Kate is known for her enormous epic fantasy tales, full of brilliant characterization, in-depth politics and mind-blowing plot twists and turns.  Now, in Cold Magic, she’s created an alternate Victorian England where airships rule the skies and Cold Mages will do anything to keep technology from getting into the wrong hands.  It’s a world where magic rules the day and science hides at night, and where one young woman must discover her destiny.

But if you need more convincing, Ms. Elizabeth Moon had some stuff to say on Cold Magic:  “It’s a definite hands-down great read. It’s a great story beyond the alternate-history setting–and that’s done extremely well. The whole cold magic concept got me shivering…I don’t think I’ve ever run across anything like it…but the characters, the mysteries, the background history, the cultural complexity,  were all so intriguing I couldn’t stop reading.  And a sense of humor, to boot.”

The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice.

It is the dawn of a new age… The Industrial Revolution has begun, factories are springing up across the country, and new technologies are transforming the cities. But the old ways do not die easy.

Cat and Bee are part of this revolution. Young women at college, learning of the science that will shape their future and ignorant of the magics that rule their families. But all of that will change when the Cold Mages come for Cat.  New dangers lurk around every corner and hidden threats menace her every move.  If blood can’t be trusted, who can you trust?

You can find Kate on Facebook as Kate Elliott and on Twitter as KateElliottSFF.

Kate has an awesome website full of writerly advice here — but if you’re at World Con this weekend, stop by to meet her!

But in case you’d like to read a bit, we do have a extract for those excited to read. Or you can go ahead and be a fan now. But Jesse also has a contest running on her blog, she’s also running around at the Borders Babel Clash with Mira Grant (Feed).  Once you get hooked, the next book, FLIP THIS ZOMBIE will be out in January 2011!

The book is about two unlikely heroes — a couple on the verge of divorce.  On their way to marriage counseling, they notice a few odd things: a missing guard, a lack of cars on the freeway, and their counselor ripping out the throat of her previous client.

Now it’s up to David and Sarah to work together, save their marriage — and survive in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

The Crowded Shadows

Celine told us that a few years ago she had a shoebox filled with the usual myriad rejection slips that all writers collect. Holding down two jobs with two children, she would secretly write at night. But much hard work later she’s now the proud owner of a finished trilogy with some very shiny covers! She’s also accumulated two nominations for the Irish Book awards and a raft of great reviews for The Poison Throne (UK | US), book 1 of the trilogy:

‘Marvellous, vivid writing, and storytelling at its absolute best . . . I was utterly engrossed’ Roddy Doyle

‘Atmospheric, complex, and intense …  this epic starts strong and doesn’t falter one iota’ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

‘All the ingredients of an international bestseller: political skulduggery, passion, violence, loyalty and betrayal’ Irish Independent

‘Told with great assurance … this is an exciting, fast-paced story’ SFX

‘Kiernan will stun you with her debut … sure to captivate’ Romantic Times

‘A complex and original story… Kiernan has created a world that fascinates’ Bookgeeks.co.uk

So, with further books hitting shelves internationally over the next few months, we’ll look forward to hearing more from the the author over the next few weeks. Watch this space!

The Black Prism hit the New York Times Extended List at #23! It will be published on Sunday September 4th and you can find it here (on Sunday).

A bit about the story (SPOILERS AHEAD! Don’t read unless you’ve read Soulless and Changeless!)

Quitting her husband’s house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season.

Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London’s vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead.

While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated and Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together, Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain her increasingly inconvenient condition, but they may be worse than the vampires — and they’re armed with pesto.

And you have seen the video about the cover design right? Trust me, it’s amazing.

And for those of you in the UK — you’ll be seeing SOULLESS, CHANGELESS and BLAMELESS in stores together this September!

Mr Shivers, the critically acclaimed horror debut from Robert Jackson Bennett, is released in paperback today. Chronicling one man’s journey through the Depression blighted Texan Dustbowl in search of the mysterious, scarred vagrant who murdered his daughter, the book is a must read for fans of old school horror, literary dystopia or anyone looking for something to knock their socks off this autumn. To celebrate the paperback release of Mr Shivers we have 10 copies of the book to giveaway.

If you caught the paperback cover launch back in July (or Mr Shivers in hardback) you’ll already be familiar with hoboglyphs, the ingenious system of symbols developed as a means of coded communication by the scores of homeless men and women who rode the rails across the US during the Great Depression. You’ll also be familiar with the awesome ‘Orbit original’ hobogylph for Mr Shivers himself which takes centre stage of the paperback cover. (See also exhibit A, a handy symbol sheet starring all of the hoboglyphs that appear in Mr Shivers, above!)

Now, as you can imagine, since discovering hoboglyphs we have found all kinds of uses for them. In fact, in open plan offices such as ours, we even went so far as to create a few glyphs of our own painstakingly crafted to covertly share highly confidential information vital to survival of day-to-day Orbit life (click on an image to enlarge):

BE PREPARED TO STIR TEA WITH MAKE SHIFT SPOON

GOOD SLEEP HERE

THIS MEETING ALLOWS ALCOHOL

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning a copy of Mr Shivers (the book called ‘Supremely chilling’ by the Daily Mail, ‘a deft amalgamation of thriller, cerebral horror and American gothic’ by the Guardian, and ‘like a collaboration between Stephen King and John Steinbeck . . .’ by Publishers Weekly) is to create a modern hoboglyph of your own and send it in to us at the usual address orbit@littlebrown.co.uk. Please send glyphs to us by midnight GMT on Sunday 3rd October including the title Mr Shivers Paperback Giveaway in your email subject line.

Your glyph can take the form of a warning, a direction, or any general piece of information you think needs to be communicated covertly. You can chalk it on the pavement and take a photograph of it, paint it on a piece of paper and scan it in, charcoal it onto the side of a local freight train (rubbing it off said freight train once you have taken the picture and sent it to us of course). All glyphs must be accompanied by an explanation. Profanity will not be accepted (who are we kidding?) Have fun!

Mr Shivers is available now from Orbit US|UK. To read a first chapter extract click here.

And if you have any interesting pictures of The Crowded Shadows (UK | US) in the wild to share with us (for example, at your local bookstore or courtesy of your own PhotoShop mash-up parlour) they would be gratefully received at the same email as above.

If you haven’t seen her post, Celine’s description of how she approaches illustrating is fascinating. And the animation of this Wynter drawing taking shape before your eyes in seconds is just amazing. And to see it again, click HERE.

working on the promotional art for UK release.

When Orbit asked would I do some limited edition artwork for the UK release of The Crowded Shadows I was more than happy to oblige. I always draw when working on a book. I draw the characters, I draw scenes from the story, sometimes I even do wee comic strips. It’s my way of blowing off steam when writing is stressing me out. So, as you can imagine, I’ve been drawing the Moorehawke characters for years at this stage, and I’ve a pretty clear picture in my head of how they look.

If you’re interested, I thought I might walk you through the process of doing a drawing?

I’m a classical character animator by trade, so my drawing process is very strongly grounded in the techniques which I learnt at the animation board. I also use the same techniques and the same tools for my graphic novel work. It’s quite time consuming, very painstaking and slow, but it’s the only method I’m happy with.

Here’s how it goes.

Drawing desk ready to go

The first thing I do, is clear my drawing desk, and fill it with relevant images. In this case I went though my many drawings of Wynter and chose those which best reflect my image of her.  Wyn went through a few changes over the years, but she has long ago solidified into the girl you see in these images – a strong, almost roman nose, large eyes, masses of red hair like her father. A short girl, with a curvy figure and quite muscular arms.

Surrounding my drawing with images like this, provides me with reference that helps me keep the character consistent. If I were working on a Moorehawke graphic novel, I would gather all these images onto one convenient page called  a ‘model sheet’. There would be several model sheets for each character and I would refer to them constantly as I drew – but for this I’m happy to just pin up loose sheets.

The preliminary layer of my drawing is always done with a graphite stick.

graphite stick

Graphite drawing

I use a ‘B’ which is medium softish, and as you can see I keep it very very blunt. It’s like drawing with a lump of cheese sometimes, but I love to do my first level of drawing with this – it keeps my hand free and stops me from getting bogged down with details while I get the line of action, expression and balance right. Sometimes – like with these drawings of Hallvor and of Ulfnaor - I put in a few loose details with a blunt pencil and leave it as a finished piece – it’s a look I really like.

To the right you can see the graphite level of the Moorehawke drawing. It’s just the begining.

The second level is done with a non photographic blue pencil.

non photo blue pencil

blue pencil details

I place a fresh sheet over the graphite drawing and trace over it. Because I spent the first stage of the drawing getting the proportions down and making sure everything works as a cohesive unit, I now feel free to get close to page and really concentrate on the details. This is when the work gets tight. I keep the pencil sharp, I draw eyelashes and hair and buckles and woodgrain – all the picky little things that I need to get down before I start inking.

Unlike graphite, blue pencil is (mostly) not picked up by the scanner. This means I can ink straight down onto this drawing without worrying (too much) about having to erase the pencil.

To the right you can see the blue sketch level of the Moorehawke drawing. Everything should be pinned down at this stage, leaving me free to concentrate on the quality of line and balance of light and dark.

Next I ink.

There are many different stages to the inking process. Each stage is scarier than the one before, because with each layer of ink you risk pushing the drawing too far and loosing the freshness of line. But without the gradual build up of depth and weight your line can look dead and the work unfinished. The inking process can take a couple of days and as I work it through, I may notice things I don’t like about the pencil drawings ( in this case Wynter’s chin and jaw were much too heavy so I pared them down. Similarly I played with her cuffs and with the way I’d drawn her feet.

Preliminary ink

Here are two different stages of the inking. The drawing above is just a first go around with a felt tipped pen. See how all the lines are basically the same weight? They all have the same thickness and depth? This makes the drawing feel flat and a little dead. Below you can see how the same drawing looks after I’ve built it up with the brushpen, adding weight and shadow. The varying thickness and flow of the brush line adds life to the drawing and makes it breath. Here too is when I fill in the BG, it was a juggling act trying to get the right amount of background detail without shifting the focus from Wyn.

Finally, I scan the finished inks, clean them up in photoshop (up the contrast mostly – erase any lingering smudges of pencil) For this piece, I drew and overlaid an intricate border, and tweaked the desecrated wood a little more – adding some new elements which gave greater depth to the gouges over Alberon and Oliver’s carved figures.

And that’s it!

I hope you like this It was fun to draw. In celebration of the publication of The Crowded Shadows, Orbit are releasing a limited edition print run of ten signed copies – stay tuned to the blog for details.

By the way, the movie below tells the story of the drawing from beginning to end. If you like, you can right click and press ZOOM IN, then drag the picture around to see the progression of which ever section you like.
]]> http://www.orbitbooks.net/2010/08/31/moorehawke-artwork/feed/ 9 http://www.orbitbooks.net/2010/08/31/daniel-abraham-talks-writing/ http://www.orbitbooks.net/2010/08/31/daniel-abraham-talks-writing/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:44:47 +0000 DongWon Song http://www.orbitbooks.net/?p=11892 Daniel Abraham is interviewed by Peter Orullian. They talk about the upcoming Dragon’s Path, writing, genre, and music. Read the whole thing here.