26 July, 2014

eBook Deals

Here are some more good deals that popped up in the last few days. I'll get the winners of the giveaway announced in the next couple days and I'm currently very much enjoying The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman. I love his world, whether it's Brakebills, Fillory, or our own.


[$1.99] Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
[$1.99] Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
[$1.99] The Emperor's Knife (Tower and Knife #1) by Mazarkis Williams
[$1.99] Pines (Wayward Pines #1) by Black Crouch

[$2.99] The Eye of Minds (Mortality Doctrine #1) by James Dashner
[$2.99] The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archives #1) by Brandon Sanderson

[$3.99] Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Absolutely loved this one.

[$4.98] Prince of Thorns (Broken Empire #1) by Mark Lawrence - This may go lower, but it's the lowest I've seen it.

TODAY ONLY:

[$1.99] Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand

18 July, 2014

eBook Deals

Found some great deals I couldn't resist. Sorry for the spotty posting. We're slowly getting back on schedule here.


[$1.99] Songs of Love and Death, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
[$1.99] Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card
[$2.99] Unfettered, edited by Shawn Speakman - You better believe I bought this.
[$2.99] The Dark Thorn by Shawn Speakman
[$2.99] Shadow's Son by Jon Sprunk
[$2.99] 11/22/63 by Stephen King - Just finished this one and it's really good though on the unnecessary long side.

15 July, 2014

Review - The Crimson Campaign (Powder Mage #2) by Brian McClellan

The Crimson Campaign picks up right where Promise of Blood left off in Adro. The Kez are at the Adran's doorstep and Tamas' plan to get behind them has back-fired, Taniel is drugged out and not looking to improve, and Adamat is still searching for his kidnapped family.

It used to be, a sequel was just a bridge to the exciting events of the final volume of the trilogy. Not so here and with a lot of trilogies I've been reading lately. Crimson Campaign belongs to a new breed of sequels. Where the sequel is better than the first.

Yes, I said it, The Crimson Campaign is better than Promise of Blood, a book I enjoyed the crap out of, in just about every way. The world has already been set up, the players are in place, and this book was filled with so much awesome right from the start.

I enjoyed every second of this book and with how busy I was this month moving my family three states away for a new job, I still sacrificed sleep on multiple occasions just to find myself in Brian McClellan's head. It's a great place to be.

At one front, we have a Chain of Dogs type situation (Deadhouse Gates) with Tamas and his 10,000 running away from the Kez at his heals and who outnumber him 10 to one. On the other hand, we have a superhero-type situation where Taniel is starting to realize something else may have happened when he shot and killed a God.

Then, flowing through this already sufficiently cram-packed-full-of-awesome is Adamat unraveling mystery after mystery and finding even more questions.

The Powder Mage trilogy is turning out to be one of my all-time favorites. I can't wait for The Autumn Republic and anything else McClellan decides to make words on.

4.5 out of 5 Stars

The Powder Mage Trilogy:
1) Promise of Blood (review)
2) The Crimson Campaign
3) The Autumn Republic

13 July, 2014

Giveaway and Excerpt - The Wurms of Blearmouth (Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach #5) by Steven Erikson

You may know of my love for everything Malazan by now. I wrote a love letter to Steve (in a way) and it's become the highest-viewed post on the blog. In fact, it continues to be a top view each week.

After completing the main, ten volume series I even declared it's better than George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and that's saying something (not that one NEEDS to be better than the other - friends forever hug!).

Then of course I can't be more excited that not only is Erikson writing two more Malazan trilogies, one that he's already started with Forge of Darkness, and not only is Ian Cameron Esslemont just about to finish off his six book series, but Erikson continues to write these ridiculously awesome novellas surrounding Bauchalain and Korbal Broach.


These novellas are probably the most accessible of all of Erikson's work, so they're not a terrible place to start though the action is quite a bit different from his main series. Just a few days ago, the fifth novella came out, The Wurms of Blearmouth, and I have an excerpt to share in just a bit.

First, the giveaway.

Tor has offered to give three copies of The Wurms of Blearmouth to three random entrants.

If you would like to enter, please follow the exceedingly simple instructions below:

- Email your name and address to: onlythebestsff@[remove this]gmail.com
- As the subject, write "Wurms? What's a wurm? Oh a Wurm..."
- Snarky comments get you extra entries for future giveaways (and make reading entries much more entertaining on my end)
- US only **ducks rotten fruit**
- This giveaway ends a week from today

The excerpt:



The Wurms of Blearmouth
By Steven Erikson
Tor Books
Hardcover: 978-0-7653-2426-9
$24.99 U.S. | 208 Pages


Excerpt: Pages 7-16
“Behold!” Arms spread wide and braced against the wind, Lord Fangatooth Claw the Render paused and glanced back at Scribe Coingood. “See how this bold perch incites me to declamation, Scribe?” His narrow, hawkish features darkened. “Why are you not writing?”

Scribe Coingood wiped a drip from his nose, worked his numb fingers for a moment, and then scratched out the one word onto the tablet. Here atop the high tower, it was so cold that the wax on the tablet had chipped and flaked beneath the polished bone point of his scribe. He could barely make out the word he had just written, and the biting ice in his eyes didn’t help matters. Squinting against the buffeting wind, he hunched down, pulling tighter his furs, but that did nothing to ease his shivering.

He cursed his own madness that had brought him to West Elingarth’s Forgotten Holding. He also cursed this insane sorcerer for whom he now worked. He cursed this rotting keep and its swaying tower. He cursed the town below: Spendrugle of Blearmouth was a hovel, its population cowering under the tyranny of its new lord. He cursed the abominable weather of this jutting spur of land, thrashed by the wild ocean on three sides on most days, barring those times when the wind swung round to howl its way down from the north, cutting across the treeless blight that stretched inland all the way to yet another storm-wracked ocean, six days distant. He cursed his mother, and the time when he was seven and looked in on his sister’s room and saw things—oh, what was the point? There were plenty of reasons a man had to curse, and with infernal intimacy he knew most of them.

His dreams of wealth and privilege had suffered the fate of a lame hare on the Plain of Wolves, chewed up and torn to bits; and the wind had long since taken away those tattered remnants: the tufts of blood-matted fur, the wisps of white throat-down, and the well-gnawed splinters of bone. All of it gone, scattered across the blasted landscape of his future.

Chewing on the end of his graver, Coingood considered setting that description down in his secret diaries. A lame hare on the Plain of Wolves. Yes, that’s me all right … was that me or my dreams, that hare? Never mind, it’s not like there’s a difference. Not when he was huddled here atop the tower, miserably subject to his lord’s whim, and Hood knew, a manic, eye-gleaming whim it was.

“Have you written it down now, Scribe? Gods below, if I’d known you were so slow I would never have hired you! Tell me, what did I say? I’ve forgotten. Read it back, damn you!”

“M-m-master, y’said … er … ‘Behold!’”

“Is that it? Didn’t I say anything more?”

“S-s-something ’bout a bold p-p-perch, M-m-milord.”

Lord Fangatooth waved one long-fingered, skeletal hand. “Never mind that. I’ve told you about my asides. They’re just that. Asides. Where was I?”

“‘Behold!’”

The lord faced outward again, defiant against the roaring seas, and struck a pose looming ominously over the town. “Behold! Oh, and note my widespread arms as I face this wild, whore-whipped sea. Oh, and that wretched town directly below, and how it kneels quivering like an abject slave. Note, too, the grey skies, and that fierce colour of … grey. What else? Fill the scene, fool!”

Coingood started scratching furiously on the tablet.

Watching him, Fangatooth made circular, tumbling motions with one hand. “More! Details! We are in the throes of creativity here!”

“I b-b-beg you, m-m-milord, I’m j-j-just a s-s-scribe, n-n-not a poet!”

“Anyone who can write has all the qualifications necessary for artistic genius! Now, where was I? Oh, right. Behold!” He fell silent, and after a long, quivering moment, he slowly lowered his arms. “Well,” he said. “That will do for now. Go below, Scribe, and stoke up the fires and the implements of torture. I feel in need of a visit to my beloved brother.”

Coingood hobbled his way to the trapdoor.

“Next time I say ‘Behold!’,” Fangatooth said behind him, “don’t interrupt!”

“I w-w-won’t, M-m-milord. P-p-promise!”

*   *   *

“There he was again!” Felittle hissed through chattering teeth. “You seen him too, didn’t you? Say you did! It wasn’t just me! Up on that tower, arms out to the sides, like a … like a … like a mad sorcerer!”

Spilgit Purrble, deposed Factor of the Forgotten Holding yet still trapped in the town of Spendrugle of Blearmouth, at least until winter’s end, peered across at the young woman now struggling to close the door to his closet-sized office. Snow had melted and then refrozen across the threshold. He’d need to take a sword to that at least one more time, so that he could officially close up for the season and retreat back to the King’s Heel. As it was, his last day maintaining any kind of office for the backstabbing mob ruling the distant capital and, ostensibly, all of Elingarth, promised to be a cold one.

Even the arrival of Felittle, here in these crowded confines, with her soft red cheeks and the overdone carmine paint on her full lips, and those huge eyes so expansive in their blessed idiocy, could do little to defeat the insipid icy draught pouring in past her from around the mostly useless door. Spilgit sighed and reached for his tankard. “I’ve warmed rum in that kettle, mixed with some wine and crushed blackgem berries. Would you like some?”

“Ooh!” She edged forward, her quilted coat smelling of smoke, ale and her mother’s eye-watering perfume that Spilgit privately called Whore Sweat—not that he’d ever utter that out loud. Not if he wanted to get what he wanted from this blissful child in a woman’s body. And most certainly never to that vicious hag’s face. While Felittle’s mother already despised him, she’d not yet refused his coin and he needed to keep it that way for a few more months, assuming he could find a way of stretching his fast-diminishing resources. After that …

Felittle was breathing fast as Spilgit collected the kettle from its hook above the brazier and poured out a dollop into the cup she’d taken down from the shelf beside the door. He considered again the delicious absence of guilt that accompanied his thoughts of stealing Felittle away from her tyrant of a mother; away from this miserable village that stank of fish all summer and stank of the people eating that fish all winter; away from her mother’s whores and the sordid creatures that crawled into the King’s Heel every day eager for more of the old wick-dipping from that gaggle of girls only a blind man would find attractive, at least until the poor fool’s probing fingers broke through the powdery sludge hiding their pocked faces. Away, then, and away most of all, from that deranged sorcerer who’d usurped his own brother to carve out, in broken bones, spilled blood and the screaming of endless victims, his private version of paradise.

Oh, there was no end to the horrors of this place, but Lord Fangatooth Claw sat atop them all like a king on a throne. How Spilgit hated sorcerers!

“You’re still shivering, darling,” he said to Felittle. “Drink that down and have another, and come closer. Now, with only this one chair, well, sit on my lap again, will you. That’s surely one way to get warm.”

She giggled, swinging her not-ungenerous backside onto him and then leaning back with one arm snaking round the back of his neck. “If Mother saw this, she’d hack off your mast and roast it on a fire till it was burnt crisp!”

“But my sweetheart, are we not dressed? Is this not entirely proper, given the cold and the cramped conditions of this office?”

“Oh, and who else do you do this with?”

“No one, of course, since you are the only person to ever visit me.”

She eyed him suspiciously, but he knew it to be an act, since she well knew that he entertained only her. Felittle missed nothing in this village. She was its eyes and ears and, most of all, its mouth, and it was remarkable to Spilgit that such a mouth could find fuel to race without surcease day after day, night upon night. There were barely two hundred people in Spendrugle, and not one of them could be said to be leading exciting lives. Perhaps there was a sort of cleverness in Felittle, after all, in the manner of her soaking in everything that it was possible to know in Spendrugle, and then spewing it all back out with impressive accuracy. Indeed, she might well possess the wit to match a … a … 

“Blackgem berries make me squirt, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Squirt water, of course! What else would I squirt? What a dirty mind you have!”

… sea-sponge? “Well, I didn’t know that. I mean, how could I, since it’s such a … well, a private thing.”

“Not for much longer,” she said, taking another mouthful.

Spilgit frowned, only now feeling the unusual warmth in his lap. “You call that a squirt?”

“Well,” she said, “it’s just that it got me all excited!”

“Really? Oh, then should we—”

“Not you, silly! Fangatooth! On the tower, with his arms spread wide like I said!”

“Alas, I didn’t see any of that, Felittle. Busy as I was in here, putting things in order and all. Even so, for the life of me I can’t see what it was that excited you about such a scene. He does that most mornings, after all.”

“I know that, but this morning it was different. Or at least I thought it was.”

“Why?”

“Well,” she paused to drink down the rum, gusted out a sweet sigh, and then made a small sound. “Oop, it’s all going now, isn’t it?”

Spilgit felt the heat spreading in his crotch, and then his thighs as it pooled in the chair. “Ah, yes…”

“Anyway,” she continued, “I thought he was looking at the wreck, you see? But I don’t think he was. I mean—”

“Hold on, darling. A moment. What wreck?”

“Why, the one in the bay, of course! Arrived last night! You don’t know anything!”

“Survivors?”

She shrugged. “Nobody’s been down to look yet. Too cold.”

“Gods below!” Spilgit pushed her from his lap. He rose. “I need to change.”

“You look like you peed yourself! Hah hah!”

He studied her for a moment, and then said, “We’re heading down, darling. To that wreck.”

“Really? But we’ll freeze!”

“I want to see it. You can come with me, Felittle, or you can run back to your ma.”

“I don’t know why you two hate each other. She only wants what’s best for me. But I want to do what her girls do, and why not? It’s a living, isn’t it?”

“You’re far too beautiful for that,” Spilgit said.

“That’s what she says!”

“And she’s right, on that we’re agreed. The thing we don’t agree on is what your future is going to look like. You deserve better than this horrible little village, Felittle. She’d as much as chain you down if she thought she could get away with it. It’s all about her, what she wants you to do for her. Your ma’s getting old, right? Needing someone to take care of her, and she’ll make you a spinster if you let her.”

Her eyes were wide, her breaths coming fast. “Then you’ll do it?”

“What?”

“Steal me away!”

“I’m a man of my word. Come the spring, darling, we’ll swirl the sands, flatten the high grasses and flee like the wind.”

“Okay, I’ll go with you!”

“I know.”

“No, down to the wreck, silly!”

“Right, my little sea-sponge. Wait here, then. I need go back to the Heel and change … unless you need to do the same?”

“No, I’m fine! If I go back Ma will see me and find something for me to do. I’ll wait here. I wasn’t wearing knickers anyway.”

Well, that explains it, doesn’t it. Oh darling, you’re my kind of woman.

Except for the peeing bit, that is.

Copyright © 2012 by Steven Erikson


If you would like to enter, please follow the exceedingly simple instructions below:
- Email your name and address to: onlythebestsff@[remove this]gmail.com
- Write "Magician's Don't Kit " in the subject line (or something that lets me know what you're entering)
- Remember, this is NOT the book, The Magician's Land, only a teaser package
- Snarky comments get you extra entries for future giveaways (and make reading entries much more entertaining)
- US only (don't hate the messenger!)
- This giveaway ends a week from today
- See more at: http://onlythebestscifi.blogspot.com/2014/05/giveaway-magicians-kit-in-preparation.html#sthash.hzj2wfT0.dpuf
If you would like to enter, please follow the exceedingly simple instructions below:
- Email your name and address to: onlythebestsff@[remove this]gmail.com
- Write "Magician's Don't Kit " in the subject line (or something that lets me know what you're entering)
- Remember, this is NOT the book, The Magician's Land, only a teaser package
- Snarky comments get you extra entries for future giveaways (and make reading entries much more entertaining)
- US only (don't hate the messenger!)
- This giveaway ends a week from today
- See more at: http://onlythebestscifi.blogspot.com/2014/05/giveaway-magicians-kit-in-preparation.html#sthash.hzj2wfT0.dpuf
If you would like to enter, please follow the exceedingly simple instructions below:
- Email your name and address to: onlythebestsff@[remove this]gmail.com
- Write "Magician's Don't Kit " in the subject line (or something that lets me know what you're entering)
- Remember, this is NOT the book, The Magician's Land, only a teaser package
- Snarky comments get you extra entries for future giveaways (and make reading entries much more entertaining)
- US only (don't hate the messenger!)
- This giveaway ends a week from today
- See more at: http://onlythebestscifi.blogspot.com/2014/05/giveaway-magicians-kit-in-preparation.html#sthash.hzj2wfT0.dpuf
If you would like to enter, please follow the exceedingly simple instructions below:
- Email your name and address to: onlythebestsff@[remove this]gmail.com
- Write "Magician's Don't Kit " in the subject line (or something that lets me know what you're entering)
- Remember, this is NOT the book, The Magician's Land, only a teaser package
- Snarky comments get you extra entries for future giveaways (and make reading entries much more entertaining)
- US only (don't hate the messenger!)
- This giveaway ends a week from today
- See more at: http://onlythebestscifi.blogspot.com/2014/05/giveaway-magicians-kit-in-preparation.html#sthash.hzj2wfT0.dpuf
If you would like to enter, please follow the exceedingly simple instructions below:
- Email your name and address to: onlythebestsff@[remove this]gmail.com
- Write "Magician's Don't Kit " in the subject line (or something that lets me know what you're entering)
- Remember, this is NOT the book, The Magician's Land, only a teaser package
- Snarky comments get you extra entries for future giveaways (and make reading entries much more entertaining)
- US only (don't hate the messenger!)
- This giveaway ends a week from today
- See more at: http://onlythebestscifi.blogspot.com/2014/05/giveaway-magicians-kit-in-preparation.html#sthash.hzj2wfT0.dpuf

09 July, 2014

Guest Post - "Writing Process" by Betsy Dornbusch

I’m asked about process a lot on panels. I get it. People want to know what works, how writers get words on the page. What’s the password to the club? What’s the secret handshake? Is there an elixir? I heard there’s an elixir!!

We’re all granted the same hours in a day but some writers just seem to get more stuff done in less time. I tend to be a slower writer but I generally get more done per pass than others. The idea of doing seventeen passes on a book... ugh. Never. Again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The longer I write, the more I plot. Tagline, flap copy, and synopsis—yeah, just like the market wants. It’s how I toss ideas into the lake to see if they float or swim. I do take them public sometimes, or ask friends. It’s worth it to test salability of ideas, and I’m not precious about them. If there’s an easy part of the process, it’s ideas.

My taglines are usually simple for personal use while it’s a WIP. When it was Exile, it was “Falsely accused for murdering his wife, a middle-aged soldier is exiled to an enemy country.” Last year, when I was working on the sequel, Emissary, I said, because lots of people know what Exile is about,“Draken has to go back to his original country to face a death sentence and a religious revolution.” And now, when I’m working on Enemy, I tell myself, “After a divisive coup Draken has to cobble his country back together to defeat foreign invaders.”

The next thing I write is basic marketing copy. Nothing too fancy, a basic paragraph. A few tent pole scenes, and the climactic cliffhanger with a little internal conflict/motivation thrown in. I’m pretty dependent on this paragraph. I don’t start writing a word until I’ve got at least that much because if it doesn’t read well that means the idea sucks.

I used to totally pantz it. Writing wasn’t FUN unless I didn’t know what was going to happen next. But you know what’s not fun? Rewriting a pantzing disaster. After a couple of these, I decided to remake myself into a plotter. I trained myself to brainstorm with friends and synopsis. At first it’s something like a couple of pages. A list of tent pole scenes, again, but more embellished, and I work harder at motivation. Why does this matter? Why doesn’t s/he just walk away? Why is my character re/acting the way s/he is? What’s the starting point, how does that inform the action, and what’s driving my character to point Z? What’s the worst thing that can happen? I include some internal conflict and drum up as many obstacles as I can. This is an anything-goes time, but I’m trying to work myself to an ending so I know where I’m headed. I’m also drafting during this time because I have no self-control. Also I do rolling revisions while I draft, going back and fixing things.

For my next book, Enemy, which completes the Seven Eyes Books, I’m working on my most detailed synopsis yet. It’s nearly chapter by chapter, though I haven’t designated any in my synopsis. It currently sits at five thousand words and I fully expect to add another thousand as I revise it. There’s a subplot to weave in and a twist to the ending I’m thinking over.

Not all publishers want this. Some want a treatment—a one pager, basically. Some do it on a verbal conversation. But I know to write the book in a timely fashion, I need this level of detail to keep me going from day to day.

And yeah, day to day. Hmm. The process there sometimes falls apart. I have kids in school, a dog, a husband, and a house to keep. I’m still working on my daily process and I think I’m realizing every day is different. I used to write to a scene, but now I tend to write word counts. I’m not sure which works better, though I feel like word counts make me more accountable (literally—haha). As I said before, I’m a pokey drafter, turning out pages as clean as I can make them.

Right now I’d call Facebook my biggest disruption, mostly because it’s the new email. Most of my writer friends contact me via PM. It’s how we organize conventions, appearances, everything. I’m in a few private groups of writers, some public interest groups, and there are always other friends to keep up with. Honestly, I’d dump Facebook if it wasn’t so integral to communicating with fellow writers. Twitter I spend less time on because every time I click it, I start chasing links and getting into conversations. I find it to be more of a timesuck than Facebook, which simply doesn’t move as fast. Twitter is probably one of those things I should be doing more, promotions-wise, but I try to put the majority of my work-time into writing.

I think the biggest part of the professional writing life is that there’s always more to do. It’s overwhelming, which is why I think some writers (coughmeahem) fall down on the day-to-day end of things. If we start thinking macro instead of micro, novel instead of chapter, or even scene, the job quickly overwhelms us.

Then we start to procrastinate. This

Source: http://myjetpack.tumblr.com/image/80457780970
cartoon from Tom Gauld pretty much describes my efforts therein. I’ve never actually been blocked but I have been too twitchy to write. That’s when I know it’s time to get up and do something else. Usually cleaning toilets or pushing the vacuum gets me back to telling stories quick enough. And that, Charlie Brown, is what writing is all about.

--------------------------------


Betsy Dornbusch is the author of a dozen short stories, three novellas, and two novels. She also is an editor with the speculative fiction magazine Electric Spec and the longtime proprietress of Sex Scenes at Starbucks (www.betsydornbusch.com).


 



Check out Exile, published by Night Shade Books, at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.