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The new blog (with the awesome name) Rescued By Nerds interviewed Jeff Somers about the star of his novels, Avery Cates:

I’ve created a character who kills people, who physically assaults people when annoyed, who has stepped over the bodies of friends in order to save himself—albeit, perhaps, regretfully. Then I went ahead and made him kind of fun and charming. It feels good on some primitive level to then smack Avery in the head with a lead pipe. It feels like the Literary Lead Pipe of Justice.

Visit the nerds for the full interview.

There’s also a new messageboard for any citizens of Old New York who aren’t feeling like themselves lately. You can find that here (at least until the SSF takes it down).

Following its successful launch in the US in 2007, and a record year for the imprint in the UK, Orbit announces its intention to expand both lists. In the US, Orbit is going to double the size of the list over the next 3 years, taking its title output to 70-80 titles per year by 2011. In the UK, where Orbit is already the biggest SFF imprint, it will increase the size of the list by approximately 10% each year over the next three years. (more…)

Welcome to our latest quick-fire round-up of links of interest featuring Orbit authors:

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’ve teamed up with Chris, The Book Swede for this one: another incredibly simple-to-enter email sweepstake, with a copy of Blood Ties [UK / US] - the first part of Pamela Freeman’s Castings Trilogy - up for grabs by one lucky winner.

The book is out now in the US but won’t be be published next month in the UK. So if you’re a UK reader then this is a great chance to get your hands on an early copy… signed by the author, no less! And the Book Swede has also reviewed the novel, concluding: “Blood Ties is an excellent book, fun, clever, and well written, with distinctive characterisations, and I will definitely be looking forward to the next book in the series!”

Full entry terms and conditions are available over on the Book Swede’s blog. Good luck!

The UK’s biggest sci-fi magazine, SFX, has posted a four-star review of Midnight Never Come [UK / US], the new novel by Marie Brennan, out now from Orbit UK, and published next month by Orbit US.

The book, which is set towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, impressed reviewer Eddie Robson with its mix of an authentic Elizabethan atmopshere and darker, fae elements: “…firmly rooted in real history, set in a convincingly-constructed Elizabethan England, but with a secret faerie court existing beneath London. Its ruler, Invidiana, is a cruel capricious sort, whose subjects live in dread of her schemes and whims.”

Eddie also enjoyed Midnight Never Come’s highly-intriguing plot: “…refreshingly for this genre, [it’s] a political thriller, with conspiracies, spies and shady machinations … The novel starts slowly, concentrating first on world-building and putting pieces on the board, but it keeps you hooked until the plot really kicks in.”

Midnight Never Come is out now in the UK and will be published next month in the US. To read the full review, pick up a copy of the June 2008 edition of SFX Magazine.

Anyone who’s read EMPRESS – or any of the early reviews of the novel – will know that it’s a book with a very unsympathetic central character (and that there aren’t a lot of hugs to go around at the end.)

Over at Grasping for the Wind, John Ottinger talks to Karen about how the book upends the expectations of epic fantasy:

GFTW: Although Hekat is a sympathetic character at the beginning of the novel, we have come to dislike her very much by the end. How were you able to write a character that rather than having an upward spiral toward a “happily ever after” instead moved on a downward spiral filled with selfishness and hate?”

Read Karen’s responses here.

You can read the first chapter of EMPRESS here.

Welcome to another quick round-up of links of interest featuring Orbit authors:

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!

Another online giveaway to tell you about: this time, we’ve teamed up with Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review to give away a pair of Mike Carey novels - his first two ‘Felix Castor’ titles, The Devil You Know and Vicious Circle, to be precise - and all you have to do to enter the sweepstake is send an email to Graeme by May 6th.

For details, see the competition post at www.graemesfantasybookreview.com.

Over at The Book Swede’s blog, Chris talks to Orbit author Marie Brennan about her forthcoming novel of Elizabethan faerie intrigue, Midnight Never Come, which we’re delighted to say is out now in the UK and will be published next month in the US.

Marie talks about her Shakespearean inspiration, the detailed historical research that went into every aspect of the novel’s background and back-story, her favourite folk tales and much more.

Read the full interview over at thebookswede.blogspot.com and catch up with Marie’s blog at her LiveJournal page.

Orbit in the US is seeking an editor to join its fabulous publishing team, based in New York. All details are here.

Over at Wired’s GeekDad blog John Baichtal reviews Matter and writes:

“Of all the books I’ve read of ultrapowerful galactic civilizations, this one does it best. Incredible tech and a huge scope, yet telling a very human story that stands out among the vastness.”

Check out the whole review here.

Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review has a great piece on Jeff Somers’ The Digital Plague (UK/US) today, where he calls it:

Last year I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of Jeff Somers’ debut ‘The Electric Church’, a gritty ‘dystopian future’ thriller that (while by no means perfect) I had a lot of fun with and left me eagerly waiting for the sequel. Well, it’s ‘sequel time’! :o) Actually, it isn’t ‘sequel time’, it’s ‘great sequel time’…Highly recommended to anyone who likes their sci-fi mean, streetwise and drenched in bullets!

You can read the full review here.

Here’s a quick round-up of links of interest featuring Orbit authors, that we’ve found - or have been brought to our attention - this week:

If you spot an interesting online article featuring an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know!

We’re publishing The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers in both the UK and US next month, but in the meantime we’ve teamed up once again with Pat St Denis of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist to give away two copies of the book in an email sweepstake.

Simply visit the Hotlist and follow the instructions to email in your entry. Good luck!

To celebrate the launch of Pamela Freeman’s Blood Ties, we’ve put together a stonecasting widget that may just know what the future holds in store for you! (and yes, if you cast more than once you may get a different fortune, but we have it on a stonecaster’s authority that only the first throw counts) You can read an extract from Blood Ties here.

Over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist Patrick posts one of the first reviews of Bloodheir, book two in Brian Ruckley’s Godless World Trilogy, and concludes: “Without the shadow of a doubt, it should be one of the fantasy books to read in 2008.”

U.S. readers can find the mass market edition of book one, Winterbirth, in stores next week. Bloodheir will be out in both the US and the UK in June.

With EMPRESS marching up the bestseller charts, My Book The Movie asks Karen Miller who she would cast to play Hekat, Nagarak, and others. Karen is adamant that the movie will never get made … but with a cast like this, we sure want to see it!

Orbit UK & US author Jennifer Rardin posted an interview with Orbit US author Robert Buettner, over at her blog just yesterday.

They talk about Robert’s ‘Jason Wander’ series, what he sees as the main differences between science fiction and urban fantasy, his life in interesting times as “soldier, Spook, palaeontologist and lawyer” and his approach to world-building. Plus, Robert offers his advice to aspiring writers.

That’s not the only interview Robert has given recently; he’s also chatted to SciFi.com’s John Joseph Adams for a piece that was posted on the site today.

Find out more about Robert Buettner’s ‘Jason Wander’ series at www.robertbuettner.com, and Jennifer Rardin’s ‘Jaz Parks’ books at www.jenniferrardin.com.

We’ve just this minute unveiled the brand new Orbit Facebook page.

If you’re a Facebook user, please feel free to head on over and sign up as a fan. We’ll be posting a range of regular updates, including news updates from the main website, as well as monthly cover galleries of our new releases, details of forthcoming Orbit-related events, exclusive previews and giveaways, along with anything else we can think of that’s relevant and interesting to Orbit Books fans.

If you have any suggestions for additional content you’d like to see on the page, please do drop us a line via the contact page of the Orbit site.

Fantasy fiction mega-blogger Pat St. Denis, of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist fame, is currently running a sweepstake to win one of two copies of Small Favour, the brand new Dresden Files novel by Jim Butcher.

The entry conditions are simplicity itself: all you have to do is send Pat an email with your postal address. Just the once, though; he’s very strict about disqualifying multiple entrants (and quite right, too).

Full details can be found over at fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com.