Publishing Horror Story
SCI FI Wire just published a news story I wrote about Cherie Priest’s experience getting her first novel, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, published.
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
My review of Peeps by Scott Westerfeld was just published in Strange Horizons today. Go read the review! Go buy the book!
“…an infectious and clever reinvention of the vampire novel…[Westerfeld] is a natural storyteller…”
Grade: A
Intergalactic Review Column
For everyone who likes my reviews, good news: I’m going to have my own review column in Orson Scott Card’s new webzine, Intergalactic Medicine Show. I’m going to be covering both books and audiobooks, and the column will appear monthly.
So, if you’re an author, publicist, or publisher, and you’d like to send me books for review in Intergalactic Medicine Show, see my Review Books page for details.
The Bestseller Awards
On Thursday last week, I attended the first annual Book Summit put on by The Book Standard. At the event, publishing professionals congregated to discuss trends in publishing and strategies for the future. Think of it as a con for booksellers and publishers. I went on the off chance that there’d be something of interest to genre fans, and proposed to Patrick Lee of SCI FI Wire that I cover the event. That got me in for free, so that was nice, but there was nary a mention of genre, so there was little to cover. However, at the end of the evening, The Book Standard’s Bestseller Awards were announced, several of which went to genre titles. As a result, I was able to write up a summary of the winners for SCI FI Wire, which you can now read here.
Carol Pinchefsky, the F&SF Humor Competition editor, and Douglas E. Cohen, the assistant editor at Realms of Fantasy, joined me at the event, Doug as my guest, and Carol was theoretically there to cover the event for UrbanDaddy.com (she also freelances for SCI FI Wire, but I beat her to the punch on this pitch).
Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan
A brilliant and brutal near-future SF satire about businessmen who manage wars (backing the side who they think will earn them the most profit if victorious) and climb the corporate ladder by killing off their competition in gladiatorial car duels; reads as if it were written by Harlan Ellison channeling Chuck Palaniuk, and ranks with the best of what either of those two have written.
Grade: A+
The Crippled Angel by Sara Douglass
Superb historical fantasy, set in plague-era Europe, that takes the well-trod trope of angels and demons battling for men’s souls and makes it fresh again.
Grade: A
Triad by Terry McGarry
Complex and ambitious epic fantasy with great worldbuilding and an interesting magical system; hardcore Tolkein-ites will probably love it, but it will prove too dense for other readers.
Grade: B-
Savage Messiah by Robert Newcomb
Robert Jordan-clone; well-written and fast-paced, but there’s nothing here that hasn’t already been done to death.
Grade: D+
One-Liner Reviews
Since I’m not allowed to reprint any of my Kirkus reviews, I link to them when I can, though they’re not always available online. So, since you faithful readers of my blog might be wondering what I thought of a particular book I was reading, I thought I’d try to post a brief summary of my thoughts, a sort of one-liner along with a letter grade to give you some idea.
You keep using that word…
…I do not think it means what you think it means.
In this case, the word is “adjacent,” and the misuser of that word is my optometrist. I got a notice in the mail the other day informing me that it was time for my eye exam, and the pamphlet reminded me that the doctor’s office was located “adjacent” to Lenscrafters.
So, the thing is, it’s not adjacent to Lenscrafters; it’s inside Lenscrafters. RadioShack is adjacent to the doctor’s office.
This doctor’s office has been using that phrase for several years now to describe their location, and even so it still tripped me up when I read it.