Archive for Contents

Orbit Links for October 31st 2008

Hello and a very Happy Hallowe’en / All Hallows’ Eve / Stuff-Your-Face-With-Candy Night to you all. Here are a few online treats (no tricks, we promise!) featuring Orbit Authors or coverage of their books:

As always, if you see any online articles, reviews or interviews that feature an Orbit author, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know! We’ll happily name-check your website or blog with a heads-up credit in return (please remember to provide us with a link…)

In Their Own Words: Brent Weeks on THE WAY OF SHADOWS

Brent says:

The Way of ShadowsThe Way of Shadows is going to appeal to readers who love big fantasy stories but get bored the fifth time an author describes a six-course meal or the twenty slashes on a noblewoman’s dress. This story flies. There’s murder, betrayal, magic, and lots of ass-kicking.

But to be honest, a lot of authors can offer that. I think what’s going to keep readers coming back is the deep, surprising characters. Everyone has secrets. Everyone runs into hard choices, and not everyone makes the right choice. Heck, not everyone makes it, period. Cenaria is a city infamous for crime and brutality. It’s the kind of place that makes legendary assassins, so expect some tough stuff – but out of that, expect characters who are very human in how they’ve been touched by or participated in the darkness around them. Expect people looking for redemption and hope. Unusual for an assassin story? Definitely. Do I pull it off? I hope people check it out and judge for themselves.

The Way of Shadows (UK | US | AUS) is out now and you can find it at all good high street and online booksellers. Get an advance taste by reading an extract here.

We’re publishing the next two books, Shadow’s Edge and Beyond the Shadows, in the next two months so keep your eyes peeled for some more ITOW from Brent Weeks very soon . . .

Deals and Deliveries: Marjorie M. Liu acquisition

We are very excited to report that we’ve bought three sharp new urban fantasies by the talented Marjorie M. Liu. These feature an enticingly different slant on the supernatural and we’re starting off in Spring 2010 with The Iron Hunt …

During the day, Maxine’s tattoos are her armour and she is invincible. At night they peel from her skin to take on forms of their own, leaving her human and vulnerable and revealing themselves to be demons sleeping beneath her skin. But these demons are the best friends and bodyguards a woman could have. And Maxine needs bodyguards. She is the last in a line of woman with power in their blood, trained to keep the world safe from malignant beings who would do us harm. But ten thousand years after its creation, the prison dimension that kept the worst of these from us is failing, and all the Wardens save Maxine are dead. She must bear the burden of her bloodline and join the last wild hunt against the enemy.

So, watch this space for more information.

The Company in SFX

The CompanyK.J. Parker‘s fantastic new novel, The Company (UK/US) is out now and getting some great reviews. One of our favourites has been in this month’s SFX, on newsstands tomorrow, which describes it as:

‘Tightly written and hugely satisfying, it’s the equivalent of a four-course banquet packed into one book, and takes a long look at the kind of characters who populate your typical blood-and-thunder swordplay epic, unearthing some uncomfortable truths as a result.’

‘…A dark, bleak and fiercely intelligent portrait of the human condition, and the way that some soldiers never truly stop fighting their wars’

and

‘…Well-crafted, powerful and downright unmissable’

We couldn’t agree more.

Stan Nicholls on the David Gemmell Legend Award

If you’ve been reading the major blogs and genre fiction news sites recently then you’ve surely heard about the launch earlier this year of The David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy.

Here at Orbit we’re delighted that David Gemmell’s memory – and his truly massive contribution to the development of fantasy fiction before his tragic and untimely death in 2006 – is being honoured by the launch of this new award, which, in the words of the introduction on the award website “will be given to a work written in the ‘spirit’ of the late, great David Gemmell, a true Master of Heroic Fantasy.”

Stan Nicholls (author of Orcs, which we published recently in the US) is a member of the initial steering committee that came together to establish the award. So we thought he’d be an ideal person to tell us how the award came about, and how its unique processes and mechanism will hopefully result in a genuine, all-round winner of the very highest quality being named when the first award is presented, next June.

(more…)

Tad Williams announces Otherland MMORPG

Otherland by Tad Williams - UK paperbackTad Williams has officially announced that his massive and magnificent Otherland series is being developed as a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG).

In Tad’s words:

It’s being made by RealU in Singapore, published by dtp entertainment, and it’s a major project. The entire Singapore studio is devoted solely to the game, and they’re approaching eighty employees. More importantly, though, they’re doing a beautiful, fascinating job, not just duplicating or doing a pastiche of the books, but trying to take what is original and interesting in the work and opening it out into an entirely new realm, the MMORPG. Into the virtual world, that is, and what could be more appropriate for Otherland?

You can read the announcement in detail on Tad’s blog at www.tadwilliams.com and see him talk about the project in a video interview at www.mmorpg.com.

It sounds, from the interview in particular, as though Otherland the MMORPG will be a highly original take on the online roleplaying concept, one that puts the key element of interactive story-telling right at the heart of the gaming experience. Pre-order those virtual-reality goggles now…

Iain Banks Q and A III now online

The one and only Iain [M] Banks has been delving into the e-postbag once more, to answer another selection of questions from fans and readers, over at his official website, www.iain-banks.net.

Topics discussed in this session include the killing of characters, happy endings, Walking on Glass, the existence (or otherwise) of godlike beings, the potential (or otherwise) for the development of a technological singularity, The Wasp Factory and living in the UK (rather than The Culture…)

You can also catch up with his two previous Q and A sessions, which were posted back in July and August.

Deals and Deliveries: six new Patricia Briggs titles

Orbit UK is delighted to announce the following acquisitions from urban fantasy writer Patricia Briggs:

3x NEW MERCY THOMPSON BOOKS

We have acquired a further three fabulously sharp urban fantasy books for the UK featuring the ingenious Mercy Thompson: mechanic by trade, coyote shapeshifter by nature. We plan to publish yearly from February 2010, but don’t forget that we’ve recently published the first three compulsive adventures – Moon Called, Blood Bound and Iron Kissed – with the next book in the series, Bone Crossed due for publication in February 2009.

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs, UK paperbackBlood Bound by Patricia Briggs, UK paperbackIron Kissed by Patricia Briggs, UK paperback

3x ALPHA AND OMEGA BOOKS

We’ve also acquired the first three books in a great new Briggs spin-off series, set in the same world as the above but featuring independent alpha werewolf Charles and unusually gifted omega werewolf Anna. Cry Wolf is the first book in the seres and will be published in August 2009, with book two planned for November 2009 and book three due in August 2010.

Patricia Briggs series, Marianne de Pierres script optioned for film

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs, UK paperbackWe’re delighted to be able to pass on a couple of items of film-related news from two of our urban fantasy authors: Patricia Briggs and Marianne de Pierres.

Firstly – as detailed in full in a press release posted over at PublishersWeekly.com – Patricia Briggs’ agent has sold option rights for the Mercy Thompson series (Moon Called, Blood Bound and Iron Kissed) to Mike Newell’s production company 50 Cannon Entertainment [IMDB] who are also behind a forthcoming adaptation of Terry Brooks’ The Elfstones of Shannara [IMDB].

Patricia is understandably delighted by the news, saying on her website: “Now, Hollywood options far more works than they ever make into movies, so there’s no guarantee that an actual movie will ever be made, but it’s still pretty exciting news. If we ever do hear that they’re going ahead with production we promise to pass the news on (just as soon as we quit squeeing and dancing around like crazy people!).”

Our second item of news is that Marianne de Pierres (author of the Parrish Plessis and Sentients of Orion series) and Lynne Jamneck’s SF movie script Stalking Daylight has been optioned by production company Enchanter, as per this press release on Marianne’s site.

Here’s what the release has to say about the concept: “Stalking Daylight tells the story of Dresher, a bright young gaming talent who is faced with some tough choices when her father contracts neuro-transmitter disease. The Earth has changed, and those inhabitants who worship technology are at odds with those who choose to live without it. Dresher must venture into Luddite territory to find the medication that her father needs to survive. But the cure comes at a terrible price.”

We’ll bring you more information on these two projects as we get to hear of it.

Shaun Hutson on UNMARKED GRAVES

Unmarked GravesMaster of the dark, Shaun Hutson, has two books out this month, the paperback release of Unmarked Graves and the new hardback release, Body Count.

Shaun was kind enough to answer some questions for us in anticipation of the books’ release:

Did the idea for Unmarked Graves come to you fully realised or did you have one particular starting point from which it grew?
It came from one idea and I expanded it. Every book I’ve ever written has come about like that. I think Unmarked Graves went through more changes than any novel I’ve ever written. The ideas I originally wanted to explore ended up disappearing in successive re-writes but the racism thing was there from the beginning.

How does it compare to your other novels?
For what it’s worth, I like to try and do something different in each novel and it contained an idea and themes I hadn’t tackled before. I’d never done voodoo before so it was something new for me. I don’t like to keep recycling the same idea over and over again in a different guise. That’s cheating your readers and I’d never do that.

You can read the rest of the interview in the back of Unmarked Graves, out this month!