Archive for Deals and Deliveries

Deals and Deliveries

Deals! There have been a few. Perhaps this is an understatement. There have been many and now I have to trace my brain back to the last time I’ve posted — please excuse me if you are already aware of some of the below already.

In March, Orbit worldwide also acquired OUT FOR BLOOD and LAST BLOOD in the House of Comarre series by Kristen Painter.  Kristen is the author of the upcoming BLOOD RIGHTS (quickly followed by FLESH AND BLOOD and BAD BLOOD) in Fall 2011 with three books in three months.

Orbit US has signed for four new novels with Joe Abercrombie. The first will be a standalone and then a trilogy — all set in the same world as the First Law trilogy.  Joe is hard at work writing as we speak! And I can’t wait to read his newest, which we plan to publish next fall 2012!

Orbit worldwide also acquired two new novels from the acclaimed N.K. Jemisin: THE KILLING MOON and THE SHADOWED SUN. We’ll be publishing them in May 2012 and June 2012. I absolutely loved the KILLING MOON — and then THE SHADOWED SUN blew me out of the water — it’s full of assassin priests, mad kings and a goddess of death.  Nora has been nominated for the Hugo and the Locus Award for Best First Novel (as well as a host of other awards). We’ll have covers for you soon on those two…

And finally, Orbit worldwide is publishing a new Lilith Saintcrow series. It is tentatively titled THE IRON WYRM AFFAIR (As in Bannon and Clare in…THE IRON WYRM AFFAIR).  Lilith has outdone herself in this amazing Victorian steampunk urban fantasy (yes! I already read the first draft!!!). I won’t give much away other than to say imagine Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson — if Dr. Watson was a sorceress. It will be out next August 2012.
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Orbit acquires three new Charles Stross novels

I’m delighted to announce our acquisition of three wonderful new books by the award-winning Charles Stross, and there’s been a big buzz of excitement at Orbit HQ over this new deal. I’ve loved Charles Stross’s books for years and always enjoy his wit, his storytelling wizardry and his playful familiarity with the cutting edge of technology. The new novels are The Apocalypse Codex, Neptune’s Brood and The Lambda Functionary and span the full range of Stross’s work – from Lovecraftian horror to space opera to near-future crime. And we’ll be publishing these in the UK/ANZ from Summer 2012.

Here’s just a snapshot of the great things that have been said about Charles Stross’s work:

As keenly observant of our emergent society as it is of our emergent technologies …one extremely smart species of fun” William Gibson
“Not only edgy and smart but grounded in human concerns” Wired
“Stretches the limits of narrative to make us see how wonderful ideas can be”
Time Out
“Stross is an author who anyone interested in SF should read and relish” SFX
“The cutting edge of modern science fiction” SFSite.com

Orbit acquires self-published ebook bestseller

Orbit is pleased to announce that it has acquired rights to publish the Riyria Revelations series by self-published author Michael J. Sullivan.  Orbit will be publishing the complete series in three volumes in consecutive months in Fall/Winter 2011-2012. The first volume, Theft of Swords, will be published in November 2011; the second volume, Rise of Empire, in December 2011, and the final volume, Heir of Novron, in January 2012.

Michael J. Sullivan has already self-published the series in ebook and print-on-demand editions, and each volume has been prominent on the ebook fantasy bestseller charts. (more…)

Lilith Saintcrow’s Bannon and Clare

I’m excited to announce that we’ll be publishing a whole new series with Lilith Saintcrow. Lili is one of the first urban fantasy authors I acquired and I’m over the moon to tell you about her new series, a combination of historical urban fantasy and steampunk.  We’ll be publishing the first book in Summer 2012. (more…)

N.K. Jemisin Acquisition

I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired the Dreamblood series from N.K. Jemisin.  It will be a two-book series that we’re tentatively titling REAPER and CONQUEROR and publishing in consecutive months in July and August of 2012.

A bit about the story:

In the city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law.  Along its ancient stone streets, where time is marked by the river’s floods, there is no crime or violence.  Within the city’s colored shadows, priests of the dream-goddess harvest the wild power of the sleeping mind as magic, using it to heal, soothe… and kill.

But when corruption blooms at the heart of Gujaareh’s great temple, Ehiru — most famous of the city’s Gatherers — cannot defeat it alone.  With the aid of his cold-eyed apprentice and a beautiful foreign spy, he must thwart a conspiracy whose roots lie in his own past. And to prevent the unleashing of deadly forbidden magic, he must somehow defeat a Gatherer’s most terrifying nemesis:  the Reaper.

N.K. Jemisin is the author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kindoms and the upcoming, Kingdom of Gods (releasing in October 2011).

She’s over at Babel Clash (with Gail Carriger) today and tonight she’ll be on Hour of the Wolf at 1:30 a.m. WBAI 99.5 FM for NYCers, or listen online!

Nun With A Gun!

Well, if that headline doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.

I’m absolutely delighted to announce that Orbit has agreed a three-book World Rights deal with Simon Morden for three superb future noir thrillers.  Simon has been the editor of the BSFA’s writers’ magazine Focus, a judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award and is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics – not many SF writers have held a chunk of Mars in their hands!  He is also the author of the acclaimed YA novel The Lost Art. Let me assure you, though, that there’s nothing ‘Y’ about these books – they’re all ‘A’!

Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom are set in the Metrozone – a dystopian future London – and feature protagonist Samuel Petrovitch: a Russian émigré with a smart mouth, a dodgy heart and a dodgier past. He’s brilliant, friendless, cocky and – even in a world where the No. 1 rule is ‘don’t get involved’ – stands out as a selfish, miserable b*****d.

The books are fast-paced, wise-cracking, action-packed romps through the overcrowded, decaying urban jungle of a not-so-distant future, featuring – amongst many other ingredients – exiled yakuza, Russian gangsters, gang warfare, virtual reality and a two-metre-tall warrior-nun packing an unfeasibly large automatic pistol. If these books don’t get your adrenaline pumping, you don’t have any!

We’ll publish in the UK, Commonwealth and US in the second quarter of next year – clear a space in your reading schedule.

Deals and Deliveries: new dark fantasies by Tim Lebbon

We are delighted to report that Orbit UK has acquired two exciting new dark fantasy stand-alones from award-winning author Tim Lebbon. These are scheduled for UK and Commonwealth release in Summer 2011 and Spring 2012, in B-format paperback.

Tim Lebbon’s author’s credits include four British Fantasy Society Awards, the Bram Stoker Award for short fiction and a Scribe Award for the author’s novelisation of the movie 30 Days of Night. The latter was also a New York Times bestseller. So, as you can tell, we’re really looking forward to these! And we’ll start out with Echo City Falls, a richly gritty tale of a city in crisis…

It hides below Echo City, a threat that has been growing over generations deep beneath the streets. The corrupt wheels of commerce, the murky cycles of political rise and fall and the rivalries of religious and military sects have intersected efficiently over the ages, filling specialised niches in a rigidly organised society. But this is about to change. As darkness stirs in the depths, a stranger arrives from across the desert that isolates Echo City from the rest of the world. Watchers have long whispered of the destruction of their city and search for something that will keep them from it. Madmen and spirits of the dead have foretold disaster and looked for a saviour. But no one expected either in this lifetime.

Labyrinthine, steeped in violent history and hiding horrors far below, the city starts to unravel as the plot gathers momentum to reach a dramatic and compulsive conclusion.

Deals and Deliveries: New Philip Palmer acquisition

We are tremendously excited to have acquired world rights in two new books by the talented Philip Palmer for Orbit, to be published on both sides of the Atlantic by Orbit UK and Orbit US. The first book, Hell Ship, will be a dramatic tale of pirates in space and will feature exploring, discovering, scouting and also killing, looting, and annihilating. Hell Ship will be appearing in a book store near you in Spring 2011, with the next book scheduled for Autumn 2011.

However, you don’t have to wait that long to enjoy more of Palmer’s larger-than-life characters, dark humour and cleverly sinister plotting. Version 43 is already on our schedules for Autumn 2010 and is an explosive adventure of death and robots on a violent frontier world.

Or read Red Claw (UK I US), out now, which is ‘hard not to warm to’ and ‘full of ideas’ according to the latest issue of SciFiNow. And we’d certainly agree with SciFiNow that Red Claw ‘deserves the plaudits it has received’ as there have indeed been many most glorious reviews for this book.

Deals and Deliveries (9!!!)

Sadly, the summer is over, and with it, (hopefully) the rain, the rain, and the rain.  But not to worry, yours truly went to the Caribbean, and got a tan.  So not a total waste.  But on to the exciting news: (more…)

New Series from Daniel Abraham!

I’m delighted to announce that Orbit has acquired World English Language rights in The Dagger and the Coin, a new series from Daniel Abraham. Daniel is, of course, the author of the acclaimed Long Price Quartet, which Orbit will publish in the UK at the end of January 2010, in two omnibus-style volumes.

Changing direction a little, The Dagger and the Coin will be epic fantasy on a grand scale, Very much in the tradition of George R. R. Martin‘s wonderful A Song of Ice and Fire –  fast-paced and filled with war, intrigue, sex, murder, magic, great fortunes lost and won, dark gods, crime, exotic races, fantastic set pieces, dragons, underground resistance movements and strange occult powers.

In Daniel’s own words: ‘In the way that The Long Price Quartet was a semi-tragic meditation on the epic scale of an individual life, The Dagger and the Coin is a love letter to fantasy adventure intended to keep the reader from getting enough sleep..’

‘I’m very conscious of the influences I’m cultivating going into it – Walter Tevis, Alexandre Dumas, Tolkien, J. Michael Strazinski, Joss Whedon, GRRM, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Dorothy Dunnett, Tim Parks – and I’m trying to take the things that I love about each one of them and make a stew out of it. It’s set right at the friction point between the medieval period and the renaissance, so we’ve got knights and kings, but we also have merchant houses and finance. There’s some magic of the understated sort. There’s political intrigue. There’s a girl who was raised as the ward of a Medici-style bank, there’s a high nobleman who’s gotten himself and his family in over his head, there’s an emotionally scarred mercenary captain straight out of Dumas.

‘The point of it all is to make a book that reads to me now the way that the Belgariad did when I was 16. I’m going to be swimming in everything I think is cool for the next year, and I’m really looking forward to it

And for our part, Orbit is hugely excited to be publishing The Dagger and the Coin internationally. The combination of Daniel’s vision and talent and the grand canvas offered by epic fantasy promises to make The Dagger and the Coin something truly special. But don’t just take our word for it. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Junot Diaz says:

‘Daniel Abraham is one of the reasons the fantasy genre continues to haunt my dreams. Abraham is fiercely talented, disturbingly human, breathtakingly original and even on his bad days kicks all sorts of literary ass. Welcome to the world of the andats, of the haunted extraordinary poets, a world where men enslave ideas, where these slaves scheme to avenge themselves, where every bad deed spawns more, a world where after the treachery, the conspiracies, the journeys, all that’s ever left in the end are the consequences. Welcome to Daniel Abraham. If you are meeting him for the first time I envy you: you are in for a remarkable journey.’

A remarkable journey, indeed. Welcome aboard!