It's News To Me #21

School's back on and summer went by oh so quickly. Even though I'll have less reading time, I'm looking forward to being at least somewhat intelligent again. Two more years and all I have to do is take the bar to see if it was all worth it. :)

Cover Art

This is for Alec and all other misguided souls who can't put his books down and walk away. :D

News

The 2009 World Fantasy Awards nominees are up and here they are (from Locus):

Novel

• Blood of Ambrose, James Enge (Pyr)
• The Red Tree, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
• The City & The City, China Miéville (Macmillan UK/ Del Rey)
• Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland)
• In Great Waters, Kit Whitfield (Jonathan Cape UK/Del Rey)

Novella

• The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, Kage Baker (Subterranean)
• “The Lion’s Den”, Steven Duffy (Nemonymous Nine: Cern Zoo)
• The Night Cache, Andy Duncan (PS)
• “Sea-Hearts”, Margo Lanagan (X6 )
• “Everland”, Paul Witcover (Everland and Other Stories)

Short Story

• “I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said”, Richard Bowes (F&SF 12/09)
• “The Pelican Bar”, Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse Three)
• “A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by HMS Ocelot, As Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, DPhil, MSc, or, A Lullaby”, Helen Keeble (Strange Horizons6/09)
• “Singing on a Star”, Ellen Klages (Firebirds Soaring)
• “The Persistence of Memory, or This Space for Sale”, Paul Park (Postscripts 20/21: Edison’s Frankenstein )
• “In Waiting”, R.B. Russell (Putting the Pieces in Place)
• “Light on the Water”, Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy 10/09)

Anthology

• Poe, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Solaris)
• Songs of The Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Subterranean/Voyager)
• Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations, Danel Olson, ed. (Ash-Tree)
• Eclipse Three, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Night Shade)
• American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps/From the 1940s to Now, Peter Straub, ed. (Library of America)
• The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology, Gordon Van Gelder, ed. (Tachyon)

Collection

• We Never Talk About My Brother, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)
• Fugue State, Brian Evenson (Coffee House)
• There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Penguin)
• Northwest Passages, Barbara Roden (Prime)
• Everland and Other Stories, Paul Witcover (PS)
• The Very Best of Gene Wolfe/The Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe (PS /Tor)

Artist

• John Jude Palencar
• John Picacio
• Charles Vess
• Jason Zerrillo
• Sam Weber

Special Award – Professional

• Peter & Nicky Crowther for PS Publishing
• Ellen Datlow for editing anthologies
• Hayao Miyazaki for Ponyo
• Barbara & Christopher Roden for Ash-Tree Press
• Jonathan Strahan for editing anthologies
• Jacob & Rina Weisman for Tachyon Publications

Special Award – Non-Professional

• John Berlyne for Powers: Secret Histories
• Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan, & Sean Wallace for Clarkesworld
• Susan Marie Groppi for Strange Horizons
• John Klima for Electric Velocipede
• Bob Colby, B. Diane Martin, David Shaw, and Eric M. Van for Readercon
• Ray Russell & Rosalie Parker for Tartarus Press

The Life Achievement Awards will be released in the coming weeks in a separate announcement.

In other list-type news:

Been looking for a place that has all kinds of reviews from many different bloggers? Well look no further. I like to compare quite a few reviews of the same book not because I don't trust my fellow bloggers :) but because I like to be completely excited about the next book I buy. Genre Reader has now updated its Epic Fantasy Book Reviews From Other Blogs index. You could spend quite a few hours there.

This is old news (from last week), but from his blog this week, Brandon Sanderson has announced that he's done with Towers of Midnight, book 13 in the Wheel of Time. Whoot!

Review(s)

I always look a little more closely at a book that gets a perfect rating from a blogger, so The Passage by Justin Cronin is moving up on my list to buy especially given Dave Brendon's 10/10 review.

First off – Justin Cronin is a man who will -hopefully, if he can stay away from natural or un-natural disasters, etc- probably become a legendary writer and storyteller.

Giveaways

The Mad Hatter's giving away quite the haul, including Alec's favorite book of the year (so far), The Dervish House. The Deadline is midnight August 31st.

And that's the news...at least to me.

So What Happened to Goodkind's 3 Book Putnam Deal?

The recent press release from Tor (which I took some liberties with here) confirming Terry Goodkind's new contract for three more Richard and Kahlan novels came as no real surprise. His widely publicized Law of Nines, dubbed a thriller, was a bomb, and not the good kind. I don't have any hard figures on the sales, but it is pretty clear that the hard cover print run was severely ambitious. When you start seeing hardcover copies in your local B&N for $2.99 and on Amazon for less than the cost of most paperbacks, well, you can be sure sales are not as rosy as you expected.

Further evidence of the Law of Nines relatively poor sales can be inferred from what happened to Mr. Goodkind's "revolutionary" website and all its fancy Flash functionality. It stopped working for six months. My assumption is that someone, somewhere, just wasn't getting paid. Did I mention the website magically returned to coincide with the announcement of the next Sword of Truth book?

Lastly, the issue of timing. A well known moderator of the Terry Goodkind forums asserted that the new Richard and Kahlan novel with Tor will be released before any further books from Terry under his Putnam contract. Now, given the early 2011 release date set for the new Sword of Truth book, and the nature of the publishing cycle, this means that for all intents and purposes the book is already written?! Which, in turn, means that Mr. Goodkind started writing it shortly after the Law of Nines sales figures came in and his next book, something about the Devil being chained in someone's basement, got a red light?!!

I could reference more circumstantial evidence, but then this might actually come off as a rational argument as opposed to the unfounded rambling that it is. Did I mention I might be biased? Not surprisingly, a number of forums have addressed these issues more or less rationally, so I refer you to those explanations in lieu of any sort of logical rigor on my part. So what if your average author would sell her firstborn for figures like Goodkind's, or hitting the New York Times bestseller list like he did... doesn't mean I'm not right.

The Other Goodkind Press Release

New York, NY – Monday, April 19, 2010 – Tor Books is proud to announce the return of New York Times bestselling author Terry Goodkind to their list. We mean this literally, having Terry come crawling back is such sweet sweet vengeance. The first book in the 3-book deal will be a new Richard and Kahlan novel, due in early 2011. These things are pretty much like crack and sell themselves. And, given that Terry copy/pastes about 30% of any new novel from his previous work, we might even be able to manage a late 2010 release. Richard and Kahlan are the principle (sic) characters from his previous New York Times bestselling books. We ask that readers construe the word 'book' liberally in this case. The rumors that The Law of Nines is being used as toiled paper in some regions is assuredly not true.

“We are excited to publish Terry Goodkind again,” says Tom Doherty, President and Publisher of Tor Books. “Millions of people delight in the novels of Richard and Kahlan and eagerly await the continuation of their story. How Terry plans on managing that, given how he ended the series, I have no idea. A virtually omnipotent protagonist is just a poor start to mark the beginning of the next series." Twenty five million copies of Goodkind’s 12-book series have been sold worldwide and have been translated into more than 20 languages. A television series adaptation of the novels, titled Legend of the Seeker, produced by ABC Studios and broadcast via syndication, first aired on November 1, 2008 and is now in its second season. We will refrain from any comments as to the actual quality of the series for legal reasons. The Sword of Truth is one of the most successful series ever published in the fantasy field. Crack.

Said Goodkind, “I’m thrilled to be back with Tor to tell more stories of Richard and Kahlan. Admire my beard." Terry also asks readers to ignore the fact that he jumped ship, leaving Tor to try and cast himself as a 'mainstream' author of 'thrillers'. Crawling back, he says, has been a humbling experience for his super-massive ego.

ABOVE IS THE OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE SPLICED FOR FLAVOR WITH MY OWN WITTICISMS (IN RED), OR LACK THEREOF. THIS MEANS THAT NOTHING IN RED IS ACTUALLY IN THE PRESS RELEASE. 

TERRY, IF YOU SPEND AS MUCH TIME GROOMING YOUR BEARD IN THE MORNING AS YOU DO WRITING ACTUAL PLOT, AND NOT PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHICAL TIRADES, I PROMISE TO GIVE YOUR NEXT BOOK AN HONEST SHOT. DON'T LET YOUR DECIDEDLY CRANKY FANS DOWN. NEW SWORD OF TRUTH BOOKS ARE JUST NOT SOMETHING I CAN SAY NO TO.