Archive for Orbit US

Cover Launch: KINGDOMS OF DUST by Amanda Downum

Behold the new artwork for the upcoming Kingdoms of Dust – Amanda Downum’s rich and exotic fantasy adventure featuring necromancer-spy Isyllt Iskaldur.  

Larry Rostant has done us proud yet again with his luxurious imagery, which we feel perfectly suits Amanda’s lush and atmospheric writing style. And the visual sums up the epic setting for this book: think fiery red deserts, swirling sandstorms and ruined cities . . .

It’s the perfect addition to the gorgeous artwork for the rest of the Necromancer Chronicles series (see all the covers together below). And the joy is that, since these books can be read as stand-alones, you can pick up whichever book most appeals to you first . . . A difficult choice indeed! Larry Rostant: we truly heart you. And tons of thanks must also go to our very talented UK designer Peter Cotton, who put all of these covers together.  (more…)

The Enterprise of Alchemy

Alchemy is a knot downright Gordian when it comes to finding an entry point for the young scribe trying to introduce his readers to the subject. One solution is to tackle the problem as Alexander would, but this in turn leaves us with a conundrum every bit as frustrating as the one we began with—instead of a compact but impenetrable knot of information, we now have countless loose, frayed ends that are just as likely to take us nowhere as they are to reveal how the intricately assembled whole came to be.

Perhaps the best approach, then, is to do as I have done and open with an overly convoluted and essentially imperfect metaphor for the problem—the encryption of meaning in complex symbolism that references the historical, the mythological, or the biblical is, after all, an essential part of the European alchemical tradition. How else to accurately pass along your wisdom without it being exploited by the unworthy? (more…)

Here’s to you, Mr Harrison…

When I was young, and I mean really young, my mother caught me reading the newspaper. That I could was just one of those things, like having brown hair and sticky-out teeth. I’m reliably informed it was something to do with the Rhodesia crisis (something you kids will have to look up for yourselves) – what it was isn’t important, but the fact of reading early, and apparently spontaneously, is. Fast forward a few years, and we’d moved towns and schools. So while most of my classmates were ploughing through their graded Ladybird books, I was pretty much left to my own devices. I have no recollection of what I read then. All sorts of stuff probably. But I do remember this: at some point (I must have been about nine) I was shown a rack of books and told to choose one, it didn’t matter which.

(c) Puffin BooksOne in particular caught my eye. It had a man in a spacesuit on the cover which, as a child fascinated by the Apollo missions, was a big draw. And that was pretty much it for the next thirty-odd years. That book (and I’ve finally tracked it down – the 1976 Puffin edition of Spaceship Medic, by Harry Harrison) quite literally changed my life. Soon I was on the hard stuff: Clarke, Asimov, the Heinlein juveniles. Anderson. Pohl. Herbert. Aldiss. Anything with a spaceship on the front, and these were the days when Bob Foss was king – those spaceships were huge.

What fed my peculiar addiction was that my mum used to help run the village WI jumble sales. Before the doors had opened, the book stall had been scoured and any likely candidates picked off and paid for. Now – my mum’s not exactly a speculative fiction fan: she was going on the look of the book. (more…)

Aunt Teagan and the Iceberg Factor

When you write a book, you’re only ever showing the important bits. Seems obvious, right? The boring stuff, the stuff that isn’t intimately bound in the narrative, the stuff that doesn’t just leap off the page, or drive home some essential truth about your characters or the world they live in, you leave out*. But it’s still there, in a way.

What you see on the page is a result of winnowing out a hell of a lot of material. Some of it great, some of it exciting to write, but they’re ultimately scenes*, and situations that didn’t serve the story. The thing is, even though they’re gone, they still sit beneath the story, submerged, they’re the nine-tenths of the iceberg – the research, the history, the backstory – that give the bit the reader sees the extra weight.

Like Aunt Teagan in my Death Works books. (more…)

The Allure of The Neon Court

The UK’s premier fantasy and science-fiction magazine, SFX, has recently launched its 2011 Blog Awards. Rubbing shoulders with other nominees for ‘Best Celebrity Blog’ – a list that includes such luminaries as Neil Gaiman – is none other than Orbit’s very own Kate Griffin, author of the much-acclaimed Matthew Swift novels A MADNESS OF ANGELS, THE MIDNIGHT MAYOR and THE NEON COURT.

Be sure to check out Kate’s blog, which is a fascinating mix of writing anecdotes, tales of her experiences working in theatre and ruminations on how it feels to be up against Sir Terry Pratchett in the ‘best novel’ category at the SFX Awards . . . and if you enjoy what you see, feel free to vote for Kate in the ‘Best Celebrity Blog’ category!

Speaking of THE NEON COURT, its publication last month was met with widespread acclaim:

‘Few can claim to share the same level of creativity and individual style as Griffin, who at her young age, and expressing this level of assured skill, is almost certainly set to become a leading voice in the genre.’ SCIFI NOW

‘Overall the book reads like a hybrid of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden stories and early Christopher Fowler: there’s a wisecracking, beaten-up, powerful hero, but also a real love of London, down to its grimiest corners and most dimly-remembered  legends.’ SFX

‘Great pace alongside a plot outline to keep you going to the last line . . . this series really has got a lot more potential to evolve into something entirely unique. A real joy to read and I really can’t wait for the next instalment.’ FALCATA TIMES

And if you’ve not yet delved into Kate Griffin’s magical, murky London – why not? – then perhaps this article by Orbit author N. K. Jemisin will convince you.

Coming in April: Orbit Short Fiction!

Starting this April, Orbit will be publishing brand-new original short fiction written by our authors as eBooks. The stories will be available at all major eBook retailers – initially in the US, further afield in the very near future. You can sign up to our announcement list here.

We’ve got a fantastic list of stories from Mira Grant, Jaye Wells, T.C. McCarthy and Jennifer Rardin. You can find details about our launch stories after the jump!
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When Should The Waltz End?

A series, like all good things, must end. In a perfect world, it would do so not sooner, not later, but just exactly where it needs to.

I’m not going to lie–this is an incredibly difficult feat to pull off. Finding the proper place to end a series is a lot like crawling around in a pitch-black room with a lamp’s plug, looking for a socket. While the room is flooding. And carnivorous eels are swimming in. Plus, lasers. And explosions. Even James Bond would have a bit of trouble with this. (Although Daniel Craig’s Bond, much as I love him, would probably be a terrifically bad writer. I don’t think he’d take editing well.)

A series needs to end for the same reason books need to end–because a successful story must have structure. A story starts out with a situation in equilibrium, something happens to disturb that equilibrium, the consequences are explained in rising action leading to a crisis, and the story naturally ends when a new balance is reached. Within each scene and chapter, this principle is also at work; there is an arc to each character and each sentence. And, of course, a series has its own arc; it naturally wants to settle into a new balance.

Finding that moment is difficult for a number of reasons. A good series ends at the right moment, leaving the audience satisfied but also wanting. If a story is a seduction, the series is the relationship, and you want it ending amicably. (Being recently divorced, maybe I shouldn’t use that metaphor. Oh well.) (more…)

Orbit Podcast Episode 2, with Jesse Bullington

This week Jack Womack chats with Jesse Bullington about his latest novel, THE ENTERPRISE OF DEATH. Subjects covered include myth and the medieval mind,  folklore and superstition, secret histories, and the use of shock value, swears, and violence in art.

You can listen to the full episode below, or subscribe on itunes or the RSS feed.

Dante Valentine — now in one volume!

I recently came across the original cover letter from Lili’s agent in 2004. That’s when I still had @twbg as part of my email!!  I remember looking at this letter — on letterhead, back before all manuscripts were emailed – and putting a note on it for my Editorial Director at the time. I remember I drew little stars on it (What? I was an Assistant Editor! I thought that’s what you did when you wanted to buy something!)  and I wrote something to the effect of “I love this. Give it to me!” Hm. Perhaps not in those exact words… but that was the gist.

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You should be reading Kate Griffin.

I don’t have as much time for reading as I used to, these days. Day jobs and deadlines aren’t exactly conducive to being well-read, even though the folks at Orbit keep me nicely supplied whenever I do my periodic “Hi guys how’s the kids here’s a manuscript by the way any new books OK don’t mind if I do mooch a few” visits to their HQ in midtown. But despite my disconnection from the new/hot/now book scene, there are a few books and series for which I will stop, drop everything, and read myself blind. One such series is Kate Griffin’s Matthew Swift novels, of which the third, The Neon Court, is out now.

Whenever I try to browbeat others into reading these books, I’ve been using “the Dresden Files if written by Neil Gaiman” as my pitch — but frankly that’s doing a disservice to the Dresden Files, Gaiman, and Griffin all at once. The setup is similar to that of the Dresden books on the surface: each book chronicles the adventures of a much put-upon modern magician just trying to go about his life in an urban setting. The urban setting in this case is London rather than Chicago, and the magician in question is not a wizard, but an urban sorcerer. There are wizards too in Griffin’s world, note — and warlocks, and prophets, and the kinds of magic users who can’t be described because they don’t fit neatly into any recognizable paradigm. But amid this wildly diverse set of magically-gifted (and sometimes -cursed) people, urban sorcerers stand out because their power comes, to put it simply, from their love of city life. Urban sorcerers can’t sit still during rush hour. They feel its surge and ebb in their blood, far more powerfully than any natural rhythms. They talk to pigeons, weave spells out of the fine print on subway tickets, read portents in graffiti. And though their ancestors include druids and shamans and all the natural magic users made famous by history and fantasy, these days they become powerless in the green boondocks beyond a city’s exurbs. The life they need, to thrive, is of a grittier, wilder sort. (more…)