September 7, 2010
Peter V Brett is coming in to the Voyager evil HQ tomorrow to have lunch with our Cabin Crew, the group of dedicated sf/f fans that wander around the building searching for the next 11-book series. We’ve prepared some questions for Peter, author of The Painted Man and The Desert Spear, and if you have any to add, just post them below and we’ll ask:
- Is it necessary to be bearded if you are a male fantasy author?
- What are your plans once the Demon Cycle series is finished?
- How do you draw a line between your public profile and your private one when you share with fans?
- What did you have for breakfast today?
- Did you know that there are dropbears in Australia?
SAVE PETER FROM THESE QUESTIONS. GIVE US SOME BETTER ONES!
Posted in Peter V Brett | Tagged Demon Cycle, Peter V Brett, The Desert Spear, The Painted Man | 6 Comments »
September 7, 2010
As announced last Friday at Aussiecon IV (the 68th World Science Fiction Convention), Eos Books, a US imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, will be rebranded as Harper Voyager, joining together with the celebrated Voyager imprints in Australia/New Zealand and the UK. The move is anticipated to create a global genre-fiction powerhouse.
‘We are already globally publishing some of the biggest names in science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, and horror, including Raymond E. Feist, Robin Hobb, Kim Harrison, and Sara Douglass,’ said Brian Murray, President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Worldwide. ‘Uniting our sister companies in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia/New Zealand allows readers globally unparalleled access to books and authors. This move enables us to offer authors a strong global publishing platform when signing with HarperCollins — whether the acquiring editor is in New York, Sydney, or London.’
The Voyager/Harper Voyager editorial leaders are: Executive Editor Diana Gill in the US, Editorial Director Emma Coode in the UK (working with Publishing Director Jane Johnson) and Associate Publisher Stephanie Smith in Australia.
Each country has a vibrant, robust list of science fiction and fantasy icons; merging the lists under one imprint will bring readers around the world access to the masters of these fiction genres.
Two authors, Karen Azinger and David Wellington (writing as David Chandler), have recently been signed and are expected to publish with Harper Voyager and Voyager for a worldwide debut.
The Eos imprint will officially change to Harper Voyager starting with the January 2011 hardcover, trade, mass market, e-book, and audio publications.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged WorldCon, AussieCon4, Voyager 15, eos, global voyager | 1 Comment »
September 6, 2010
Check out this excerpt from The Seventh Wave by new Voyager author Paul Garretty … especially if you like darkness and grit!
PRELUDE
The aftertaste of fear.
It’d been the title track from his first platinum album. Back then he didn’t know what the hell it’d meant; he’d just sung what they handed him and sucked up the success. Now its metallic bitterness coated his tongue so thickly he could barely swallow.
He hawked and spat through the limo’s open window.
Damn head cold.
He inhaled and drew power down into his abdomen just like they’d told him. Immediately the cold symptoms subsided.
‘Nearly there, Mr D,’ the driver said over his shoulder.
‘Yeah, right,’ Double D said, wishing he could snort a quick line, but they’d been adamant about that. No drugs. Not even booze and the Club had the chits on him to force the issue.
A million. How the frig had I hocked up a million to them? The last album was supposed to have fixed it, but it had bombed — ‘hype without the spike’ had been the kindest review.
Now he was being sent out to do PPAs (privatepersonal-appearances) like some ‘He used to be …’
What the hell! Who would know if I had a quick heart-starter to get me past this head cold?
Double D squished himself into the corner so the driver couldn’t see what he was doing and pulled a silver hip flask from his inside jacket pocket. Halfway to his mouth his hand froze. Icy tendrils slid beneath his shirt and clawed their way up his back.
No! Not again. How could they know what I’m doing?
How did they know anything?
He mouthed a protective incantation. The snaky coldness paused, hovering, as if it were listening from the hollow space at the back of his neck. When he’d finished the incantation it slid in anyway, spreading throughout his head like spilt black ink, causing him to cry out as the pain blossomed.
He sobbed and threw the flask out the window.
‘All right! It’s gone. It’s gone! Just stop it.’
Read on
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Paul Garretty, The Seventh Wave | Leave a Comment »
September 6, 2010
Sunday morning we bumped into Peter V Brett looking slightly pale outside the dealers room on Level 2. He was preparing for his reading from The Great Bazaar and by all accounts did very well. We gave away some Voyager party bags with the v15 hardbacks inside to some lucky tweeters and passers-by, celebrating both our anniversary and hitting 1000 followers on Twitter! Duncan Lay wandered over on his way to his kaffeeklatsch and said he was enjoying himself and also preparing for a reading later that day. Haven’t heard yet how it was but I’m sure it was fantastic!
Then your correspondent went to a ton of panels: the artist’s paradox with GoH Shaun Tan, Cat Sparks and Nick Stathopoulos was especially interesting. Robert Silverberg’s panel with Peter Ball, Alan Baxter and Keith Stevenson also provided food for thought on the novella form – hard to sell? Hard to write? Growing in popularity? Increasing the number of small press publishers?
After a brief break for lunch it was time to see our own Stephanie Smith, Voyager Publisher, on the Dreaming Again panel led by Jack Dann, with Janeen Webb, Jason Nahrung, Angela Slatter, Richard Harland and Jenny Blackford. Jack was in fine form and asked if everyone else had turned up for a roast Jack panel! 
Then it was a discussion on crowns and monarchies with interesting insights from a whole panel of Voyager authors! Duncan Lay, Jennifer Fallon, Glenda Larke, Fiona Mcintosh with guest appearance by Joel Shepherd, duked it out – and one good point they made is that by settling on a monarchy as your governing system, you can concentrate on telling the actual story.
After this it was off to rm 519 to listen to Mary Victoria read from Tymon’s Flight and -bonus- from Samiha’s Song. Mary read beautifully and had us all under her spell.
We had a lovely Voyager dinner with our authors and then a few of us headed to the Hugos, where Garth Nix was doing a fab job of MCing. We’re all thrilled that Peter Watts won a Hugo for his story in New Space Opera 2 and Peter’s speech thanking Jonathan Strahan, editor of the anthology, was nice. We also enjoyed George R R trying to run off with a Hugo he was presenting and Robert Silverberg’s quips about editors and wombats!
Finally, it was off for one final evening in the Hilton Bar accompanied by Peter V Brett to join Jennifer Fallon and Glenda Larke, Stephanie and HarperCollins account manager and fantasy fan extraordinaire Theresa Anns. Then bed!
Today we’re off to Mary V’s panel at 10 on Writing Strange Lands, and then dropping into Nicole Murphy’s reading, where she tells us she will not be reading from page 310!
Posted in AussieCon4, Awards, Duncan Lay, Fiona McIntosh, George R R Martin, Glenda Larke, Hugos, Jack Dann, Jennifer Fallon, Jonathan Strahan, Kylie Chan, Mary Victoria, Nicole Murphy, Peter V Brett, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Tracey O'Hara, Will Elliott, cons, on writing | Tagged Glenda Larke, Jonathan Strahan, Hugos, Jennifer Fallon, Peter V Brett, Stephanie Smith, Jason Nahrung, Jenny Blackford, Duncan Lay, Mary Victoria, Nicole Murphy, theresa anns | 3 Comments »
September 6, 2010
Are you getting edgy because you’re not at AussieCon? Don’t worry, we’ve got some reading to calm you down . If you ARE at AussieCon, don’t miss the following panel with Voyager star Fiona McIntosh.
Getting edgy: The disreputable protagonist in modern fantasy
While fantasy used to centre around noble and good-hearted heroes, a growing sub-genre of recent years has
celebrated a less savoury breed of protagonist. Knights and wizards-in-training are giving way to thieves, assassins, mercenaries and cutthroats. What is the appeal of this form of anti-hero, and what are its origins? How does changing the protagonist alter the kind of story you are able to tell?
Ellen Kushner, Trudi Canavan, Fiona McIntosh
Monday 1300 Room 204
Not at the panel? Here’s a sneak peek from Kim Falconer’s Road to the Soul, the following up to Path of the Stray. Kim would have been on today’s panel but unfortunately had to return home as she has a bad flu.
Jarrod discovered the source of the haunting call the moment he entered the woods. It wasn’t wind whistling through a hollow canyon or skimming across the mountain lake. It wasn’t the swaying trees or a murder of crows shooting like black arrows into the sky. It was a beautiful young witch with honey red hair. The call came from her.
He watched her walk through the heart of the woods unafraid. Never had Jarrod seen such a contrast — her hair red against the trees. Opposites on the spectrum, it made the tone of the woods seem even more vivid. Hunter green! He’d heard about it in Corsanon. Bards wove it into their songs, those who had travelled here and seen it first-hand, and what they said was true — the hunter green of Vesper would catch you, seduce you, and it did. And so did the young witch.
Read on
Posted in Kim Falconer | Tagged AussieCon4, Kim Falconer, The Spell of Rosette, Quantum Enchantment, Strange Attractors, quantum encryption, Path of the Stray, Road to the Soul | Leave a Comment »
September 5, 2010
Here’s a sneak peek that will thrill Traci Harding fans – a look at Traci’s new book Universe Parallel, which is out later this year.
PRELUDE
ACROSS THE UNIVERSAL DIVIDE
Rest was not essential to the inhabitants of the Otherworld, but they could choose to nap and dream about life on the Earth plane — past, present and future — for the Otherworld was beyond the constraints of time, space and physical reality.
The Lord of the Otherworld, who could frequent either the physical or subtle realms of existence, usually chose to sleep in the realm he ruled, as in his dreams there he could revisit the years he’d spent under his parents’ roof, with all his siblings close at hand. He had only come to appreciate how special and fleeting his childhood had been after his parents had departed this universal scheme to join the ranks of the Grigori — a causal race of beings frequenting a level of awareness beyond even that of the astral realms of the Otherworld. Over a century had passed since his parents’ ascension, and still the Lord mourned their company, counsel and the tight-knit family life they had created for himself and his siblings.
Blissfully snoozing through the memory of one childhood New Year, which the Lord had relived many times in his dreams, his recollection of the event unexpectedly altered.
Read on
IF LINK DOES NOT WORK: COPY AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING INTO YOUR BROWSER:
www.voyageronline.com.au/books/extracts/V15_UNIVERSE_PARALLEL.pdf
Posted in traci harding | Tagged Being of the Field, traci harding, Universe Parallel | Leave a Comment »
September 5, 2010
From Anne Bishop comes a book of four stories set in the world of the Black Jewels trilogy and here’s an excerpt from the first story … where you’ll find Daemon and Lucivar still have a lot to learn about women!
Daemon Sadi, the Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, crossed the bridge that marked the boundary between private property and public land. On one side of the bridge was the drive leading to SaDiablo Hall, his family’s seat; on the other side was the public road leading to the village of Halaway.
Fluffy snow dusted the bottom of his trousers as he walked toward the village in blissful solitude. Of course, he’d had to sneak out of his own home in order to have that solitude, and he recognized that there was something not quite right about the most powerful male in the Realm of Kaeleer sneaking out in order to avoid three snoozing Sceltie puppies. But whether or not he was allowing little bundles of fur to dictate his actions instead of using his rank and power to do as he pleased wasn’t the point. At this moment, here and now, he was alone on a crisp winter morning, and that was the point. No one was whining about having cold paws. No one was complaining that he walked too fast. No one was grumbling because he wouldn’t stop every few feet so interesting smells could be properly sniffed.
And no one was going to sulk because he refused to carry someone with wet fur under his coat and up against his white silk shirt.
Solitude. Bliss. And if his mother had created the gift he’d asked her to make, fun.
Winsol was almost here. Those thirteen days were a celebration of the Darkness–and they were a celebration of Witch, the living myth, dreams made flesh.
Read on.
IF LINK DOES NOT WORK: COPY AND PASTE THIS INTO YOUR BROWSER:
www.voyageronline.com.au/books/extracts/V15_TWILIGHTS_DAWN.pdf
Posted in Anne Bishop | Tagged Anne Bishop, Black Jewels, Daemon Sadi, Twilight's Dawn, Lucivar, Jaenelle Angeline, Saetan | 5 Comments »
September 5, 2010
So, yesterday dawned a bit too bright and early for anyone celebrating Voyager’s 15th birthday and the Ditmars, but as a famous person once said: the con must go on. And so it did. We went to lots of panels, including one on cover art: a dying form? If the images shown by GoH Shaun Tan are any indication, then no, it is not! Was lovely to see Nick Stathopoulos’s cover for Dreaming Down-Under there – and we plan to go to the Dreaming Again again panel at 2pm today.
Around lunchtime we spied a very big queue indeed – no surprises, George was doing a signing. In the end they had to organize a second signing later in the day to give fans a chance to get to the front and the grrm the chance not to get RSI.
We saw Peter V Brett and Cory Doctorow discussing online presence and fan interaction – a great insight into how the author deals with such relationships. We also caught a bevy of Voyager authors talking about the trilogy in fantasy-why is it so common now? A whose choice is it? Fiona Mcintosh ably chaired the panel between Glenda Larke, Trudi Canavan and Russell Kirkpatrick and also forced ‘dettol lollies’ on the unsuspecting audience! It was a great chat and a bit of a prelude to the upcoming Crowns and Swords panel where I suspect Glenda and Fiona will return to the subject of castles 
.
Also spent a bit of time in the Dealers Room talking to Galaxy Bookshop’s Mark Timmony and then bumped into Karen Miller, a lovely surprise!
In the evening, after a foray into Melbourne’s laneways for dinner (successful) we dropped into the Hilton Bar and spied Cory Doctorow, Kim Stanley Robinson and Jason Nahrung, among others. And we also had the pleasure of meeting Jonathan Strahan, one of the best editors around, and co-editor with Jack Dann of Legends of Australian Fantasy.
And then, finally, it was time for zzzzzzzz.
Posted in AussieCon4, Cory Doctorow, Fiona McIntosh, George R R Martin, Glenda Larke, Jonathan Strahan, Karen Miller, Kim Stanley Robinson, Peter V Brett, Russell Kirkpatrick, Voyager 15, cons | Tagged Glenda Larke, Jonathan Strahan, Fiona McIntosh, Russell Kirkpatrick, Cory Doctorow, George R R Martin, Jason Nahrung, Trudi Canavan, Kim Stanley Robinson | 1 Comment »
September 5, 2010
Don’t fret if you love great fantasy but you’re not at AussieCon4. Here’s a sneak peek at Perth-based author Bevan McGuiness’s upcoming book, the first in the Eleven Kingdoms trilogy. Bevan is also the author of the Triumvirate trilogy, which began with The Awakening.
He stopped digging.
The only sound he heard was his own laboured breathing; his panting breath disturbed the dirt in front of his face. The darkness was total — he could not see his own hands, or the blood he knew was welling from his torn nails and scraped knuckles. He lifted his head slightly, bumping on the top of the tunnel.
There it was again — that sound. With an effort, he controlled his breathing, trying to listen for whatever it was he’d heard twice now. His heart thumped in his chest, but he managed to quieten its frantic pace with a calming exercise he’d learned. In the silence, he listened again.
Dripping. Was it water? A moment’s fear swept over him. Where was he? Had he gone too far? Was there a river or a lake nearby? His fingers gripped the dirt, feeling the moistness. Had he been wrong to assume the moisture was his blood? In the dark, with the earth all around him, he felt the panic start to take hold. He became aware of the tiny hole he was in, how far beneath the surface he was, how far away from his dank — but safe — cell. Fear shifted to unreason, unreason moved towards panic, and panic looked at terror.
It took a great effort, but he wrested control of his mind and body back from an abyss of terror. Down there he saw his own death awaiting him.
Read on.
Posted in Bevan McGuiness | Tagged Bevan McGuiness, Way of Purity, Triumvirate, The Awakening, Slave of Sondelle | Leave a Comment »
September 4, 2010
Catch up with Jennifer Fallon all weekend at AussieCon4.If you can’t make it down, here’s a sneak peek at Jennifer’s upcoming new book, first one in new series The Riftrunners!
‘It shouldn’t be so easy to take an innocent life.’ Amergin cast back his mind, trying to pinpoint the moment in time when taking a life had moved from being a moral dilemma to a political necessity.
‘We’re not going to kill them. We’re going to divide them,’ Marcroy Tarth said. ‘Send one of them away. Somewhere he’ll never be found. Or at least, not found until the Undivided can be replaced with something less dangerous.’ Then he added with a thoughtful frown. ‘We’ll need to do it somewhere there are no witnesses.’
The Druid stared at the sídhe for a long moment. His sharp features were inhumanly pretty; so familiar and yet so alien, his long, straight blond hair, tucked behind his sharply pointed ears, tinged blue by the cave’s magical light. Despite his apparent youth, he seemed even more sinister than usual in the flickering Faerie glow illuminating the icy grotto where this perilous rendezvous was taking place.
Amergin shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Marcroy …’
‘Very well,’ the sídhe lord said with a shrug. ‘I will report back to the Brethren with your answer. I’m sure when I tell them I was unable to find a bloodless way to remove the threat of the Undivided twins destined to destroy our kind, they’ll understand. I mean,’ he added with a sardonic smile, ‘you know how forgiving and understanding the sídhe elders can be.’
‘I’m not trying to anger the Brethren,’ Amergin said, feeling trapped. ‘And you know I would never do anything to endanger your people. But you must understand… I am a Druid. I am sworn to protect my people. If anyone should discover …’
Marcroy smiled patronisingly, a smile made worse by the fact the sídhe lord looked like a lad and
not a creature who’d lived longer than Amergin cared to contemplate. ‘The whole purpose of opening the rift without witnesses, brother, would be to prevent discovery, would it not?’
‘You’re asking me to betray my own race.’
‘On the contrary. I am offering you a chance to save your race. The Brethren have spoken. They have seen what will happen in other realms, where RónánDarragh have grown to manhood, united. They will not permit it to happen in our reality.’
Amergin was shocked by what Marcroy seemed to be suggesting. ‘Are you telling me the Brethren would kill the boys, themselves?’
‘They can’t,’ Marcroy said. ‘You know that. Orlagh’s treaty with your kind protecting the Undivided binds all the sídhe races. But there are ways around such oaths.’
Read on
IF LINK DOES NOT WORK, COPY AND PASTE THIS INTO YOUR BROWSER: www.voyageronline.com.au/books/extracts/V15_UNDIVIDED.pdf
Posted in Jennifer Fallon | Tagged Jennifer Fallon, Riftrunners, The Undivided | 1 Comment »
