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Winterbirth arrives in France this month, courtesy of Editions Eclipse.
It comes with a slightly tweaked version of a familiar cover:
And with its own little corner of the Eclipse website.
And with a minor role in a snappy little video promo for the November releases from this perky new imprint:
Tell all your French friends the good news!
Enough of this Autumnal blogging inactivity. Got to take baby steps back into the habit for fear of straining my moribund blogging muscles, of course, so just a couple of quick notes to start with:
Czech edition of Winterbirth emerges blinking (and perhaps even bawling?) into the world, under the title ZROZENI ZIMY. It sports a distinctly striking cover – not sure who, if anyone, the specific characters are supposed to be, but they definitely look … alarming. Tempted to think of them as some heavily-armoured version of Wain and Kanin, but who knows? Thanks to reader Martin for sending me a useable jpg of the cover.
My parents were awesome. A completely and unreservedly true statement, of course. In fact, they still are awesome, but that’s not the point. The point is this: the My Parents Were Awesome blog. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find it an extraordinarily affecting, interesting, hypnotic, moving, evocative etc etc site, given that it is such a simple idea: reader-submitted photos of their parents, mostly as young(ish) adults, offered without commentary, without location or context or anything but the most simple identification. Page after page of them, and as I work my way through them it feels like I’m looking into lives, into stories, into the past, into other worlds almost; and I invariably find myself thinking ‘Why, yes. What obviously awesome people. Just look at them. They look wise, and fun, and kind, and thoughtful. Awesome.’
It’s a silent, restrained archive of childrens’ love and respect for their parents, an acknowledgement that those parents lived lives as rich and strange and individual as anything their children have managed. Fantastic stuff.
More waffle here soon.
For a measly one dollar, those of an e-book inclination can, all through April, get themselves one whole copy of Winterbirth for their e-reading pleasure, as this little site confirms. Available on Kindle, Sony and from booksonboard, whatever that is. One dollar! Nearly two hundred thousand words! That’s … a measly 0.000555 cents per word. And at least some of the words in there are truly great, I can tell you; worth a whole lot more than that.
I’m guessing most people stopping by here already have a paper and ink copy of Winterbirth, but if you’ve got an e-reader, I guess you might want a digital copy too? More importantly, if you know anyone who’s into the whole e-book thing, perhaps now’s the moment to point out they’ve got almost nothing (well, one dollar and a bit of time) to lose by giving Winterbirth a shot. Spread the word! I need to buy food!
EDIT TO ADD: Meant to mention, but failed dismally, that this is a US promotion, so all you non-USA type people can ignore all of the above. Sorry about that.
A few quick notes as 2008 heads towards its end and 2009 looms on the horizon.
I am one of a great many guest posters on the Fantasy Book Critic blog, offering some brief comments on stuff I read this year and stuff I might read next year.
New for 2009! The latest addition to the universe of prizes for genre books is the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy. The inaugural winner will be announced in 2009, once it has been chosen by … you, the public! You can check out the long list of nominated books here (and yes, Bloodheir‘s one of them), and vote for your favourite here.
For any early-adopting, US-based, ebook geeks out there, Winterbirth has made it onto the Kindle.
Most Shocking Realisation of 2008: I have reached a point – I don’t know whether it’s age-related, or career-related or just a transitory state of mind – where the single most exciting shopping experience I can have is apparently delivered by … stationery superstores. The long lines of endlessly but subtly different office chairs (ever single one of them just crying out to be sat upon, and every one of them seeming more welcoming than my current model), the packages of photocopy paper stacked in bricky towers, the notebooks – the notebooks! – of every hue and size and binding. Pens. Even better: pencils! Folders. I have no need of folders – I already have more of the things than I have stuff to put in them – but I can’t help but embark on a critical examination of their robustness, their rigidity. It’s possible I may need to get some professional help in 2009, to cure me of this strange affliction. I mean, I realise these places are sort of consumerist temples to the business of writing, and therefore bound to be of some interest to the likes of me, but I can’t help but feel there’s something vaguely unseemly and deeply uncool about finding them so … exciting.
For those who are Facebookers: you can now follow this blog, or be a part of its network, or something, over there. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what the deal is, but it’s available. Whatever it is. And you’ve already joined the gang on the Winterbirth page, right?
Novels that have come into my possession, in one way or the other, over the course of the festive period so far: Vinland by George Mackay Brown, Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson, The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks, Black Man by Richard Morgan, Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory. Such bounty! Is any of it going to be any good? Oh, I should think so …
Etymology! I like a good word, and ‘swashbuckling’ is a good word. But where, I wondered, did it come from? Thus I discovered the very handy Online Etymology Dictionary. And the quite interesting origins of ‘swashbuckling’.
Finally, and most importantly, to all readers and visitors to these parts, all best wishes for the year about to be new. Here’s hoping 2009 is good to us all. See you next year.
In honour of the release of Winterbirth as a US mass market paperback, I have been interviewed over at mania.com. There’s also a review up over there, which is generous enough in its praise to make me blush (you can’t see me, but I’m blushing. Really).
Seems a bit self-indulgent to take up blog space just for that (I know, someone with a blog suddenly starts worrying about being self-indulgent. Imagine that. Next up: a politician admitting they have no clue whatsoever how to solve a problem). Anyway, since I’m here, a handful of other webby things:
The Abominable Charles Christopher. A web comic by Karl Kerschl. I enjoy it. Nicely drawn.
The Orbit Page on Facebook. You can now become a fan of an entire publishing imprint. It has cover galleries of upcoming books, news on author events etc. etc.
Golden Age Comic Book Stories. Is a torrential cornucopia of great art, not remotely limited to comic books. I was going to try and pick some favourites to link to, but it’s pretty much all good.
British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. For the aspiring authors out there, a chance to flex your genre muscles.
A first, very brief, visit to Ireland for me over the weekend. Gorgeous place. Was in the Burren, on the west coast, which is a place so fantastically landscaped it looks like it belongs in fiction.
Huge expanses of exposed limestone, all corrugated and cracked. Basically looks like a moonscape, only with less dust and a bit more grass (though in some places not much more – the photo above is really a positive oasis of grassiness compared to the really cool bits, but of course I didn’t get a photo of them). And for extra cool points, the whole place is dotted with relics of Stone Age humanity. Like this tomb, which looked precariously balanced to me, but presumably will last a bit longer since it’s made it through from BC times this far:
Away from the limestone, it’s all rolling countryside, verdant fields and wide open shores.
Very nice. Well done, Ireland. Good effort.
Despite the fact I wasn’t paying attention, the world saw fit to continue to happen over the weekend, and indeed happen in ways that manage to be very modern but would also be entirely familiar to our ancestors from a few hundred years ago: the hyper-modern (and rather fine looking) sailing ship Ponant got seized by pirates and last I heard is holed up in a Somali port hiding from the French navy who are in pursuit … Terrible business, I’m sure, but since nobody seems to have got hurt so far, I feel able to admit that my first reaction was something along the lines of: ‘Ha. Cool. Them’s some pirates with taste.’
And in other, marginally less noteworthy news, the US mass market paperback of Winterbirth turned up in the post. It’s published next month, and is a lovely little thing that I am entirely charmed by. Small, but perfectly formed.
Every so often, you get a reminder of why the internet and e-mail are such fine things. A minor example: a flurry of e-mails from readers this week, and I can tell you, there are few things more likely to lift the spirits of a writer – it being, as everyone always says, such an isolated and potentially lonely old business – than hearing direct from the readers (assuming they’re polite and friendly readers, of course).
The best thing is, it’s a two-way process, so I can fire a random question out into the virtual ether, and get an answer back in basically no time at all:
“The title Zimowe Gody means more or less Winterbirth. ‘Zimowe’ means winter (as an adjective). ‘Gody’ is the traditional Polish name for a wedding, but also may be used for other festivities (like your book’s Winterbirth).”
So now I (and you) know. Fantastic. Thank you, Pawel. Incidentally, googling ‘Zimowe Gody’ – an entirely pointless exercise due to my ignorance of the Polish language, but I couldn’t help myself – did at least reveal one thing of which I was previously unaware: Poland appears to have a frankly staggering number of online bookshops. Dozens of the things, as far as I can see. No idea why so many.
And the two-way thing works in reverse, so people can ask me questions or make suggestions, like Andy, who wants an extract from Bloodheir putting up on the website or the Facebook page asap, please, thank you very much. A little bit of patience is required on this front, I’m afraid. Such a thing will be along before too long, but it’s not going to be in the next few days or anything. There’s a good chance it’ll show up on the Facebook page first, but that’s not certain. This is, in fact, a rare example of something showing up in print before it’s online: I know, for I have seen it (and it is good) that Orbit US have produced a little sampler booklet containing short extracts from not only Bloodheir but many of the other fine books they’ll be publishing this year. But that’s not something you’re likely to stumble upon unless you’re in the publishing or bookselling trade, I imagine, so that’s no great help to Andy or anyone else, really. Sorry.
And to end on a morbid note, when I talked about the Forth Rail Bridge a few posts back, the Millau Viaduct was flagged up in the comments (thanks, Simon), as another bridge-type thing laden with the Wow Factor. Quite true: it’s a stunner, although it might be ever so slightly too perfect and clinical-looking for me to really love it. Not sure.
Thinking about these two amazing constructions raised a question in my mind, and thanks to the internet, finding an answer was trivially easy:
Number of construction workers who died in the three years (2001-2004) it took to build the Millau Viaduct: 0. Yes, that’s precisely zero.
Number of construction workers who died in the seven years (1883-1890) it took to build the Forth Rail Bridge: No one really knows, but probably something like 98.
How things have changed. Those Victorians knew what they were doing when it came to putting together brick and steel; health and safety at work, not so much. Just last year, a memorial was finally created in memory of those who died working on the bridge. But what I find more moving, for some reason, is that you can go and see the name, age, job and the exact day they died for many of them right here. It’s a strange experience, to scroll through those lists, and one that would be impossible without the amazing internet.
Of course, things have not changed so much everywhere. The death toll of construction workers is only one – and arguably not the greatest – of the costs associated with this infamous megaproject, but still: apparently, over 100 of them died. That’s a lot of dead workers, if true. I wonder if they’ll get a memorial? Or have their names listed on the internet?
Today started badly. Man in truck reversed into the front of my car, destroying number plate, breaking bumper and inserting tow hook so decisively into the wreckage that the two vehicles were as firmly attached as a pair of mating dogs. Much fiddling about with a jack, splintering of plastic and general struggling later, and they were finally parted. Sucks as a curtain-raiser to a new day, and on the whole it set the pattern for much of what was to follow.
There was one glimmer of sunshine, though, since on my return from the scene of the truck v. car strife, oily-handed and irritated, I found an e-mail tipping me off to the existence of kind words about Winterbirth, uttered by a notably talented author. Jeff Vandermeer, in his Best Sf/f of 2007 report for Locus, says ‘Winterbirth is the debut of a formidable fantasist, capable of writing complex and often fascinating heroic fantasy.’ Very nice, and all the sweeter for coming from someone who has written remarkable books: City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek are distinctive, strange and fascinating concoctions that linger in the mind long after you’ve finished reading them.
Ah, life’s rich tapestry. It’d be nice to dispense with the downs and only have the ups, but I guess that would asking a bit too much.
As previously mentioned here, I’m on Facebook and likely to say yes to Friend requests from Winterbirth readers. That’s old news. Now, in our continuing mission to explore the new worlds of the internet frontier, Winterbirth has its own Facebook page. Yes, why bother with the author when you can now go directly to the crux of things and make friends with (or in this case ‘become a fan of’) a book. It’s got all the usual stuff Facebookers will be familiar with: pictures, discussion board, news items, blog feeds, links to extract from the book etc. etc. Quite neat. No idea whether it will appeal to people or not, but if you like Winterbirth, go along and have a look, maybe sign up as a fan (or, as I like to think of it, ‘moral support’). If there’s enough interest, there might be some Facebook-exclusive stuff that shows up there eventually.
The Winterbirth hardback well has run dry. Okay, that’s not strictly true, since there’re no doubt still some in circulation out there in bookshops and on the internet, but Transreal Fiction, who’ve been selling the signed hardback, are getting an ‘Out of Print’ message from the distributors. Should anyone for any reason think a signed paperback of Winterbirth would be nice, or make a nifty Xmas present for someone, Transreal can still supply those, but it looks like no more hardbacks will have to suffer the indignity of being defaced by my scrawlings.
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