Bestselling fantasy author Gail Z. Martin is holding a sneak peek for her new book, Ice Forged, and we’ve got the goodies! Gail Z. Martin is the author of the Chronicles of the Necromancer series, published by Solaris Books, and The Fallen Kings Cycle from Orbit Books. Her short stories have appeared in numerous U.S. and UK anthologies.
Gail is unveiling the new cover for Ice Forged (coming from Orbit Books in January, 2013), and throwing her annual Hawthorn Moon Online Sneak Peek Event, which includes more than a dozen partner sites with exclusive excerpts, author and character interviews, audios, and more!
Ice Forged will take readers to an entirely new world with completely new characters. “It’s a totally different series,” Martin says. “I’m having a lot of fun building it and I’m looking forward to sharing it with readers.
Here’s the story: Condemned as a murderer for killing the man who dishonored his sister, Blaine “Mick” McFadden has spent the last six years in Velant, a penal colony in the frigid northern wastelands of Edgeland. Harsh military discipline and the oppressive magic of the governor’s mages keep a fragile peace as colonists struggle against a hostile environment. But the supply ships from Dondareth have stopped coming, boding ill for the kingdom that banished the colonists.
Now, McFadden and the people of Velant decide their fate. They can remain in their icy prison, removed from the devastation of the outside world, but facing a subsistence-level existence, or they can return to the ruins of the kingdom that they once called home. Either way, destruction lies ahead…
Get your exclusive excerpt from Ice Forged here: http://www.4shared.com/office/NhlMRowu/Ice_Forged_Excerpt_2.html
To get in on all the action, including the other three unique excerpts, find out more on Gail’s site, www.AscendantKingdoms.com
Courtesy of the author, I have a copy of one of her backlist titles for one (1) lucky winner!
Contest is open to US only. No PO Boxes, please. To enter, just fill out the form below. Contest ends July 20. I’ll draw a name on July 21, and notify winner via email.
Author Leigh Bardugo is visiting SciFiChick.com today with a guest post! This is just one stop on her blog tour promoting her latest release Shadow and Bone, reviewed here.
— Plots, Schemes, and Teenage Dreams
Recently, while putting together a post for Dear Teen Me, I went digging through some of the boxes in my mom’s basement. Among the cringe-inducing diary entries and photos of me in my prolonged awkward phase, I also found the beginnings of a lot of stories.
The best (and by “best,” I mean hilariously awful) is the first few chapters of an epic fantasy called Tinscritalswhim. The title kind of says it all, and clearly, 12 year-old me got wise to this too, because in later drafts, I seem to have changed the name to Ladinphur.
The story revolves around a teenage assassin named (wait for it) Blood. Honestly, if you name your daughter “Blood,” what career paths are really open to her? It’s like calling your kid “Candee” then getting upset when she becomes a stripper. Then again, Blood’s brother is named Jereth so I don’t really know what her parents were thinking. Maybe it’s a family name.
Here’s how I describe my heroine:
“Blood didn’t believe in killing for fun. In fact, the thought made her relatively nauseous. She was no sadist either. She hated killing mainly because it was wrong in her mind, but also it reminded her of her own mortality. If they could be killed, so could she.” Wow, okay, I’m not sure if Blood is just a narcissist or firmly in the sociopath camp at this point. (Also, I think my favorite part of this is that she’s relatively nauseous.)
Blood spends a lot of time smiling wryly and leaping down onto her enemies from branches, rooftops, the occasional lintel. I go on:
“Blood had shut up her heart and carefully packaged it in her bundled up soul.”
Admittedly, the physics here are iffy, but I think you get the idea. And I’M NOT DONE:
“She had a dry wit and was a master of satire.”
I’d like to believe that Blood was penning amusing send-ups of the Tinscritalswhimian ruling class in her spare time, but I suspect that preteen Leigh was just confusing satire with sarcasm.
Blood and Jereth (a gentle giant with hidden depths) join forces with a slightly psychic (it’s a thing) tavern-keeper’s son (love interest!), a spiteful fairy named Una (natch), and… a woodchuck. Here’s where things get really weird:
‘What’s for dinner, Lorenzo?’ The woodchuck turned around and placed Una’s glasses on the edge of his small nose, trying to look studious. He instead succeeded in toppling off his pile of books. ‘I’m not sure,’ Lorenzo replied. ‘Everything I’ve made has blown up.’ ‘It would help if you used less sneezweed,’ Jereth said, walking over to the counter to remove a root that looked somewhat like celery. Lorenzo could have been incredibly smart. Woodchucks were known for their intelligence and he had all of the advantages of education. However, Lorenzo had been more interested in battle and adventure than becoming a lawyer.’
Okay, let’s stop right there. Apparently, I was reading too much C.S. Lewis and Piers Anthony, because… a woodchuck who doesn’t want to go to law school? There is such a thing as too much whimsy.
So, other than “Burn the evidence,” what possible lessons can I take from this horrifying artifact?
On a personal level, it’s pretty clear that I was trying to make Blood into everything I wanted to be at age twelve: beautiful, deadly, emotionless. I had just started junior high and every day was like going into battle. I didn’t get it as bad as some kids, but that was only because I managed to hide just how much the jabs and snubs hurt. It was all about bravado, pretending I didn’t care. Blood wasn’t pretending. Plus, she had a brother, a confidant, someone she could depend on. I wanted that desperately.
As a writer, I can’t help but notice that there are a lot of drafts of first and second chapters to Tinscritalswhim. They’re written with slightly different names and variations, but they never move much past the introduction of the cast of characters and the beginning of the quest.
These days, though my stories involve fewer talking animals, I still find that starting is the easy part. I may not begin at the beginning the way I did when I was a kid, but there’s nothing like the momentum when a project is new. The characters feel vibrant. The dialogue clamors to be set down. Everything is loud, thrilling cacophony, driving me through the first few thousand words. And then… silence.
Finishing my first book meant making the transition from pantser to plotter. Now when I start a story that I think may have the makings of a book, I don’t let myself linger over specific scenes. I jot down the bits and pieces that I don’t want to forget. Then I force myself to move on to the next moment and then the next. When I get stuck, I write questions into the outline: “How does this work?” “Does this make sense?” “Why would she want X?” (Although my favorites are always things like, “Insert awesome moment here” and– no lie, this was in the first draft of Shadow and Bone– “Villain rant: Kneel before Zod!”)
That initial outline is a tangled, crazy, rambling mess, but it has a beginning, middle, and end. Knowing the structure is there, that I have a final destination, makes returning to the work each day easier for me.
It can be hard to let go of the myths we create about process: I’m a pantser. I’m a plotter. I work best a night. I need my fuzzy slippers to write. In the end, the only thing that matters is whether or not the process you’ve committed to actually works to get you through the draft. I’m new enough to this that it still feels like there’s some mysterious alchemy involved in taking a book from idea to finished manuscript. But I do know that magic comes easier when we shake off the old habits and old ghosts. Sometimes, you’ve got to make like a woodchuck and just blow stuff up.
Courtesy of Henry Holt and Co., I have a copy of Shadow and Bonefor one (1) lucky winner!
Contest is open to US and Canada only. No PO Boxes, please. To enter, just fill out the form below. Contest ends June 29. I’ll draw a name on June 30, and notify winner via email.
Welcome to The Great Undead War Blog Tour! My thanks to Angela for having me on today.
My name’s Joseph Nassise and I’m celebrating the release of my new novel from HarperVoyager, By the Blood of Heroes, which is the first book in the Great Undead War series that combines an alternate World War One with steampunk and zombies.
I’ve been focusing in on the characters, the setting, the genre, even zombie classifications since the start of the tour, so today’s focus is going to be on something a little different. Today I want to talk about THE SHARP END.
BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES has been described by Harper Voyager as “an alternate history zombie novel set during World War I that blends the take-no-prisoners heroic grit of Inglorious Basterds with the irreverent inventiveness of Dawn of the Dead…” Its main focus is a dangerous mission behind enemy lines to rescue a downed Allied pilot who has information crucial to the war effort. It combines horror, steampunk and gold ole fashioned action to create what reviewers are saying takes alternate history to “brilliant new heights” (Library Journal.)
BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES opens with the main character, Captain Michael “Madman” Burke trying to make some field repairs while in the trenches to his mechanical hand. He’s not happy with the result, feeling he’s done little but move some of the dirt from one set of gears to the other, knowing he needs a trip to the rear to get it cleaned properly in one of Nicolai Tesla’s laboratories.
The story quickly moves on to other issues and topics, but questions linger. How did Burke lose his hand? Why did he agree to replace it with a mechanical one? What the hell kind of war is he fighting anyway?
THE SHARP END is my answer to those questions. Think of it as BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES’ little brother. It is a prequel short story that I released as a stand-alone ebook in the days leading up to the launch. It is intended to introduce readers to both the setting and characters of BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES, by telling the tale of this seminal event in life of then Lieutenant Burke. Readers also get to meet Sergeant Moore, who eventually becomes Burke’s right-hand man and close friend.
The story is thirty-six pages long, which makes it more a novellette than a short story, to be honest, and focuses on the events that occur during the Battle of Passchendaele. Also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, this marked the first time the German army deployed poisoned gas as a battlefield weapon. That gas attack occurs in THE SHARP END as well, but the gas has been modified slightly…
Along with the story, the ebook also contains a timeline of events leading up March 1921, which is the setting for the series, and the first two chapters of BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES itself. Best yet, it sells for $1.99, so readers can check out a new writer they might not be familiar with without breaking the bank while still getting a taste of what the story will be like.
So come join the war effort! Check out THE SHARP END. If you find it meets your fancy, BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES awaits…
Contest is open to US and Canada only. No PO Boxes, please. To enter, just fill out the form below. Contest ends June 15. I’ll draw names on June 16, and notify winners via email.
