We interrupt our usual service for an announcement from Giguhl, the demon/feline sidekick of Sabina Kane, star of the urban fantasy novels by Jaye Wells.

Hello, mortals.

Giguhl, the fifth-level Mischief demon, here. You’ve probably heard of my many accomplishments as the champion of Demon Fight Club and as the coach of the seriously bad-assed Manhattan Marauder roller derby team. But did you know that in my spare time, I am also the official sidekick of an urban fantasy heroine?

Her name is Sabina Kane. She’s half-mage and half-vampire and all sorts of trouble. And without me getting her back and providing color commentary, she’d be totally lost. I get lots of letters from beings who want to follow my hoofsteps into the sidekicking business. They think it’s all glamour and making sweet love to nymphs. Little do they know that it’s actual work. Today I’m going to break down the attributes required of every awesome sidekick . . .

 1. A sense of humor. Look, I don’t mean to be judgey, but a lot of urban fantasy protagonists tend to veer between anger and morose nihilism. Things can get dark pretty quickly without a sidekick around to make a well-timed dick joke. It helps if you have no internal censor or qualms about offending delicate sensibilities. In other words, if you can’t look at a corpse and improvise a joke about blue balls, you’re not on your game.

2. Speaking of balls, you need some. Hush, lovely ladies, I’m not being literal. Trust me, I’ve met plenty of UF heroines who make dudes look like fluffy bunnies. Male parts are not required for bravery. Regardless, since you’re going to spend a good portion of your time backing up your hero/ine while they battle Avenger demons and other nasties in dark alleys, you can’t be the sort to tinkle in your panties at the first sign of violence.

3. Flexible morals. Thank the gods I’m a demon and was born without any sort of annoying moral compass. Some of you might not have been so lucky and are burdened with a pesky “conscience.” My advice is to get over that ASAP. Saving the world isn’t pretty. Neither is hiding the bodies of your boss’s enemies. Or 4 a.m. blood and whisky runs. Guilt is for saints, but you, my friend, need to revel in being a sinner. Trust me, misbehaving is way more fun than piety, anyway.  

4. No sense of shame. Imagine you’re normally a seven-foot-tall sexy badass of a demon until your heroine decides to experiment with magic. Suddenly you’re spending half your time trapped in the body of a hairless cat. Are you going to let soul-crushing embarrassment get in the way of doing the job? No you are not. Granted, it’s no picnic to have to wear cat sweaters and knit caps, but at least you get to flash your dangly bald bits at unsuspecting bystanders.

5. Sexy dance moves. Okay, this isn’t exactly required for the job, but you never know when you’ll get a chance to partake in the forbidden dance with a hot nymph. Plus, you never know when someone’s going to challenge you and your hero/ine to a dance fight a la Westside Story. You gotta have your jazz hands o’ fury ready!

That’s pretty much it. Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on your handler. Like, say, if your heroine is a werewolf, she might be a real bitch who demands you wax her back around the full moon. If that’s the case, run like hell because next thing you know she’s gonna be demanding you pour hot wax on her undercarriage and no sidekick is paid enough to give a werewolf a Brazilian wax. Trust me on this.

If you have any other questions or, you know, just want to tell me how awesome I am, feel free to drop me a line on the Twitter.

 Giguhl out!

Giguhl can be found on twitter @Giguhl, and Jaye Wells can be found at her website or on twitter @jayewells.

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We are delighted that two Orbit titles have been shortlisted for this year’s Kitschies - awards that celebrate the most ‘progressive, intelligent and entertaining works of genre literature’, run by the excellent Pornokitsch website.

Jesse Bullington’s The Enterprise of Death is a finalist for the Red Tentacle for best novel, and the cover for Simon Morden’s Equations of Life is a finalist for the Inky Tentacle for best cover.  Congratulations to Jesse and our very own designer Lauren Panepinto!

To celebrate we want to give you the opportunity to read these great books and judge for yourselves.  We have 10 copies of each to give away.  Just fill in your details below and we’ll pick the winner in two weeks time, the day before the winners are announced at the SFX Weekender 3 Kitschies Award Ceremony (sponsored by Kraken Rum, making it even more certain to be a great event).

Please read the full terms and conditions.

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We released Jaye Wells’ new urban fantasy novel SILVER-TONGUED DEVIL (UK/ANZ/US) this month, and to celebrate this and the fact that there’s a lot of love on the Orbit team for all the urban fantasy heroines out there, we created a quiz to give you the chance to test your knowledge against us!

Can you guess which urban fantasy heroines uttered the quotes below? If you recognise one, comment with the number of the quote and the name of the leading lady who uttered it. Try to be the first to get them right! No googling, because that’s just cheating!

We had a lot of fun coming up with these quotes, and we hope you have fun guessing too . . .

1. “I took one more thing to bed with me, a stuffed toy penguin named Sigmund. I don’t sleep with him often, just every once in a while after someone tries to kill me.”
2. (“What up, peeps?”) I looked at the hairless cat for a moment. “‘What up, peeps?’ You’ve been watching MTV again, haven’t you?” (“Word.”)
3. “If the Apocalypse comes, beep me.”
4. “This feels a little bit like what a vampire bar would look like if it were a ride at Disney World.”
5. “Another werewolf thing. Like most animals, we spent a large part of our lives engaged in the three Fs of basic survival. Feeding, fighting and… reproduction.”
6. “She’s a thousand-year-old vampire who’s joined the cheerleading squad. There’s a whole different set of rules in play here.”
7. “So here’s the plan. I’ll get us tickets to New Orleans, we’ll go save the world from abstract evil, and afterward we’ll hang out in the French Quarter for a couple of weeks and blow off steam.”
8. “I was dragged through Hell, betrayed by my god, left in Jersey, and finished up nearly being drowned by a demon with a bad haircut.”
9. “Lycans are allergic to silver. We have to get the bullets out quickly, or they end up dying on us during questioning.” (“What happens to them afterward?”) “We put the bullets back in.”
10. “So in the sweltering heat of a July night, I sang a Christmas carol to a room full of fae, who had been driven out of their homelands by Christians and their cold-iron swords.”
11. “But the next noise to echo through the hall was one I was pretty sure I recognized. It was the unmistakable sound of the sh*t hitting the fan.” 

Clue: There are some TV heroines, some film, and some from novels, both Orbit books and non Orbit books.

EDIT: It’s 26th January 2012 and we’re providing the answers to this quiz, here they are now . . .

1. Anita Blake, of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels. 2. Sabina Kane (and Giguhl), the vampire (and demon/cat sidekick) of Jaye Wells’ Sabina Kane series. 3. Buffy Summers, from Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 4. Sookie Stackhouse, from the TV series True Blood, based on novels by Charlaine Harris. 5. Elena Michaels, the werewolf from Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld novels. 6. Elena Gilbert, from the TV series The Vampire Diaries, based on novels by L. J. Smith. 7. Jayné Heller, from M. L. N. Hanover’s sequence of novels: The Black Sun’s Daughter. 8. Dante Valentine, from Lilith Saintcorw’s series of the same name. 9. Selene, the vampire star of the Underworld movies. 10. Mercedes Thompson, a werewolf from Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series. 11. Jane True, the selkie starring in Nicole Peeler’s Jane True series.

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The Mystery Writers of America announced their nominees for the 2012 Edgar Award this morning, and Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Company Man (US | UK | ANZ) will be on the ballot for ‘Best Paperback Original’!

This comes on the heels of The Company Man‘s Philip K. Dick Award nomination, and almost exactly a month before the release of Robert’s new novel, The Troupe (US | UK | ANZ). The Troupe  follows 16-year-old piano prodigy George Carole and the mysterious vaudeville troupe he runs away to join, whose performances have a strange effect on their audiences. George gradually realizes the troupe is not simply touring: they are running for their lives.

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A DARK ENEMY. AN ANCIENT WAR. A NEW CHAMPION.

Young Malian is being trained to rule. Her people garrison the mountain range known as the Wall of Night against an ancient enemy, keeping a tide of shadow from the rest of their world. Malian is expected to uphold this tradition, yet she’s known little of real danger until the enemy attacks her fortress home and the Keep of Winds becomes a bloodbath.

Malian flees deep into the Old Keep – and when the danger is greatest her own hidden magic flares into life. But if she accepts its power, she must prepare to pay the price.

THE HEIR OF NIGHT by Helen Lowe is a richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery and conflicting loyalties, set in a well realized world.”
– Robin Hobb

THE HEIR OF NIGHT is the first novel in Helen’s skillfully weaved epic fantasy series, The Wall of Night. The second volume in this series, THE GATHERING OF THE LOST, (UK|ANZ)  will be released from Orbit UK on the 5th of April this year. Only three months to wait now!

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Following the news that the role of Ender will be played by Asa Butterfield, star of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo,  rumours are circulating about who will feature alongside him. The Hollywood Reporter announced recently that True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld is likely to play the role of Petra, and just today we’ve heard the news that Ben Kingsley, known for movies such as Schindler’s List, Shutter Island and Species, is also in talks to star in the movie. Even Harrison Ford has been mentioned as a possible Colonel Hyrum Graff.

We here at Orbit just can’t wait to see how it turns out, and I’m sure Card’s legion of fans can’t either. But who else would you like to see starring in this movie? Personally, I’m intrigued to see who will play Valentine and Peter . . .

In the meantime, look out for our reissue of Ender’s Game the novel (UK / ANZ), released this month in a shiny new package, and with a boy on the cover who looks not too dissimilar to Asa Butterfield coincidentally . . . (we must be psychic)

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Okay, she’s a lot like me in ONE way.  I also, um, love reading books.

I find I’m naturally attracted to characters with a hint of evil in their souls.  Like Lena, or indeed Flanagan, in DEBATABLE SPACE. Or Saunders in RED CLAW.  Even Sharrock in HELL SHIP is a warrior, and hence a cold blooded killer.

Some of the characters I’ve created in these books are, however, Good Guys. Version 43, for instance, in the novel called (would you credit it?) VERSION 43 is an honest cop in a dishonourable world.  He may have flaws but he’s not corrupt.  In fact his main flaw is that he’s not nearly corrupt enough.  He is, exasperatingly, too good to be true; because he’s a cyborg and not a true human.  But, as time goes by, he gets more and more human…and that makes him, in my view, easier to warm to.  And he’s also very good at his job, of enforcing law and order, usually by killing people.

Artemis, though,  is very much at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum of amorality.  She is a one woman killing machine.    But does that make her an unsympathetic character? Well, I’d argue not. Because she has reasons for what she does.  Good reasons…

But she’s flawed, without a doubt. Highly flawed.  Murderous – sometimes selfish – obsessive – and vengeful.  I like characters with flaws;  perhaps because I am myself a character with many flaws… And I believe firmly that characters who are nice and full of virtue aren’t the ones we root for when we read stories.  That’s why Satan is the one we cheer on in Paradise Lost, not those wretched angels; certainly not God.

Mulling on this theme, I’ve coined the term ‘Rootability’, to refer to that special quality in a character that makes us want to root for him, or her.  Tyrion Lannister (in George R. R. Martin’s  Games of Thrones series) has it in abundance. Eddard Stark is far more heroic. Daenerys is more exotic, and has those wonderful dragons. But Tyrion is the evil dwarf we love to hate; he’s the underdog; he’s the smart one.

Harry Potter, for my money, DOESN’T have Rootability. He’s too powerful.  He’s too nerdy. He has those glasses. I’d like those stories much more if Hermione were the heroine – the ‘little girl’ who no one takes seriously but who always wins the day.  But then again I’m strange; and JK Rowling’s fans seem to like Harry’s books just the way they are.

So to define the essence of Rootability in a story is to reveal something about yourself.  I like strong female characters.  I like flawed characters.  I like funny self-deprecating characters.  I like characters who have to make complex moral choices and don’t always get it right. Those are the characters I tend to root for.  But then again, I also root for Conan the Cimmerian in the Robert E. Howard stories, and he’s not female, he’s not flawed (he’s the perfect example of what he is) and he never makes complex moral choices – he does what he does according to his code, with nary a moral qualm afterwards.  But I root for him because he’s indomitable.  He just keeps on keeping on.

Not every protagonist has to have Rootability.  You can enjoy a story for the sake of the story; you can enjoy following a character without ever wanting him, or her, to win.  But for much of the time, it’s a key element in the strange process of the enjoyment of fiction.  We root for the good guy, or we root for the bad guy, and that shows we really care.

Rootability is close to Empathy of course; and Empathy is akin to Madness.  That strange Madness whereby the bookaholics among us lose ourselves in strange worlds, and identify, and sometimes overidentify, with the characters in those worlds.  But it’s possible to have empathy with every single character in a multiple-POV story, and still only truly root for one, or maybe two of them.  There are people who rooted for Willow, not Buffy, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  There are certainly people (I’ve met them) who rooted for Cordelia. There are others (strange people) who rooted for Xander.  Who you are affects who you root for.

This is, by the way, the third novel I’ve now written with a female protagonist – the others are Lena in DEBATABLE SPACE, and Sai-ias in HELL SHIP, who isn’t in my view Rootable, because she’s Nice, but I still love her.

Artemis is, I suspect, though don’t tell the others, my favourite of these three protagonists.  She narrates the whole novel; she’s in every scene; she has a thirst for vengeance; and she lives, oh boy, she lives.

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Now, in LEGACY OF KINGS [UK | ANZ], the final confrontation is at hand. Secrets will be spilled,  blood will run and magic will be unleashed. The fate of the world lies in the hands of a select few . . . but will their powers be enough to hold back the darkness?

Praise for Celia Friedman’s Magister trilogy:

Perhaps the most staggering achievement of FEAST OF SOULS is how purposeful every scene feels. There is no filler in this book — Ms. Friedman’s prose is crisp and to the point, just as every scene in this book serves as an integral part to the novel as a whole . . . FEAST OF SOULS is a fantastic, superior work of speculative fiction’ – THE BOOK SMUGGLERS

‘Friedman has her hands firmly on the reins and delivers scenes that are tightly controlled while sparkling with vitality’ – GRAEME’S FANTASY BOOK REVIEW

‘Friedman truly knows what she is doing as a storyteller, since she is following one of the great axioms: “Always leaving them wanting more.”  I, for one, want more; especially after reading the last couple of exhilarating chapters’ - SFF WORLD

‘WINGS OF WRATH is C. S. Friedman writing at the top of her form. This series is head and shoulders above most of the competition on the market today. Yes, it’s that damn good’ – PAT’S FANTASY HOTLIST

‘In short, FEAST OF SOULS is an absolutely brilliant novel that . . . will have you enthralled from start to finish. With a host of fully developed characters and a solid narrative, you should definitely check it out!’ - MITHRIL WISDOM

‘An excellent new fantasy trilogy, distinguished from others with its life-stealing magic system and sharp gender relations. This was my first exposure to the writing of Friedman and it won’t be my last’ - NETHSPACE

Find C. S. Friedman on the web at www.csfriedman.com and on her official author Facebook page.

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Voting in this round closes on Sunday so get voting now!

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