oree’s point of view, the narrative voice is authoritative and original — this is a book that readers won’t be able to put down.”
—Romantic Times

Cover Launch: LEVIATHAN WAKES

Leviathan Wakes is by James S.A. Corey, which is the pen name of  Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. This behemoth is hitting stores May 2011. What an awesome project. We’re talking space opera, big ships, interstellar travel, secrets, conspiracies, and high adventure. Once I got my hands on it the gears started turning full tilt.

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Orbit goes digital first with THE WINDUP GIRL

Time Magazine named The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi as one of its ten best novels of the year. And the book has also won an extraordinary five of 2010’s major international SF awards: the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook Award and John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

To take advantage of the huge buzz for this book (read a free extract HERE), Orbit is taking the unusual step of releasing the ebook edition immediately, as the fastest way of getting this important work to a UK audience. The paperback print edition will be out later, from 2nd December. We are very excited to publish this in the UK, as the extraordinary word-of-mouth excitement for this work in the States has been tremendous and now UK fans will have access to this wonderful book. (more…)

Ideas about Ideas

Where do you get your ideas?

Ever since I got my agent and it was no longer an act of extreme hubris to introduce myself as a writer at parties, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask this question. I’ve got my answer all ready! It would go like this:

Random starry-eyed person: Where do you get your ideas?!

Me: China, where everything else in America comes from.

*drumroll*

China is the new Schenectady, folks! (more…)

Food for Thought

Mira Grant recently dropped this pearl of wisdom in an interview with therealmcast.com:

“Phorid flies are native to South America, and the way they reproduce is gruesome and horrible in the extreme.  See, they inject their eggs into fire ants, and when those eggs hatch, the larvae eat the ant’s brain and take over its body, driving it around like a new sort of economy car.  When the larvae are ready to hatch, they chew off the ant’s head and crawl out of the hole.  Ponder this for a moment.  Nature makes zombies on a regular basis. Rabies changes your behavior.  Parasites and parasitic insects are more than happy to take over your brain for fun and profit.  I think some sort of zombie outbreak could definitely happen–the only question is how.

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. And Mira is the one who gives them to me. So, if I look more tired than usual, blame the zombies…

A few thoughts about The Sworn and The Dread—Looking Towards the Future

As this blog comes out, The Sworn is getting closer and closer to its publication date in late January, and The Dread is nearly completed in first draft.  It’s been very interesting for me working on these two books, since they show the characters maturing and dealing with some new and troubling issues, compared to the challenges faced in the first four books.

Of course, one way that The Sworn and The Dread are different is that they offer a gateway into my world of the Winter Kingdoms for readers who haven’t read the other four books.  I like the idea of offering multiple points of entry into a fantasy world, so that as the number of books set in that world grows, readers don’t feel like they have to get caught up if they don’t want to do so or aren’t ready to tackle the project.  So for new readers, The Sworn and The Dread are a fresh start, while readers who have been with the series since the beginning will see old friends facing a brand new adventure. (more…)