Archive for Commentary

Which Daniel Abraham book is best for you?

Whether it’s writing urban fantasy as M. L. N. Hanover, epic fantasy under his ‘real’ name, or space opera as one half of James S. A. Corey (the ‘James’ part, apparently), there’s no doubt that Daniel Abraham is a man of many talents – and many guises.

This invariably leads to two questions: why the various names, and where should you begin your Daniel Abraham experience?

We can help you with the second question, but first let’s have Daniel himself answer the first:

I recognize that my take on working with a different name for each different project is a little idiosyncratic, but it’s not exactly unprecedented.  Richard Stark and Donald Westlake, for instance, were openly the same guy writing very different kinds of books.  The name on the cover is one of the best ways to let people know what kind of ride they’re signing on for, and that can avoid a lot of disappointment later.  There’s a price to pay in that folks who like the things I do under one name might have to dig a little to find all the other stuff, but in the age of the Internet, it’s a pretty low investigative bar to clear.  I think the tradeoff’s worth it.

 There are also writers I know, like, and admire who don’t like the idea of putting a name on their work that isn’t the one they go by in the world.  Now, I know all writers are egoists, myself very much included, but that particular kink isn’t one I have.  I don’t care what name we put on the cover as long as I can be proud the work that went into it.

 There is another idea that if you know you like Stephen King (or Jeanette Winterson or Sebastian Junger — the model holds true for everyone), you’re already better primed to like one of their books when you pick them up.  I think that if the name of the author is what makes a book good, it isn’t a good book.

Many thanks to Daniel for the explanation! Now to the second question: which Daniel Abraham book is best for you? Read on and find out. (more…)

SEVEN PRINCES: It’s About Blood

The cover of the debut fantasy novel ‘Seven Princes' by John R. Fultz, showing a band of princes going to war
Seven Princes – released Jan 2012

So what’s your book about?

Is there any more difficult question for an author to answer? I know I have a hard time with this one. After spending so much time (often years) crafting a novel, living inside the souls of your characters, building the intricate world in which they live, overseeing the progress of an invented history and chronicling the fictional exploits of your literary “children”, it’s hard to encapsulate all the diverse threads of a novel into a single statement.

Yet the market demands a “hook” or “premise” on which any novel can hang its metaphorical hat. After all, if readers don’t know what to expect, why should they even buy the book? Blind faith? Hardly. Word of mouth? Well, that’s the best advertising you can get . . . but consider the irony. If you as the author don’t come up with a satisfying answer to “What’s your book about?” then your early readers and reviewers are going to do it FOR YOU. They’re going to summarize, encapsulate and foreshorten your Massive Undertaking of Artistic Purity to a description worthy of a sound-byte (or at least a Facebook update). So authors are better-off coming up with their own answer to this big question, rather than leaving it up to somebody else to explain.

All of this begs the question: “What is SEVEN PRINCES about?”

If you look at the cover text, SEVEN PRINCES is about war. “An age of legends. An age of heroes. An age of war.” Now that’s a great tag line. It’s engaging, evocative, and it rings with mythic resonance. Ready for more irony?

Here’s the thing: I never considered this book a “war novel” when I was writing it. Yet war itself is definitely one of the themes that drives the characters and the plot. Some characters want to prevent war—they know the red tragedy and the pointless slaughter that it brings—while others actively seek war to prove themselves, to avenge wrongs, or simply as a means of grabbing power. So the concept of war itself is definitely buried in there. There’s even a conversation at one point between two characters who argue about the essential nature of Man as a war-like being. Is Mankind capable of living in peace—true peace—for long? That’s a question that also lies at the heart of SEVEN PRINCES. So yeah, it’s about war. But it’s also about a lot more . . . (more…)

Robert Jackson Bennett on the Point(s) of Plot

Robert Jackson Bennett’s most recent novel, THE COMPANY MAN, published by Orbit in April, has been receiving rave reviews across the board:

“Bennett does the seemingly impossible here. He’s written an alternate-history novel that measures up in every respect to Philip K. Dick’s masterful The Man In the High Castle.” — Booklist

“The novel is a genuine original, something like an episode of ‘The X-Files’ written by Clifford Odets. Strongly recommended.” —Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

“THE COMPANY MAN made me realize how far sci-fi has come in my lifetime.” —Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal

Robert knows plenty about plot. On his blog he has just posted a piece in which he talks about the point of plot, expressing his forthright opinions on the academic’s view of plot as opposed to the reader’s; the different uses of plot, character, and voice; and how and for what reason spoilers can be advantageously ignored.

“The very best novels are a space in your head, a secret little corner only you know about, and you want to return to that place and spend a few hours enjoying yourself. What goes on in that place could matter less.”

Check out Robert’s thoughts at his blog; and if you haven’t yet read THE COMPANY MAN or his first novel, the critically acclaimed, multiple award-nominated MR. SHIVERS — do.

Does size REALLY matter?

We thought we were more opened-minded than this, but lately here at Orbit when we’ve asked ourselves the timeless question– does size really matter? – we’ve found ourselves answering with a shocking ‘yes’.

We didn’t want to be swayed by the spine width of any given book. ‘Why should it matter how wide the spine is?’ we’d say. ‘All books should be treated equally, regardless of spine width’ had always been our mantra.  But we’ve recently found ourselves paying a bit more attention to these chunky titles and omnibuses.  We even went so far as to measure them:


(For those of you keeping score, it’s Pamela Freeman’s The Casting Trilogy for the win!)

Now that we’ve acknowledged our bias we’re hoping we can move past it, though we do wonder if readers are swayed by book width as well.

So what do you think? When it comes to buying books, does size matter?

STORM FRONT by Jim Butcher: a Dresden Files reread

Mark Yon has been a reviewer and web administrator at SFFWorld, one of the world’s biggest genre forum sites, for nearly ten years. He has also been on the David Gemmell Awards organisation committee for the last two years. In this series of rereads, Mark will guide us below through the whole of Jim Butcher’s fabulous Dresden Files series as we count down to the new hardback at the end of July.
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And here’s where we commence the series.

Storm Front starts in typical film noir mode. With the sentence ‘I heard the mailman approach my office door, half an hour earlier than usual’, we are introduced to Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. And he’s the only person in Chicago’s director enquiries listed under ‘Wizard’.

However, this Harry is not the ‘Potter’ type. As we see from his advertisement, his stock in trade is: ‘Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Reasonable rates. No love potions, endless purses or other entertainment’. Harry is more of your paranormal dealing, insoluble crime-solving type of guy, and the only wizard used as a consultant by the Chicago Police Special Investigations Department. They need him when dealing with the demons and ghouls that live in the strange other-world of the Nevernever.

Harry is in his typically seedy office when a phone call from Chicago’s SI chief, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, involves him in a double murder investigation. The male victim is a bodyguard for the local mobster, Johnny Marcone. The other victim is Jennifer Stanton, an escort from the Velvet Room, a gentleman’s club run by one of Chicago’s vampire families.

Things get really interesting when Harry discovers that the murders involve black magic, and a black mage is behind them. And more worryingly, though Harry doesn’t know who it is, the black mage knows him. And is out to get him.

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Joe Abercrombie, Non-Nihilist

Recently, on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, an intriguing essay by Leo Grin entitled “The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists” appeared, finding Joe Abercrombie’s latest novel, THE HEROES,(as well as the work of a number of other contemporary fantasy writers) to be a bit lacking — allusions to “Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer” and a “small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing” rather clearly convey the author’s position.

Joe has written a very effective response on his website, among other things noting that he simply hadn’t realized he was recognized as such a threat to fantasy in general, and Western civilization in particular. Especially, as observed in both sites’ comment threads, by those who haven’t gone so far as actually reading Joe Abercrombie’s more recent work in order to comprehend its dangers.

If You Meet the Writer On the Road, Say: Keep Writing

Robert Jackson Bennett, who came onto the scene at the start of 2010 with his critically acclaimed debut MR. SHIVERS, and whose next novel THE COMPANY MAN will be published by Orbit in April 2011, has written a guest post at Inkpunks where he addresses every writer’s Greatest Unknown; what they can — and can’t — do in the face of that mystery; and how to accept the existence of that mystery and do the one thing doable: keep writing.

The performance of a book, that figure so desperately desired by so many terrified authors, is a constant moving target. It’s not unlike space travel: you are moving, and your target is moving, and by the time you’ve figured out where your target is then the distance between you has changed hugely.

Go read.

Nano advice: Time Travel Edition

I’m back with more advice from the editor’s perspective for all you Nano people out there. So, this time I want us all to hop into the Orbit time machine. We have one of those. It’s how we know the future.

It’s December 1. You wrote like a madman all month long and now you have 50,000 words and a warm glow of satisfaction. You drank all the champagne and ate all the cupcakes and are ready to bask in the relaxing life of being an author.

So, what next?
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Nano advice: Break the rules…

I’m back to talk about National Novel Writing Month some more. This time, instead of complaining on the internet about how mean everyone is—because that’s productive—I figured I’d take a shot at giving advice. This, of course means, that I will get to be the target of enraged tweeting and, with any luck, at least one table-thumping LiveJournal post.

Anyhow, as with last week, this is all with the caveat that any advice I have is targeted towards Fantasy and Science Fiction writers, because that’s what I know and that’s what I love, and this is the Orbit blog, so, frankly, you’re probably a SFF fan anyways. Also, this is all from the perspective of someone who hasn’t written anything longer than an editorial letter since college. So, advice from an editor. Not even advice, let’s say it’s some things you may want to think about if you have a moment between pounding out thousands upon thousands of words a day. (more…)

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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