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Arrrrrr me hearties! Cap’n Orbit here, markin’ International Talk Like a Pirate Day wi’ another fine haul o’ Orbit Author Links, plundered from the briny depths of T’Interwebs! Arrrrrr!

As always, if you see any online articles, reviews or interviews that feature an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know! We’ll happily name-check your website or blog with a heads-up credit in return (please remember to provide us with a link…)

Arrrrrr!

We recently released all three books (to-date) in Robert Buettner’s Jason Wander series in the UK (having first re-published them with new cover art in the US this April) and it’s lead to a definite resurgence of interest in the series.

Over at UK-based blog / webzine Concept SciFi, blogger Gary Reynolds has posted a detailed email interview with Robert, which covers a range of topics including the author’s inspiration for the series, his writing processes (”Compared to most writers, who are planners, I’m a duct tape improviser. I begin with an idea of where my story will end, and some idea of who will live it and how. But I don’t know exactly what has to happen next.”) and his current projects and plans for the future.

Meanwhile, over at Grasping For The Wind, John Ottinger has reviewed the first Jason Wander book, Orphanage [US / UK]. John explains that the book is a (freely-acknowledged by the author - see the ConceptSciFi.com interview, above) homage to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Haldeman’s The Forever War, but points out that Buettner also brings “post-9/11 sensibilities” to the classic ‘young man goes to war’ storyline. He also points out that whilst this isn’t a hard-sf novel, it’s a gripping and engaging one, summing it up by saying:

“Some suspension of disbelief will be required for those who like their science fiction to be based wholly in reality. But if you can let that go, you will end up with a deeply emotional and adventure filled novel of particularly high quality.”

We recently asked Robert to introduce the Jason Wander series in his own words, and this is what he told us.

The first three books in the series are currently available, as follows:

• - Orphanage [US / UK]
• - Orphan’s Destiny [US / UK]
• - Orphan’s Journey [US / UK]

Book four in the series, Orphan’s Alliance is scheduled for publication by Orbit US in late October 2008 and Orbit UK in January 2009. Book five in the series, Orphan’s Triumph is currently being finished.

You say ‘to-MAY-to’ and I say ‘to-MAH-to’,
You say ’shu-NAR-a’ and I say ‘SHAN-uh-ra’,
’shu-NAR-a’ . . . ‘SHAN-uh-ra’,
’shu-NAR-a’ . . . ‘SHAN-uh-ra’,
Let’s call the whole thing Geekspeak. . .

Behold! The Gods of Geek have seen fit to bestow upon me a brand new, super-shiny iPhone, and - lo! - I have become addicted to podcasts.

Hmm. So what does the above mock-portentous gibberish have to do with the ill-conceived George and Ira Gershwin pastiche that opened this blog post? I’m glad you asked! This morning on the train in to work, I passed the time standing up, plotting horrible deaths for the train company executives who can’t organise enough seats for paying customers listening to Terry Brooks discussing his career on Rick Kleffel’s excellent Agony Column podcast.

This particular episode is a ‘cast of Geekspeak, Santa Cruz public radio station KUSP’s live weekly show. Terry talks about how he got started as a writer, his Shannara series (the latest volume, The Gypsy Morph, is available now), Star Wars, writing the Episode One tie-in and a whole lot more.

Check it out here.

Over at his ConceptSciFi blog and ezine, Gary Reynolds has been talking to novelist, screen- and radio-writer Philip Palmer, author of the gloriously head-mashing space opera Debatable Space [UK | US] about a whole range of subjects, including (of course) the book itself, as well as Philip’s approach to writing, his techniques and processes and his experiences with writing and publishing.

Philip had the following to say on the subject of his love of science fiction:

“Science fiction is a genre that deals with exciting ideas. It’s about speculation and dreaming and imagining; and once you add real vibrant characters to that mix, it’s unbeatable.”

And in an update on his current projects, he drops a few hints about his next Orbit novel:

“I’ve just started a second draft of Red Claw, my latest Orbit novel, which is a high concept action thriller - think Predator on an alien planet and you pretty much have it. I wanted to do something exciting and visceral and also brainy … I also wanted to write a science fiction book in which the ’science’ isn’t quantum physics or astrophysics, it’s biology. This is a book which brims with aliens of every sort, not just alien monsters - alien grasses, alien bugs, alien soil, alien plankton, alien everything.”

You can read the whole interview over at www.conceptscifi.com and find out everything you ever wanted to know (and a whole lot more) about Philip Palmer over at his blog/website www.philippalmer.net.

Welcome to our regular Friday lunchtime Orbit links round-up. Shake the rain from your coat, pull up a chair, put your feet up by the fire and enjoy a hot cuppa while we tell you what some our our authors have been up to online in the past week or so…

As always, if you see any online articles, reviews or interviews that feature an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know! We’ll happily name-check your website or blog with a heads-up credit in return (please remember to provide us with a link…)

K.J.says:

Most everything I write starts with a physical object, a thing I hold in my hand. Colours In The Steel began nearly forty years ago with a pitchfork. It was very old, handmade by some backwoods blacksmith, and I used it to help my father carry the hay from the orchard out back of the house. As I walked along with it on my shoulder, I saw my shadow and imagined it was a soldier; and once I’d called that soldier into existence, I felt under an obligation to him to provide him with a story. Thirty-odd years later, in a foul mood, I started writing it down. The rest, as they say, is bibliography.

The Engineer trilogy started with a Bridgeport universal milling machine, a seventy-year-old miracle of engineering with which a competent machinist could make anything from an earring-back to a battleship. Its owner, who was teaching me to use it, spoke a strange language, where the words seemed familiar but had new and radically different meanings.

To him, ‘tolerance’ wasn’t an abstract. You could stick a definite article in front of it, or make it plural. A tolerance to him was the degree to which you were allowed to deviate from an unattainable ideal, and it was quantified in ten-thousandths of an inch. One ten-thousandth this side of the line was OK; the other side, and the thing you’ve been working on for two days straight turns into scrap and goes in the trash. It’s not often you get three complete books handed to you on a plate like that. All I had to do was go away and shuffle the words around.

The Company started with the flying jacket my father brought back from the War. It spoke for itself. I just hope I was paying attention.

The Escapement, part three of K.J. Parker’s Engineer trilogy, has just been published by Orbit in the UK in paperback and is also available in large paperback from Orbit in the US. Together with the first two parts of the series - Devices and Desires [UK | US] and Evil for Evil [UK | US], it tells the story of Ziiani Vaatzes, Engineer, and a whole lot more…

K.J.’s new novel, The Company tells the story of a group of war veterans trying to come to terms with peacetime (although of course, as with any of K.J.’s books, you can never assume that there’s just the one level of meaning in play). The Company will be published early next month by Orbit in both the UK and US.

Walter Jon Williams (author of the forthcoming This is Not a Game) has a post on his blog about his role writing the “science fiction parts” of the dialogue for Spore - the long anticipated and much-hyped new game from Will Wright.

Walter writes:

“When you encounter some fifteen-eyed, twenty-tentacled Purple People Eater lecturing you from the command center of its UFO, you’re talking to me, baby!”

Check it out!

Lilith says:

Hunter’s Prayer was actually the first-written of the Jill Kismet series. It came about because I was just finished with the Dante Valentine books and I needed a character who wasn’t so ‘broken’. I actually thought nobody would ever want to publish it because of some of the themes - abuse, prostitution, human sacrifice, and the like - so I let myself go and just went to the darkest corners, the places where I usually hold back when I’m writing something with a specific goal in mind. It was a shock to find that my editor wanted it, and wanted it yesterday!

With both my editor and agent so certain I went ahead and sold the book - and I’ve been endlessly glad I did. There’s nothing like stretching out of your comfort level to really challenge a writer.

Hunter’s Prayer - the second of Lilith Saintcrow’s Jill Kismet novels - is out now in paperback in both the US and UK.

Lilith writes a regularly-updated blog on her website at www.lilithsaintcrow.com, which includes frequent items of advice for aspiring writers. You can also read the free Saint City serial novel, Selene at www.lilithsaintcrow.com/selene.

Orbit is excited to announce that we’ve bought three more Jaz Parks novels starting with Bite Marks in October 2009.

For those of you who can’t get enough– or just can’t wait that long –don’t forget that Bitten to Death is just out and we’ll have One More Bite in January 09.

And take the facebook quiz to find out what kind of urban fantasy star you really are!

We’ve just had an eagerly-awaited delivery in the form of The Destiny of the Dead, the final volume in Ian Irvine’s fabulous Song of the Tears trilogy, set within Ian’s wider Three Worlds sequence.

This really is a major occasion, as it marks the end of an eleven-book cycle and a huge amount of hard work by the author. At around 2.3 million words this is an epic feat indeed. And you never know, there might be room for a few more Three Worlds books one day, if we’re lucky. But for now, that’s it from Santhenar. Except to say that Ian has topped a million Three Worlds books in print worldwide: hurrah!

All three series can be read alone, but reading more books in the wider cycle adds a real sense of historical depth, and a picture of three worlds at war down the ages.

Here are just some of the great things that have been said about the series:

“A worldbuilding labour of love with some truly original touches”
Locus Magazine on A Shadow on the Glass

“Irvine has brought both a lively intelligence and a keen moral sense to the heroics and spell-play of the modern fantasy novel”
Roz Kaveney on The Way Between the Worlds

“A page-turner of the highest order … Irvine can now consider himself comfortably ranked next to the works of Robert Jordan and David Eddings. Formidable”
SFX Magazine on Geomancer

“Epic, non-stop action adventure”
Starburst on The Curse on the Chosen

“Hang on with both hands, because this story waits for no one”
SFX on The Curse on the Chosen

And please read on for book blurbs and more info …
(more…)

Here’s another selection of links to items of interest featuring Orbit authors that we’ve found online during the past week:

As always, if you see any online articles, reviews or interviews that feature an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know! We’ll happily name-check your website or blog with a heads-up credit in return (please remember to provide us with a link…)

This month we’re publishing the mass-market (regular sized) paperback of Charles Stross’s near-future novel of crime and computer gaming, Halting State.

A whole bunch of reviewers rather enjoyed it when it first came out last year in the US and we think BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow summed it up pretty darn well in his review:

“Charlie Stross’s latest novel Halting State starts out as a hilarious post-cyberpunk police procedural, turns into a gripping post-cyberpunk technothriller, and escalates into a Big Ideas book about the future of economics, virtual worlds, the nation state and policing, while managing to crack a string of geeky in-jokes, play off a heaping helping of gripping action scenes, and telling a pretty good love story.”

But don’t just take Cory’s word for it (or ours)… you can sample the opening section of the story for yourself, courtesy of this extract from Halting State that we’ve posted elsewhere on the site.

And please feel free to leave your own mini-review of the book (or a link to your review elsewhere) in the comments, below, if you’ve already discovered the joy of Halting State for yourself and want to shout it to the world. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

We’ve just updated the Orbit UK Schedule page with six great new titles that we’ll be bringing to UK readers in November 2008:

• Living With the Dead by Kelley Armstrong - her brand new Otherworld novel.
• A Sword From Red Ice by J.V. Jones - book three of the Sword of Shadows saga.
• Chaos Space by Marianne de Pierres - the second part of Marianne’s Sentients of Orion space opera saga.
• Earth Ascendant by Sean Williams - part two of Sean’s galaxy-spanning Astropolis series.
• Shadow’s Edge by Brent Weeks - the second part of Brent’s debut fantasy series about a reformed assassin seeking to escape his violent past.
• The Curse on the Chosen by Ian Irvine - the second instalment of the epic fantasy saga The Song of the Tears.

Click the titles to read the trailer text over at the schedule page, and start firing up those retailer wish-lists!

Welcome to our latest round-up of links to items of interest featuring Orbit authors. Without further ado:

As always, if you see any online articles, reviews or interviews that feature an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know! We’ll happily name-check your website or blog with a heads-up credit in return (please remember to provide us with a link…)

Over at the official Iain [M] Banks website, we’ve just posted the second Iain Banks email Q&A session, in which Iain answers selected questions from his fans and readers.

This time around you can discover Iain’s predictions for the next big UK literary stars, his view of the Minds’ attitude toward the rest of the Culture, a question as to would he / wouldn’t he write an episode of Doctor Who, whether he thinks there will ever be a Culture-based MMORPG, and more…

Head on over to www.iain-banks.net to read the full piece.

Just a reminder that Karen Miller will be in the UK signing at:

Waterstone’s Bracknell at 1pm tomorrow

and

Waterstone’s Basingstoke at 6pm tomorrow.

Hope to see you there!

Two Orbit Authors - Brian Ruckley and Jeff Somers - recently took part in the first BookGeeks SF and Fantasy Writers’ Panel.

The round-robin discussion, which also includes contributions from authors Alastair Reynolds and Jaine Fenn, is on the subject of the marriage of prose and visuals. Specifically: maps (is their inclusion in sf / fantasy books a good thing / bad thing?), cover art (should an on-cover portrayal of a book’s characters or vehicles be encouraged / avoided?) and visualised representations of the authors’ work (what would they like to see, what would work best - games, comcis, movies?)

The piece is presented in round-robin format, with each authors’ responses to the three questions then commented upon by the other three authors, which works quite nicely to build up a the discussion between the participants. It all makes for some very interesting reading. Do check it out and do leave your own comments; pieces like this always work best with plenty of feedback.

It’s Friday lunchtime, which can mean only one thing (well, around here, anyhow): it’s time for our weekly round-up post of links to items of interest featuring Orbit authors:

As always, if you see any online articles, reviews or interviews that feature an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know! We’ll happily name-check your website or blog with a heads-up credit in return (please remember to provide us with a link…)

Lilith Saintcrow – author of the Dante Valentine Series and the new Jill Kismet Series – has just launched a free serial novel: Selene. Set in the world of the Dante Valentine series, Selene expands on the Saint City adventures of Selene and Nikolai. New chapters will be posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can read the serial here – or subscribe to follow it on your rss reader here. Enjoy!

Karen Miller , the bestselling fantasy debut author of 2007, is coming to the UK! She’s going to be signing copies of all her novels, including The Innocent Mage, The Awakened Mage and Empress

Thursday, August 28th at:

1:00pm: Waterstone’s Bracknell
17 Stanley Walk, Bracknell RG12 1HA.
For more information, call the store on 01344 488124 or visit www.waterstones.com

6:00pm: Waterstone’s Basingstoke
35 Wesley Walk, Basingstoke RG21 7BE.
For more information, call the store on 01256460646 or visit www.waterstones.com

Hope to see you there!