If there's anything I should add/subtract to make it better, please let me know. In the words of Aldous Huxley, "There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."
Cover Art
Mark Charan Newton is having fans vote for the cover of his next book The Book of Transformations:
Count me in with the left cover. The close up just looks so much better although the best cover is still the US edition of Nights of Villjamur. I do have to admit, I typically don't like real people in my covers.
Interviews
Neal Asher "Answers 8 Crappy Questions" at SFFnews.com. Asher's an author I've become more and more interested in reading. I already own Gridlinked so it's only a matter of time.
Neal: My next book is The Departure, which is a title full of double meanings. It is a departure from the Polity in that I am telling the tale of the early years of the ‘Owner’ who will be found in short stories in my collection The Engineer ReConditioned. It comes out next August...Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, whether he'll be staying around or leaving, has a few more interviews for the rest of the year. Most recently Jasper Kent is up, and yet another author I've only heard good things about. Hmm...
- Can you tell us a little more about the road that saw this one go from manuscript form to finished novel?Peter F. Hamilton talks about his Void trilogy, with more parts to come:
Once I was happy with the text I started sending it directly to publishers (reasoning, wrongly, that it would be easier to get over the single hurdle of being accepted by a publisher than having to face being accepted first by an agent and then by a publisher). All the feedback that wasn’t cursory was pretty positive in terms of the content, but at the time publishers couldn’t really find much of a place for horror. Peter Lavery at Macmillan was particularly enthusiastic and suggested I contact John Jarrold as a literary agent. John managed to get it seen by more publishers, but still without a bite.
We have another featurette from HBO's Game of Thrones (still can't get used to that instead of A Game of Thrones) this week. From the artisans:
Top 3 Book Reviews
I know it was 5 last week, but I realized that 3 is much more elite. :)
3. Kamvision: Shadowrise by Tad Williams - I still need to read Tad Williams. I own Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and will (hopefully) very soon get into this and someday get to the Shadowmarch quartet. Someday.
2. Graeme's: Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin Anderson and Sam Stall - Have to say I was surprised by how high of a rating this got.
1. A Fantasy Reader: The Black Prism by Brent Weeks - Yup, this book was number one last week, but this one's more positive. Seems like it's a bit of a split opinion.
And that's the news...at least to me.
