Archive for Orbit US

Orbit’s First E-Book Only Launch!

We’re thrilled to announce our first ebook only publication from New York Times Bestselling author Lilith Saintcrow! We’ll be publishing The Hedgewitch Queen in December 2011, and the sequel, The Bandit King, in July 2012 in both the US and the UK.  The series will be available across all digital reader platforms.

The story centers around a young woman who must advance to the throne amidst court intrigue, conspiracies, and magic.

Vianne di Rocancheil is a lady waiting at the Court of Arquitaine, where she studies her books, watches for intrigue, and shepherds her foolhardy Princesse through the glittering whirl. Court is a sometimes-unpleasant waltz, especially for the unwary, but Vianne treads its measured steps well.

Unfortunately, the dance has changed. Treachery is afoot in gilded and velvet halls. A sorcerous conspiracy is unleashed, with blood, death, and warfare close behind. Vianne must flee, carrying the Great Seal of Arquitaine with her. This is the one thing the conspirators need to rule, and they won’t rest until they have it. A life of dances, intrigues, and fashion has not prepared Vianne for this. Nor has it prepared her for Tristan d’Arcenne, Captain of the King’s Guard and player in the most dangerous games conspiracy can devise. Yet to save her country and avenge her Princesse, Vianne will become what she must and do whatever is required.

A Queen can do no less.

Lili is a class act and with such an exciting story – that’s so different from anything she’s done before—we felt we couldn’t pass up this opportunity to try something new.

The only right word

First, I’d like to say that it’s Eli Monpress week over at Mel’s Random Reviews! This was entirely her own idea and I was flattered to take part. You can read reviews of the first three books plus an interview with me and a very swoon worthy meme about Eli, book boyfriend. All in all, very well done, and you really should check it out! – R

The other day I received the following question on Twitter “why did you add more “offensive” language from each Eli book instead of leaving it younger audience friendly?”

To say this threw me for a loop would be, as Eli would say, the bedrock of understatement. See, I go out of my way to try and keep the language in my books as clean as possible. This doesn’t mean the books are prudish (well, Miranda might be, but no one who’s spent one chapter with Eli Monpress could ever accuse him of being puritan), it just means that I steer clear of the sort of extreme violence, language, and gore that you find in darker fantasies. This isn’t to say I don’t have violence or unpleasant circumstances, I just don’t roll around in them. I leave that to Joe Abercrombie, who does it much, much better than I ever could.

As I explained to The Write Thing a while ago, keeping my books clean wasn’t a decision I took lightly. It all came down to readership. The long and short of it was that, while the Eli Monpress books are written for adults, with adult themes like paying the price for chasing your dreams, how not all love is healthy, and what it actually means to be uncompromising, I still wanted the series to be accessible to everyone no matter their age or who was censoring their reading. I didn’t want someone who could enjoy my work to turn away just because of stupid language choices.

But (as most authors will tell you) sometimes there’s only one right word, and when that word happens to be a word you can’t say on network television, the time comes to make an executive decision. For those of you wondering what word I’m talking about, the obscenity in question is bitch, and the person it was applied to was Benehime.  Now, if you’ve read my books (and if you haven’t, it’s not exactly a spoiler), you know that Benehime is, in fact, a bitch. And when you get to read The Spirit War and Spirit’s End next year, you’ll be amazed by my restraint at only calling her bitch and not… other things I’ll refrain from saying here because my mother reads this blog. But yes, in Spirit Eater, Benehime is called a bitch, and very rightly so. So rightly so, in fact, that I’d actually forgotten I’d used the word until this question reminded me.

In all fairness to my poor reader, he was listening to the audio version, and after two books of straight up PG reading, the bitch can hit you out of nowhere (as bitches are want to do). While I am sorry the word came without warning, I’m not sorry I wrote it. It was the right word, the only word to use in that particular instance. Far more interesting than the actual bitch, though, was why I felt the need to break my cursing ban in the first place. (more…)

New Books From Gail Carriger!

As reported today in Publishers Weekly, we’re thrilled to announce that Orbit US will publish Gail Carriger’s next adult series,  The Parasol Protectorate Abroad. The series is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2013 with book one, PRUDENCE, to be followed  by IMPRUDENCE (naturally). Both books will also be available as simultaneous, unabridged audiobook releases from Hachette Audio.

If 2013 seems too far away, fear not — there’s plenty of parasol coming to tide you over. In March 2012 Orbit will publish TIMELESS, the final book in the original  Parasol Protectorate Series, and our friends at Yen Press will be releasing  SOULLESS: THE MANGA, an incredible graphic adaptation of the books illustrated by artist Rem.

And  to round things out, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has acquired Carriger’s debut YA historical fantasy series, Finishing School, set in the same world but 22 years prior to SOULLESS.

You can learn more about these books, and all of Gail’s projects, at gailcarriger.com!

 

SPR-SUM 2012 US COVERS: EARLY LOOKS

 Wow, now that’s a lot of covers! A whole season in fact. With our US Spring-Summer 2012 catalog sneaking out into the world we wanted to go ahead and post all the early covers in one place so you don’t have to go sneaking about the interwebs looking for them. As this is catalog time, and pretty much a whole year before these books will go to print, a lot is still in development, and a lot will still change, so I’ve marked the not-final covers so there is no confusion. After the jump you can link and download each cover individually.

So go ahead! Get excited! Make your christmas lists, birthday lists, and beach-reading lists, and in the coming months we will be launching each of these covers with all the pomp and circumstance (and fun background videos, insider info, and semi-lucid ravings of yours truly) you have come to expect right here on orbitbooks.net

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Cover Launch: SEVEN PRINCES by John R. Fultz

Today I am very excited to launch a hotly-anticipated book (and cover!) for The Seven Princes by John R. Fultz. I am absolutely in love with the art by Richard Anderson. I love his loose, impressionistic fantasy style. This project is a perfect example of everything we try to do at Orbit – make an amazing cover that absolutely oozes fantasy, yet do it with an infusion of a fresh new style or new angle. The book is a very classic fantasy tale but told in a really fast-paced cinematic, almost modern pulp kind of feel, and I am just thrilled with this marriage of artist and story. Definitely go check out the artist’s site and blog, he’s been working on concept art for Guild Wars for a long time, and if you are familiar with the game you’ll definitely recognize things, but all of his portfolio pieces are super drool-worthy. I am very excited to get working on the next cover in the series soon!

After the jump, get a teaser and see the art big and sexy…(yes sexy is a technical art-direction term!) (more…)

The Big and the Little

For me it’s always about the big and the little, even before reading John Crowley’s amazing novel Little Big. As a kid nothing excited me more than thinking about how vast the universe was, and how small the world was, and how small my home town was within it, but that it was still part of this universe that included massive gas giants, black holes (who isn’t thrilled by those monsters) and super novas. I always had trouble fitting that into my mind (I still do) I positively ached with the excitement of it, but I had so much trouble expressing that, letting it out until I started writing.

It was writing that helped me contain the big and the little. And made me understand that one doesn’t really have much meaning without the other.
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The Truth behind Theft of Swords and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

I’m honored and incredibly excited that Orbit’s release of the first book in my Riyria Revelations, Theft of Swords, has been selected as Library Journal’s Fantasy Debut of the Month for September.

In the conclusion of LJ’s review they said, “VERDICT: Fans of Fritz Leiber’s classic “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” novels should welcome the adventures of Hadrian and Royce. A winning debut for fantasy lovers.” This is not the first, and probably won’t be the last, time that my series has been compared to Fritz  Leiber’s classics that were mainly published between 1940 and the mid 1970’s. As my series features two unlikely heroes, a larger fighter and a smaller thief, there are valid reasons to make correlations between the two.

But here’s my dirty, little secret…I’ve never read Leiber’s works, so any similarities are completely coincidental. I know. I know. You’ve just met me and already I’m admitting to what could be a fatal fantasy faux pas. Yes, I admit that I’m not an expert in all the classic fantasy that has come before I showed up. But my shame goes even deeper…I didn’t even know that F&GM even existed! Let me explain how I found out about them. (more…)

Orbit Needs You. And You. And You.

We are looking for three people to join our awesome publishing team in New York. To apply to be an Editor, click here. If Online Marketing is your thing, click here. Publicists, click here. We look forward to hearing from you!

Important note: Please read the job descriptions carefully and confirm that you have the required experience, skills, and attributes before you apply!

The Orbit Team

HELL SHIP reviews — featuring aliens, invaders and pirates in spaaaace!

As we’ve had such a fine crop of reviews for Philip Palmer’s rumbustious tale, we thought it was only fair to share. Click on the following links for more on Hell Ship’s swashbuckling story (UK | ANZ | US ) plus here’s a free extract  and reviews follow below … the Sun review is just hilarious in itself!

No one writes SF quite like Palmer… Hell Ship is a freewheeling extravaganza replete with a hundred varieties of alien, vast spacecraft, exotic worlds… aficionados of bizarre space opera will be amazed and delighted”
GUARDIAN

“The triumphs and tragedies of this novel are told in the style of ancient legend. But there is also a sense of irrepressible fun … This is epic science fiction with a twinkle in its eye”
SUN

“I really do recommend Palmer’s work – he’s an unflinching and relentlessly ballsy writer”
SFREVU.COM

“Great storytelling … a joy to read. Great stuff from Philip which proves why he’s fast becoming my favourite science fiction author”
FALCATA TIMES WEBSITE

“Palmer’s imagination knows no bounds … readable and enjoyable”
THEBOOKBAG.CO.UK

“I knew I would love it after reading just a couple of pages … You will be treated to an entertaining tale of heroics, tragedy and selfless sacrifice all written with a gleam in the eye”
IWILLREADBOOKS.COM