Author Archive

The Lightbringer Read-Along begins today!

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

One of the hardest the things about being a fan is the waiting, especially when it’s something you really, really, really want.

Well, Brent Weeks fans, you have less than two months of waiting until the big release of THE BROKEN EYE, but those two months don’t have to be completely maddening.  Join us on Goodreads for a Lightbringer Read-Along! This month we’ll be reading and discussing THE BLACK PRISM followed by THE BLINDING KNIFE in August.

In other news, Brent Weeks announced THE BROKEN EYE Book Tour on his blog yesterday! Mark your calendars and don’t forget to RSVP on Facebook or Goodreads!

Captain Lee Harden Returns – THE REMAINING: AFTERMATH

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

Book two of D.J. Molles’s bestselling series is available now in paperback! When a bacterium turns 90% of the population into hyper-aggressive predators, it’s up to a group of elite soldiers like Lee Harden to salvage what they can from the wreckage. The obstacles are immense, but failure is not an option. See what’s in store for Captain Harden in THE REMAINING: AFTERMATH.

To Captain Lee Harden, the mission to rescue his countrymen and rebuild the nation seems like a distant memory.

Wounded and weaponless, he has stumbled upon a group of survivors who may be his last hope. But a tragedy in the group causes a deep rift and forces him into action.

And in the chaos of a world overrun by infected, Lee is pursued by a new threat: someone who will stop at nothing to keep him from his sworn duty.

If you are new to the series, make sure to check out the first book, THE REMAINING and follow the author on Facebook.

THE REMAINING – Available now.
THE REMAINING: AFTERMATH  – Available now.
THE REMAINING: REFUGEES  – July 2014
THE REMAINING: FRACTURED –  August 2014

Novella 1: THE REMAINING: TRUST
Novella 2: THE REMAINING: FAITH

On the road with THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS releases today in the US in hardcover, and will be out in paperback in the UK next week in (June 19th). Read the first ten chapters on Facebook or listen to a sample from the audiobook.

We know you’ll be hooked by Melanie’s heart-stopping story. M.R. Carey joins us today to tell you more about that journey.

…

I don’t know why I ended up writing a road movie. I almost never watch them.

I’ll make some exceptions to that blanket statement. I love Sideways. And Midnight Run. And if we’re counting yellow brick road movies, The Wizard of Oz is pretty damn cool.

It’s just that I’ve seen so many features where changing the scenery stands in for any kind of thought-through development in either the characters or the plot. Stories where it really is just one damn thing after another, episodes piled on episodes until you get to a slightly bigger episode that you realise (after the credits roll) must have been the climax.

If you’re still with me, you’re probably already compiling your own mental list of great road movies. “Hey, fool, you forgot O Brother Where Art Thou, Easy Rider, Wild At Heart…” And yeah, I did. For the sake of my argument, I’m willing to overlook a certain amount of inconvenient evidence.

Can we agree on one thing? When you take a story that depends on a fixed setting and works well within that setting, and for no reason other than variety being the spice of life you wilfully take it out on the road, you’re flirting with disaster. The very phrase “jumping the shark”, after all, comes from that terrible Happy Days episode where the whole gang goes off to Los Angeles and hangs out on a beach.

A long while back I read an essay by the French media guru Roland Barthes in which he talked about the appeal of utopias in fiction. Barthes claimed that most utopias are finite, enclosed spaces – “idealised caves” – that satisfy our need for security by providing an environment where stability is absolute and guaranteed. He made it clear, though, that this enclosure didn’t have to be a physical thing. The classic sit-com, he argued, is utopian because it presents situations and relationships that are entirely resistant to change. One of his favourite examples of a utopian world was that of the Carry On movies, the mildly smutty British comedies of the 60s and 70s in which a cast of beloved character actors would mount a series of gag sketches in a historical setting, effectively playing the same roles no matter whether we were in Cleopatra’s Egypt, the Khyber Pass or the London of Jack the Ripper. (more…)

New Wallpapers: CIBOLA BURN by James S.A. Corey

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

“Combining an exploration of real human frailties with big sf ideas and exciting thriller action, Corey (pen name for authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) cements the series as must-read space opera.” – Library Journal

We’re just two short weeks away from the release of CIBOLA BURN, the latest novel in James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series!   Remember there is still time to pre-order your copy and claim your signed bookplate.

The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity’s home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.
Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world. The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth.
James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail.

– See more at: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/james-sa-corey/cibola-burn/9781478900825/#sthash.r6GqV09H.dpuf

As we’ve done in the past, we’re getting ready for the big day with a set of desktop wallpapers featuring the breathtaking artwork of Daniel Dociu.

1024 x 768 |1134 x 680 | 1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 | 1920 x 1200 | | 2048 x 1536 | Facebook

If you’d like to pick up the others, see the links below.

LEVIATHAN WAKES
CALIBAN’S WAR
ABADDON’S GATE

The Watcher of Veldaren returns!

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

“…a winning combination of A Game of Thrones, sword-and-sorcery RPGs, and vivid description.” – Publishers Weekly on A DANCE OF CLOAKS

A DANCE OF SHADOWS (US | UK | AUS), the fourth Shadowdance novel, is out today!  A bit about what lies ahead for the master assassin Haern:

When Lord Victor Kane attacks the city, determined to stamp out all corruption, foreign gangs pour in amidst the chaos in an attempt to overthrow the current lords of the underworld.

And when a mysterious killer known as the Widow begins mutilating thieves, paranoia engulfs the city. Haern knows someone is behind the turmoil, pulling strings. If he doesn’t find out who — and soon — his beloved city will burn.

David Dalglish’s action-packed stories are hugely addictive. If you’re new to the Shadowdance novels, here is an excerpt from the first book, A DANCE OF CLOAKS. For those of you with a long weekend coming up, there is no better time to start reading this thrilling fantasy series.

Over on Buzzfeed today, David Dalglish shares a personal story about the time he ran a Dungeons & Dragons campaign set in the world of the Shadowdance novels, and the mayhem that followed. Start your morning off with a smile and this great read. If you’ve ever DM’d a game before, I’m sure you’ll be able to empathize with his trauma.

My Crash-Course on Military Strategy

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

Global war is raging throughout most of my new novel, DEFENDERS (US | UK | AUS). In fact by the end of Defenders, humanity has fought more than one global war, because at its heart the book is about war veterans, and what becomes of them once they come home and the parades are over. Once I’d outlined Defenders and very broadly mapped out the wars that are the backdrop for the unfolding drama, it occurred to me that I knew absolutely nothing about war. I knew a bit about military history, but little or nothing about strategy, tactics, weapons. I had, for example, no idea what an invading army did. Once they dropped into enemy territory, where would they go? How did you win a war?

This was a problem. It was also surprising, because my father is a retired Brigadier General. Over the years we’d spent countless hours talking about investing and baseball, politics and comic collecting, but never military strategy. That changed as I began writing Defenders.

I was on the phone with my father nearly every day, describing what was happening in my world, and asking what a military leader would be thinking and doing in those various situations. I didn’t make things easy on him. No military commander in history has ever had to deal with an enemy who can read minds, who knows exactly what you’re planning at every moment. And no commander has had millions of somewhat deranged, genetically engineered super-warriors as allies. Dad played along, though, sometimes sending elaborate battle plans.  In fact, let me cut and paste a small sample to give you an idea. This is part of his battle plan for the defenders (the deranged super-warriors), whose mission is to seize a nuclear power plant.

Two separate LZs (landing Zones) will be utilized.  The first LZ will be approximately 5 miles NNE of the objective, the second, 5 miles SSE. Both LZs are between Highways 60 and 5. One additional squad from each drop zone is designated as a security squad and will move as follows: From drop Zone one, directly North; from drop zone two, directly South. Northern moving squad cuts off and secures Highway 60 and establishes a perimeter defense. Southern moving squad secures highway 5 and establishes perimeter defense. Full security squad will deny Luyten movement from West to East.

By the time I finished writing Defenders, I knew a lot more about military strategy. I’d learned, for instance, that winning a war was about controlling resources. Power. Water. Food. I understood that one of an army’s most pressing concerns was supply routes–both theirs and the enemy’s–because if food and ammunition can’t reach you, you’re done. I also learned about protecting your center of gravity–the place where your leadership is located. If the enemy takes out your center of gravity, you’re in trouble. Also, an army never invades an area right away if they have an air force. First they bomb it for a few hours to a few days in order to weaken resistance.

If you decide to read Defenders (and I sure hope you will), you’ll find the book opens with a prologue. In it, an army platoon is on a mission to salvage tons of World War II era weapons (pistols, rifles, flame-throwers, machine guns, hand grenades) that the U.S. Army sealed in an abandoned coalmine in Pennsylvania decades earlier. The weapons were coated in cosmoline, a greasy substance that keeps the weapons fresh and rust-free. This is all true. There are weapons caches like this in abandoned mines the U.S. Government purchased for just this purpose. The weapons are down there just in case. I’m guessing psychic alien invaders were not one of the “just in case” scenarios considered when those weapons were sealed away, but they sure came in handy in writing Defenders. I’m glad my father told me they were down there.

…

 DEFENDERS (US | UK | AUS) is available now! Look for it online and in bookstores everywhere. Here is an excerpt from the novel. 

Five Side Characters I Loved Writing In The Crimson Campaign

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

THE CRIMSON CAMPAIGN (US | UK | AUS), Book 2 of the Powder Mage Trilogy, releases today! In The Crimson Campaign, all your favorite characters are back (plus a few new faces!), and there will be bloody times ahead for everyone.

If you’re new to the series, check out the beginning of  PROMISE OF BLOOD (US | UK | AUS)—available now in ebook, audio, and tradepaperback formats!

Below, Brian McClellan names his five favorite side characters. We’d love to hear who your favorites are in the comments!

…

Side characters are often the most fun for me to write. I can give them little quirks and write them with more freedom than point-of-view characters. Their lives are more “off-screen” than those of our heroes, and that can make them more mysterious and interesting to both myself and the reader. Here are five of my favorite side characters from Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign.

Be warned, there will be minor spoilers from Promise of Blood!

Ka-poel

A red-headed, freckled “savage” from the distant country of Fatrasta, very little of Ka-poel’s history is known. She uses a sorcery outside the recognized schools of magic in the Nine Nations, and the mystery of her motives and powers are compounded because she was born a mute. She only communicates through hand gestures and facial expressions.

This last bit has proved a challenge to write. It limits what I can do to build her character and has forced me to, quite literally, “show” instead of “tell.” But I love how mysterious her character is and she has turned out to be delightful to write. Ka-poel is an example of a side character who develops into an integral part of the story during the writing process.

Olem

Olem and Field Marshal Tamas meet at the beginning of Promise of Blood, when the field marshal is in need of a new bodyguard. They develop an immediate mutual respect for each other, and Olem’s skills as a soldier and his Knack–the ability to go without sleep–make him a natural choice for a bodyguard.

Field Marshal Tamas tends to take himself very seriously. Maybe too seriously. Lucky for us, Olem is there to watch his back and remind him, often in a rather sardonic manner, that there is more to life than pride and duty. Olem is deeply loyal, and while he often stretches the bounds of what would normally be appropriate to say to a field marshal, Tamas tolerates his familiarity for the sake of their friendship.

In The Crimson Campaign, however, we’ll discover that even Olem can go too far with Field Marshal Tamas.

Vlora

The ex-fiancée of Taniel Two-shot, Vlora is in the awkward position working alongside Taniel’s father. In original drafts of Promise of Blood, she had a lot more screen time that wound up getting cut along the way and it was fun to explore her character in more depth in The Crimson Campaign.

Vlora resonates with readers because she is complicated and conflicted, her most important relationships destroyed by a single mistake just before the start of Promise of Blood. Next to Taniel and Tamas, she is one of the most gifted Powder Mages in the world. In The Crimson Campaign, we get to discover her side of the story and see her in action. (more…)

Anatomy of a Badass

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

When I first sat down to write Devi Morris, I only knew two things about her: 1) she wore powered armor, and 2) she was a total badass. Naturally, the first factor contributed greatly to the second. I dare you to put anything in in a sleek suit of powered armor and not have it become instantly more badass! But equipment alone doesn’t a badass make. If Devi was truly going to be who I wanted her to be, she would have to be just as awesome outside of her armor as she was in it. Her badassery needed to be inherent, a natural element of her being, and before I could write that, I needed to figure out just what a badass was.

What makes someone a badass is one of those things that is instantly recognizable, but hard to actually pin down in objective description. Heroes can be badasses, but not all badasses are heroes (in fact, the badass role is often saved for the villain, whose badassery is used as a threat). And while the classic image of a badass is an aggressive dude, badass is not an inherently masculine or macho descriptor as proven by the enormous number of female badasses in film, comics, television, and literature. It’s also not limited to violence. People who survive impossible situations are also proclaimed badasses even if their feat of badassitude was to simply continue living when most wouldn’t.

With all these differences, the most basic anatomy of a badass can be stripped down to three primary factors: a refusal to give up when the odds are stacked against them, a confident attitude, often aggressive attitude, and some kind of extreme proficiency in a skill. Why these? Well, the attitude part is obvious, but the rest is more interesting. See, humans love to watch people do things very well. Even the simplest, most mundane acts like stacking plastic cups can seem like magic when performed at a world class skill level. We respect talent, even if we can’t actually say how the talent is useful. Likewise, we admire people who stand on their beliefs. One of my favorite lines from Highlander is that uncompromising men are easy to admire. Even when we don’t actually agree, we admire and respect people who stand up for their ambitions/causes/beliefs/dreams and refuse to back down despite overwhelming odds.

Put all these factors together and you can make a badass out of anything. Take the competition cooking show Iron Chef, for example. In the show, chefs from all over the world challenge the reigning Iron Chef to a one hour extreme cooking showdown with a mystery ingredient. Naturally, since this is television, the challenge is designed to seem impossible. How many of us could cook a 5-7 course meal on the fly when every course must incorporate an ingredient we don’t even know until the challenge begins? But the chefs on this show are all kitchen badasses, and they use their years, sometimes decades of experience, creativity, and natural skill to overcome the odds and prove that their cuisine reigns supreme!

So we see that the anatomy of badass can be simple, even formulaic, and when used without thought, this can be a big problem. Think of any mediocre, forgettable action movie and you’ll see a badass that failed not because they didn’t follow the formula, but because they followed it too well. There’s nothing wrong with simplicity, but just as great art can never be achieved painting by numbers, a truly memorable, worthy badass must be far more than the sum of her parts.

Being good at something, an in your face attitude, and refusing to back down are all a good starting point, but a badass who is also a good character has to have style. She can’t just say “I’m the best,” she has to prove it over and over again against increasingly crazy odds. She can’t just take a stand, she has to put it all on the line every single time for a worthy cause she and the reader both believe in. She has to be larger than life and human at the same time, which means her problems have to be writ just as large as everything else. She has to be admirable but still rateable, else she risks being a caricature instead of a character.

This was what I learned from reading and watching my favorite badasses in action, and this was the approach I took with Devi. Now that the series is ending, and I’m looking back at everything I tried to do with it, I think creating a badass to be remembered was the one place where I truly succeeded as well as I’d hoped to. Authors aren’t supposed to have favorite characters, but I can’t help but admit that Devi is and probably will always be right up there at the top. She’s the female hero I always wanted to see in the movies, the badass lady I would have pretended to be when I was a kid, and I already miss her more than I should miss someone who is ultimately a figment of my imagination.

So for everyone who’s been waiting to see how the story ends, I really hope you enjoy HEAVEN’S QUEEN (US | UK | AUS). I put a lot of thought into creating a suitably badass ending, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And for those of you who haven’t met Devi Morris yet (and who’ve been sufficiently entertains by this post long enough to get all the way down here to the end), I invite you to read a little more and check out the first chapter of FORTUNE’S PAWN (US | UK | AUS), the beginning of the Paradox series. Thank you everyone for reading and for making this series a success! I look forward to writing more Paradox novels. I can’t promise more Devi, but really, do you think I can keep her down?

Not a chance.

The Politics of Chaos

  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

Nature abhors a vacuum—nowhere more so than in politics. Remove a dictator, and a hundred evil wanna-be despots arise in his stead. Depose a king, and the nobles squabble among themselves. Take down a tyrant, and the underlings kill each other off until only one remains.

In my first Ascendant Kingdoms novel, ICE FORGED (US | UK | AUS), the war between Donderath and neighboring Meroven got out of hand after years of ground assaults, leading to devastating strikes and counter-strikes by the mages on both sides. The strikes were intended to kill the king and the families of the nobility, which they did. But the strikes also severed the bond that enabled mortals to control magic, making it a wild force of nature. The civilizations of Donderath and Meroven, which had depended upon magic, collapse.  Leaderless, with the magic gone and the infrastructure in ruins, Donderath and Meroven descend into chaos.

Unfortunately, anarchy has its advocates.

One of the aspects that intrigues me with the Ascendant Kingdoms books is the tension between order and chaos.  On the plus side, chaos can permit natural talent to rise, unencumbered by inherited position, social convention or historical precedent. More often, this means that might makes right, the strong oppress the weak and justice fails.

Among those who see opportunity in chaos and anarchy are men who have styled themselves as warlords, mustering Donderath’s defeated returning soldiers to their ranks and gathering the displaced farmers and tradesmen who have nowhere else to go. Bandit gangs and highwaymen prowl the byways and the city streets now that the king’s guards are no longer to be feared. The talishte—vampires—are split between those who see an opportunity to take the power for themselves as the strongest predators and subjugate mortals, and those who prefer the rule of law. Mages also split between those who desire to use their power to rule over the non-mages by magical force, and those who prefer to work in service to governing powers.

Between the warring factions are the farmers, tradespeople, soldiers and townsfolk whose entire existence was upended by the war and the Cataclysm that resulted from the mage strikes. Unlike the court mages and the battle wizards who worked magic on a grand scale, the common people relied on small magic to make their lives easier in hundreds of ways. Before the Great Fire, magic kept milk from souring and healed sick children and lamed horses. Magic shored up wobbly walls and kept fences together and kept the river from flooding its banks. The Great Fire burned their towns and destroyed their leadership. They lost their livelihoods and crops to fire and flood, along with losing their livestock to illness and their sons to the war. Some try to make the best of it and get on with their lives. Others choose sides, pledging themselves to the service of one of the new warlords.

Blaine McFadden was willing to be stripped of his lands and title to save his sister from dishonor, and the murder he committed resulted in his exile. When he discovers that he is the only living Lord of the Blood and returns to restore the magic, he finds that creating some degree of order is necessary to enable the lands to rebuild. The title he never coveted is now his, along with the responsibilities. And it is increasingly clear that he’s going to have to win a new title—that of ‘warlord’—in order to live long enough to accomplish his goal and protect everything he holds dear.

…

REIGN OF ASH (US | UK | AUS), book two of the Ascendant Kingdom Saga, releases today! Read an excerpt now or start from the beginning with ICE FORGED.