Last week's Books & Pieces round-up

Over the weekend, the 2012 Hugo Award nominees were announced(full list). Awards to be presented September 2, 2012 at Chicon7. Voting is open to members until early August. Last year they streamed the awards ceremony live online; hopefully they’ll do the same this year for all of us who can’t get out to Chicago.

Speculative art and design rules: There are these great “Urban Astronaut” paintings by Jeremy Geddes that I’m absolutely in love with, and then there’s the Dark Shadows Barnabas Portrait Project a Deviant Art contest with three winning artists to be chosen for monetary prizes by Tim Burton himself.

Chuck Wendig’s 25 things you should know about word choice is a tour de force article on writing. An entire workshop’s worth (or five workshop’s worth) of prose style and word choiceadvice vulgarly put.

My absolute favorite discussion this week comes from the podcast Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing: It’s a panel discussion on the publishing industry’s recent “turmoil” regarding authors vs. Amazon and Paypal vs. Smashwords — the end summation? A good dose of common sense. All these crazy things are just businesses practicing business; writers should keep writing and not worry about it. They make other wonderful statements directed at writers:make your name, diversify, and don’t turn down any market. And then get in a few good nudges at publishing, suggesting that publishing needs to become more like other businesses, get out of [the] Madison Avenue offices and out of the the golden age mindset of “owning writers.” The podcast is about an hour long and I can’t recommend it enough.

(Books&Pieces was cross-posted on the World Weaver Press blog.)

Ad of the Week

Hradnai

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.

I could have gone for one of the more popular H series out there -- Harry Potter, Hunger Games, one of those. But what I really wanted to write about was David Weber's Hradani novels.

Starting with Oath of Swords David Weber introduces us to Bazhell Bahnakson, a prince of the Horse Stealer hradani, an oversized race known for their rages. The book opens with Bazhell finding himself in a shitload of trouble just for being a good guy. Everything that makes Bazhell Bazhell makes him the perfect champion for the gods.

Of course, everything that makes Bazhell Bazhell says there's no way in hell he'll ever be the champion of the gods!

He also has an unlikely companion on his journey, Brandark.

Brandark is another hradani and while only slightly less skilled as a warrior than Bazhell, Brandark has the soul of a bard ... and the voice of a hoarse toad.

These books manage to have fun, lighthearted moments as well as strike that deep resonant chord about doing what is right in the face of those who would have you take the easy path of what is wrong. They're also a series that both my father and I agree on and adore.

Second book: The War God's Own. Third: Wind Rider's Oath. The fourth book in the series, War Maid's Choice, has been a long time coming. It's scheduled to appear this July after a seven year dearth of Bazhell books.

Grave Witch

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.


Grave Witch is the first title in the Alex Craft series by Kalayna Price. I love love love Grave Witch. I read it before I read the Kim Harrison novels about the character Rachel Morgan, and when I got to Rachel Morgan's world, (which was written 5-10 years before Kalayna Price brought out Grave Witch), I couldn't help but think that Grave Witch was a more sophisticated version of the same world.  If you like Rachel Morgan, you'll like Alex Craft.

The characters are beautifully crafted and so is the gritty crime world that Alex Craft deals with. She's a witch who can raise the shades of the dead temporarily. Her skills are invaluable to the police department and loved ones looking for closure, in spite of this, she frequently finds herself with pennies in her purse.

In a world where witches and fae abound but aren't fully accepted, Alex Craft carves out a carefully narrow social and economic existence. One where Death, a grim-reaper-type-hottie that only she can see, knows more about her than many of her closest corporeal friends.


Grave Dance, the second book, is already out, with the third, Grave Memory, scheduled to drop this July. I wait with bated breath.

Jewels of the Sun

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.

This is a Nora Roberts trilogy set in Ireland with a heavy dose of underhill magical interference thrown in. Although, when I went to grab images/links from Amazon today, I found that the actual name of the series is "The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy" -- who knew?

I was drawn to the first book because it involves a stressed out, disenchanted, young American writer who flees to a rented cottage in Ireland for a few weeks or maybe months of R&R only to fall in love with the tiny, colorful town she's residing on the outskirts of. And as it turns out, the ghost that haunts her rented cottage isn't the only magic brewing in the Irish countryside.

It's a romance -- don't ever doubt that. But I think I fell in love with the entire Gallagher family, not just the hero of the romance.

Book series order: Jewels of the Sun, Tears of the Moon, Heart of the Sea.

Fae Fever

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.


Fae Fever, sometimes just called "The Fever" series by Karen Marie Moning. When the series starts out, MacKayla Lane is a prissy girly girl living in the American South, happily holding down a bartending job that means she doesn't have to go to college or accomplish things like her ambitious sister is set on doing. But her world is shattered when MacKayla gets a call that her sister's been murdered while studying abroad in Dublin.

MacKayla flies to Ireland to be an advocate for the dead -- someone has to lean on the authorities to keep open the investigation into a girl who has no local ties. But it turns out that this isn't a case human cops can solve. MacKayla stumbles her way into a world of light and dark fae and other strange things that are not only wandering around Dublin but are looking to take over the city. MacKayla goes from bubblegum sweet, fluff headed girl to woman with supernatural powers on a mission.

Despite its urban fantasy feel, this five book series is shelved under romance because that's where author Karen Marie Moning's existing fan base already is. The world is that of her Highland romance novels -- and even features cameos from Drustan, Dageus, Cian and even former fae-by Adam, and the occasional plot point focused on the MacKelter families.

In a somewhat confusing move, the series starts with the book Dark Fever, yet the series is often referred to by fans by the title of book three, Fae Fever. Go figure. The publishers call it "The Fever Series." Still, confusion led a friend of mine to buy book three first. She started reading and was like WTF, dude?

Alphabet delay ...

... I'm not giving up on the challenge, but I'm recognizing the delay. I'm a few days/letters behind, but I'll finish the challenge even if I don't do it precisely on time.

Everyday Dragons

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.

I'm including three series by one author under the moniker Everyday Dragons today.  These are the dragons, demons, doppelgangers, and humans of Katie MacAlister's Aisling Grey, Silver Dragons, and The Light Dragons series. They're funny, spunky, set in contemporary Europe with hot men, hot women, evil wizards, brooding dragon-men and a demon who's not that evil but loves taking the form of a Newfoundland because of the awesome amounts of mess he can make.

The first series focuses on the character Aisling Grey (first person narration from Aisling's point of view), an American who knows nothing of the fantasy world of dragons, demons, etc. when she's sent to Europe to courier an expensive delivery. She runs into a dragon in his human form. Of course, the mere idea of a dragon in the same room as an expensive item is a recipe for theft -- if dragons do one thing in literature, it's covet treasure, and Katie MacAlister's dragons are no different! So beings You Slay Me.

The second series is the plight of the Silver Dragons who've been cursed centuries ago. While featuring a heavy overlap in terms of world and characters, these novels have a brand new female character narrating them (also first person).

The third series starts to answer some of the big historical questions brought up in the previous two series. What really happened to Ysolde and Baltic four hundred years ago? The third book of the Light Dragons comes out May 1 (cover at right).

These are fun books. A good comedic romp. They have enough romance and intrigue to be interesting, enough wit to make me snort a couple of times, and -- best of all -- the heroine, more often than not, is strong enough and smart enough to save herself!

These series are best read in the order described here as they build off of each other in terms of plot and characters, although you could probably pick up the first book in any of the series and figure things out without too many problems.

1. Aisling Grey series order: You Slay Me, Fire Me Up, Light My Fire, and Holy Smokes.

2. Silver Dragons series order: Playing With Fire, Up in Smoke and Me and My Shadow.

3. The Light Dragons series order: Love in the Time of Dragons, The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons, and Sparks Fly (forthcoming on May 1). No word yet as to whether the Light Dragons are going to be a three or four (or more!) book series.

Dark Is Rising

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.


The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper is a five book young adult series set (mostly) in contemporary England while winding its way in and out of the old Arthur legends.

I was in the fifth grade when I first read Over Sea, Under Stone on assignment from my elementary school teacher. It was the tale of three British grade school children who embark on the quest for the holy grail. And to me, it was just another tale until the very last lines when Barnaby, the often discounted youngest sibling, comes to realize something marvelous about their uncle and sometimes accomplice Merriman Lyon. From there, it was the most amazing book of my young existence.

When the entire five book Dark is Rising sequence became available through Scholastic book order later that year, I told my mother I wanted to read these novels. She bought them, and one day the order arrived and I totted home the whole set.

The three siblings of Over Sea, Under Stone don't show back up for several novels, but instead we get to meet Will, the seventh son of a seventh son -- a boy fated to be the last of the Old Ones while still a child himself.

The entire sequence is heavily couched in Arthurian legend. At one point we even get to meet Arthur's legitimate son. And they are a curious and wondrous mix of contemporary world and times long gone past. But that's not what I remember most about the series.

I remember being eleven years-old and sitting on my covered front porch reading about Will one summer. In the novels it is winter; the ground is frozen and the snow is piled deep.

And then it begins to rain.

And then it began to rain in my world, at first a mist, then a light rain -- still, I sat and kept reading.

In the novel the rain comes and comes and comes. It melts the snow, but the ground is still frozen. The rain and the melted snow have no place to go and the world floods.

My mother came out onto the porch and asked if I wanted to go inside.

No. I wanted to keep reading. Keep reading in the downpour, with the rain withing reach but not touching me as Will raced through the novel, trapped in a downpour that was about to devour the world along with the Dark.

O, it was a wondrous moment.

Cat & Bones

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.


Cat & Bones  is the fan-given name for the Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost. This is perhaps the best written first person vampire novel(s) I've ever read. Cat, the heroine and narrator, is a half-vampire by birth, forever damned to be hated by her mother for what she is and feared by humans for what she isn't. And among vampires ... well, vampires, my dear, are what she spends her Saturday nights killing.

The series starts with Halfway to the Grave and to be honest, the tale isn't really concluded in the first novel. If you're in for Halfway to the Grave be ready to take on One Foot in the Grave to finish the initial story line.

But following One Foot in the Grave, the story isn't quite as enthralling. The main story line still follows Cat & Bones (characters and romantic couple) but there's only so much unresolved sexual tension you can have once you're eternally bound to one another.

Subsequent series spin offs include books about Spade and Mencheres, and various other characters (vampires) you meet as you go along. Supposedly Vlad one day soon. But it lost the magic for me.

But don't discount the magic of the first two books! Oh baby! They're worth it!

After the first two or three novels, the series starts to suffer from having too many too powerful (or all powerful) characters. First it was flight. At first the reader didn't know that vampires could fly, but they can do that. Now you always have to wonder hey, why didn't they just whoosh there? Now the author (and consequently) the plot, faces huge challenges from having vampires who can hear the goings on in buildings quite a distance away -- and therefore can spy on each other from that distance -- as well as telepathic abilities which keep being granted to more and more characters.

Also the cover art has gone down hill as the series expanded. The first covers were gorgeous. Then okay. Then so-so. Then ... what the hell happened here? (Exhibit awfulness, right).

Northville Review call for submissions: YouTube

In addition to my April A to Z blogging challenge, I'd like to share the following from Northville Review:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/jNQXAC9IVRwFirst video uploaded to YouTube: April 23, 2005

YouTube: The planet’s third most visited website, where the averageuser spends 15 minutes per day, every day. Where memes live, andnaivete dies. And, at last...the subject of The Northville Review’sSummer 2012 issue!

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:
-- Look for “Summer 2012” on our Submishmash page. It’s toward the bottom.-- Send us a story, a poem, an essay that is somehow related to anembeddable YouTube video.-- “Somehow related to” is deliberately very open-ended. If youretrofit a video to something you’ve already completed, that’s betweenyou and your deity.-- “Embeddable YouTube video” is not open-ended. Click “Share” andthen “Embed” to make sure the video is embeddable. Submissions withoutthis will be rejected.-- Include a link to the YouTube video and a bio in your cover letter.-- Work selected for publication will run underneath the correspondingembedded video.-- PLEASE NOTE: If your submission is accepted and your video goesdead on YouTube before the publication date, so does your work. Choosewisely. Tip: It’s probably not a good idea to send anything relatedto Prince.

DEADLINE: June 30. This is NOT a top secret project. Feel free tospread the word.

QUESTIONS? northvillereview@gmail.com or whatever social media works for you.

Black Jewels Trilogy

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.

Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. I first came upon this series when I was a teenager. The cover to the right is from the original mass market paperback. They've had several rebrandings with new cover art, an omnibus edition, and a whole trail of stories spun from the same world, but I've never read beyond the original trilogy and perhaps one or two short stories set in the world.

Daughter of the Blood introduced us to a dark and glittering second-world fantasy landscape with heroes who are as ruthless as they are deep dreamers. Their world has become corrupted. A matriarchal society ravished by greed has become a cruel parody of itself. Into this is born Witch; she is, as the novel puts it, dreams made flesh. The novel follows the rise of Witch and the decay of the world as well as the three strongest dreamers, Warlord Princes by the names of Daemon, Lucivar, and Saeton SaDiablo the High Lord of Hell.

It's not a sunshine and daisies kind of series.

But it's not all dark and brooding either.There are moments when you gasp, moments when you cheer and moments when you laugh aloud.

I gave the first book to my best friend to read when she was taking a plane ride to go visit family in Florida for a week. She finished the book quickly and spent the rest of the week wishing she had the second one -- there was a local book shop, but at this time the series had just come to print and Anne Bishop wasn't all that well known, so they didn't carry any of her work. Also, it was before the time of instant download and e-reading. So she returned home, yelled at me for letting her go away with the first book and no access to the second, then promptly took the second book from my shelf and went home to read it.

The series starts with Daughter of the Blood, book two is Heir to the Shadows, and it concludes with Queen of the Darkness (new style cover to the left).

My friend and I talked about the series so much that all our friends wanted to read it. I think at last count, my copy of Daughter of the Blood had been read 26 times by myself and my friends. My copy of Queen of Darkness however, has never been borrowed because by that point, all of my friends wanted their own copy of the series!

Allie's War

For the 2012 blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm writing to the theme of book series that I love. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a few others thrown in.

Allie's War a series by JC Andrijeski. These books (there's four out in the series right now with more to come) are billed as urban fantasy but felt much more like science fiction to me -- the world is like ours except humans are living alongside another species, Seers, and their presence has changed the technology and politics of the world. The altered tech and heavy focus on warfare and strategy make it feel more sci-fi thriller with an underlying romantic thread based on a prophesy from religious scriptures -- but hey, that could describe The Fifth Element and that's still a sci-fi movie, right?

I first came across Rook when I was asked to review it for New Myths magazine (full review). I had a lot of issues with the first hundred pages, but the last few hundred hooked me into the world and made me care about the characters. I went and got a digital copy of Shield and Sword and read both of them before my review deadline even came to pass. And at the time I didn't own an eReader. So I read two entire novels on the tiny, glowing, harsh-to-read-for-hours-on-end iPod screen. It's a measure of how enthralled I was.

I was also completely devastated at the end of Sword because I'd somehow gotten it in my head that the series was a trilogy and Sword ends with a twist that would be so not a cool place to end an entire series. I felt mad, I felt cheated, I felt like I had to scour the internet in search of news if there was a fourth book in the series!

Turns out the internet didn't have much to offer me but I came across JC Andrijeski's facebook page where she was interacting with readers and plunked down the question there. The response was a relief: book four was in the works ... and so was book five. Shadow came out in January and book five, whose title I don't yet know, is due out in June.