Books and things!

[thanate]

Today's plan is to alternate between short writing sessions and working on baby quilts (it's 11:30 and I've done one of each so far, so we'll see how that goes...) but meanwhile, have some fiction-related stuff that maybe other people might like to know about:

Books you might already know about:

*If anyone's in the Philadelphia area next Saturday, Lois McMaster Bujold is going to be doing a reading as part of the Ivan-book tour. 2pm at the Barnes & Noble in Willow Grove. I am hoping they won't run out of copies of the book to buy, as I am a bad fan and haven't even *seen* it yet, let alone gotten my own. (there was that baby thing, & that nano thing...) Though I hear that while the contents are worthy, Baen hasn't yet figured out that we buy these books *despite* the terrible cover pictures, not because of them. Oh well. Also debating whether I want anything signed (for the most part, I'm far more interested in the book itself rather than proof of who's touched it), and if so, whether I should bring my much-read paperback of Memory, or Paladin of Souls.

*It's not officially out until December, but Amazon is already shipping paper copies of Martha Wells' The Siren Depths. More cool dragony shape-shifters, and this one reportedly deals with where Moon came from. There will also be four e-format only novellas about the raksura next year, which might be enough to induce me to stop putting off getting an e-reader. We'll see.

From my VP classmates:

*L Blankenship (who blogs about craft-of-writing, if you're interested) has released the first of her Disciple of the Fount series, with the second due out in April. I haven't read it yet (see above, about not getting to anything...) but it comes highly recommended by mutual friends. L describes it as "gritty fantasy romance;" what I know of it thus far includes well-thought-out world building with a peasant-born healer getting caught up in court politics and dangerous travel for diplomatic reasons, and I'm quite anxious to know why the first installment is called "for want of a piglet." E-pub and print options with professional production values, and if any of that sounds vaguely interesting, you can hop on over to the book page and read the first chapter for yourself.

*And as of November 15, blairmacg will be releasing Sword and Chant, for which there's also a sample first chapter up. Again, complex fantasy (and this one's long!) with intense world building and drama and wars and things. Also highly recommended by those who've actually read it. E-only for the moment, but there's been mention of print format eventually.

And for those of you who are e-enabled with an interest in shorter fiction:

*Clarkesworld Magazine could use your subscriptions, as Neil Clarke has found himself suddenly out of his day job. (Judging from conversation Friday night, if he manages to remain solvent this could be a good thing in terms of not dying of ongoing heart issues, but the abrupt timing can't be helpful on that front.) In any case, their stories are free to read online, but for a modest fee you can get nice versions conveniently loaded on your device-of-choice, and support one of the better-run and better-paying short fiction markets out there. Print versions also newly available.

Comments

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the mention!

And I just purchased a Clarksworld subscription, because I'd been meaning to do so anyway...