Out this week: The Shadowmage Trilogy
16-05-2012
The Shadowmage Trilogy
by Matthew Sprange
OUT THIS WEEK!
Forced onto the streets of Turnitia after the army destroys his home and murders his parents, Lucius Kane becomes an excellent thief, gaining notoriety in his new profession. Soon drawn into a war between rival thieves guilds, Kane fights for friends and profit but finds himself pulled into the darker and more mysterious world of the Shadowmage. Mercenary practitioners who combine stealth with magic, Shadowmages make the best scouts, infiltrators, spies ... and assassins!
This stunning fantasy features a never before seen final part of the Shadowmage Trilogy, completing the saga of Lucius Kane.
Mr Sprange has a solid history in roleplaying design as well as writing over two dozen gaming books, including the Babylon 5, Judge Dredd, and Starship Troopers games, and has won two Origins Awards for his work in miniature wargames.
We asked him about fantasy worlds, finding time to write, and reading books on wildlife...
We asked him about fantasy worlds, finding time to write, and reading books on wildlife...
* Tell us a bit about The Shadowmage Trilogy and why people should buy it.
The Shadowmage Trilogy charts the return of one of Kerberos' 'legacy' characters to the free city of Turnitia, Lucias Kane. He is a rogue, a mercenary, really he is a bum with a sword. However, he is also a Shadowmage, someone who combines magic with stealth. He gets drawn first into one of the thieves' guilds of the city, and then the small group of Shadowmages who are beginning to return after being persecuted some years before.
The first book concentrates on the Thieves' War as rival guilds clash, but the backstory shows Lucius developing his Shadowmage skills. As the trilogy unfolds, his thieves' guild finds itself up against the Vos Empire, a tyrannical state that invades Turnitia, while lucius himself finds his loyalties split between the thieves and the Shadowmages.
* With three books set in the same world, how did things evolve over time?
Well, the first book really sets the scene, putting Lucius at the centre of several struggles between thieves, Shadowmages and two two rival empires of the world (Vos and Pontaine). After that, it was really just a case of thinking 'how can I make life more difficult for Lucius?' So, one of his fellow Shadowmages really goes off the deep end (and ends up destroying a fair portion of the city), a preacher from one of the empires makes it his personal mission to finish Lucius off and, to top it all, there is a rogue artefact from the time of the Older Races that Lucius wants no part of and yet cannot ignore.
* What are the elements that make a fantasy series work well?
Honestly, I think they are the same things that make any story, of any genre work well - conflict, drama, the ordinary man doing extraordinary things, or the extraordinary man affected by ordinary things. With fantasy, however, you have a much bigger canvas to work on.
* Tell us a bit about your writing routine.
I wish I had one! I try to set aside 'writing blocks' of 4-5 hours at a time, during which I will try to complete a whole chapter. That does not always work for long chapters, of course, so sometimes it gets split. As for when I schedule this writing time - whenever 4-5 free hours pop up!
* What are your five favourite novels?
Oh, now you are asking... In no particular order, I would have to say Starship Troopers, Frank Herbert's Dune sequence, and Bernard Cornwell's Arthur books. And I am going to hope you don't spot that is actually 10 books!
* What advice would you give to new writers hoping to break into the field?
Read. A lot. And don't confine yourself to your favourite genre. If you want to write science-fiction, read action thrillers, courtroom dramas, epic verse. Read non-fiction, and don't confine yourself to science-fiction related topics - read histories, biographies, books on wildlife, astronomy, engineering. You can use ALL of it. And once you get into the habit of constant reading, don't forget to write. Sounds obvious, but it is very easy to get caught up in the 'real world' and forget that you always wanted to be a writer.
The Shadowmage Trilogy is available now in the UK and Ireland, and in North America.
JUNIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER, £16-18,000 p.a.
REBELLION, OXFORD.
Rebellion publishes two fiction imprints, Solaris and Abaddon Books, along with 2000 AD, encompassing the weekly comic 2000 AD, the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine and 2000 AD Graphic Novels.
We are seeking a full-time junior graphic designer to join our busy publishing department in Oxford. The successful candidate will have a graphic design qualification, a good knowledge of Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and familiarity with Quark and Adobe Illustrator.
Duties will include: flowing in text and laying out interior pages for novels; prepping comic strip pages for print; scanning/colour correction and basic image manipulation; making corrections and final pdfs; designing advertisements; assembling the files for graphic novels. The successful candidate will be required to develop a broad knowledge of our archive to source and choose images for external licensees and others. Experience of design for websites and the internet will be useful.
There will be scope to develop this design role, however this position is not a platform for submitting or producing artwork for Rebellion-published comics and graphic novels.
To apply please send your CV and any available graphic design work portfolio link or hobby work to vacancies@rebellion.co.uk
Rebellion can only consider applicants who can legally work in the UK.
Double Dead:
Bad Blood
by Chuck Wendig
OUT NOW!
£2.99 (UK) $3.99 (US & CAN)
An exclusive ebook novella
But just out in the Bay in the abandoned fortress prison of Alcatraz, a ketamine-snorting cult of New age weirdoes who eat the flesh of the zombie as some kind of grotesque communion bring a new threat to Coburn’s continuing existence – super zombies!
After his rip-roaring debut novel, Double Dead, the inimitable Wendig has returned to his world turned upside by the zombie apocalypse, in which a lone vampire finds himself protecting a terrified remnant of mankind. Or ‘lunch’, as he prefers to think of them.
Irreverent, bloody, and darkly humorous, Bad Blood goes for the throat from the first sentence and is another exclusive ebook novella from Abaddon Books.
“…not the standard zombie fare; the human and vampire elements really make this one worth seeking out.”
– British Fantasy Society on Double Dead
Bad Blood is available now in the UK and North America.
What if he had only one target, but an army between him and it?
Sniper Elite V2: Target Hitler is an exclusive ebook novella from Rebellion’s publishing imprint Abaddon Books that ties in to the third-person World War Two shooter that launched today from Rebellion and 505 Games.
Written by novelist and the Sniper Elite V2 game writer Scott K. Andrews, the thrilling book ties into the game’s pre-order downloadable content offer, in which players have one chance to kill the leader of the Third Reich before he escapes the ruins of Berlin.
The title is being published 4th May and will be available for Kindle in the UK and North America, Nook, Kobo, and through all major e-retailers, as well as the Rebellion online store.
Re-writing the past in fiction is one of the most popular sub-genres of recent years, with every corner of history explored with a cutting ‘what if?’. Target: Hitler focuses on one of the great debates of modern times - should the Allies have assassinated Adolf Hitler?
Everyone knows the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days – cornered, insane, killing himself in despair as Berlin burned above him.
But this story is based solely on the eyewitness accounts of the people who shared the bunker with him – the people most loyal to the Führer; the people most likely to lie to protect him. The world’s foremost Nazi hunter has never believed the official account; he has spent his life chasing a phantom, convinced that Hitler escaped the bunker.
Now, as he lies on his deathbed, he receives a mysterious visitor; a man who claims to know the true story of Hitler’s death; a man named Karl Fairburn. Is he just another conspiracy fantasist, or could his tale possibly be true…?
Scott K. Andrews has written three novels for Abaddon – soon to be collected as the School’s Out Forever omnibus in September – as well as episode guides, magazine articles, film and book reviews, comics, and audio plays for Big Finish.
For more information on the #1 selling game, go to www.sniperelitev2.com
Time’s Arrow:
Black Swan
by Jonathan Green
Available from Amazon Kindle Store and iTunes from Monday 7th May
An exclusive ebook release and an intriguing publishing experiment
The caper is afoot, but where it leads only YOU decide! The latest installment of the exciting new novel from Abaddon, Pax Britannia: Time’s Arrow, is coming!
In a unique publishing experiment, readers themselves get to decide on the fate of our hero Ulysses and where the Time’s Arrow story will take them.
Our hero Ulysses Quicksilver – wanted by the French Police for murder – battles his way across Paris, from the Louvre to Notre Dame, in order to prove his innocence. Readers have been voting online on where they want the story to go and they overwhelmingly voted for Ulysses to go in search of the mysterious "M. Lumière”.
Time’s Arrow puts the reader in charge and merges the best of print and online. Each instalment is published as an ebook with readers able to vote on where THEY want the story to go at the end of each episode. The first installment, Red Handed, was published in October and once all three instalments have been published, they will be bound together into a print edition.
“Lashings of derring-do, sprinkled with just the right amount of plot development to keep a reader hungry for more.”
– The Eloquent Page on Time’s Arrow: Red Handed
Welcome to a new world...
02-05-2012
Weirdspace:
The Devil’s Nebula
by Eric Brown
Launches 29th May (US and Canada) and 21st June (UK)
£7.99 (UK) ISBN 978-1-78108-022-1
$7.99/$10.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-78108-023-8
Also available as an ebook
Starship Captain Ed Carew and his small ragtag crew are smugglers and ne’er-do-wells who regularly thumb their noses at the Expansion, the vast human hegemony encompassing thousands of worlds.
Well, until they’re caught.
They face a simple choice – work for the Expansion or face death.
So they must travel through the territory of the inscrutably alien Vetch in pursuit of a human vessel that set off for the strange worlds of the Devil’s Nebula one hundred years ago. Why are the Expansion authorities so eager to track down the ship and can Carew’s crew survive the journey through Vetch territory into the weird space beyond?
Renowned SF author Eric Brown creates a brand new shared universe for Abaddon, a cosmos-spanning theatre full of looming threat, intergalactic politics, intriguing characters, sinister worlds, and taught action.
“Eric Brown spins a terrific yarn.”
– SFX on Guardians of the Phoenix
Coburn is coming...
30-04-2012
Our April, May, June and September releases. Beautiful, no?
Well, we're giving you the FIRST CHAPTER absolutely and totally free ... and you can read it right here!
That's right, words direct from Al Ewing's brain to your eyes.
Don't tell us we don't treat you nice, eh?
Pax Omega is out this week in the UK and Ireland, and next week in North America.
Pax Omega is his third and latest tome for our Pax Britannia series - the world's longest-running series of Steampunk novels.
This epic novel, which spans all of time, features Ewing's anti-hero El Sombra and is a rollicking mega-bite of meaty goodness...
We caught up with Al to discuss the universe of Pax Omega, the vast enemy of writing that is the internet, and the mating rituals of dust mites...
* What were the particular challenges you faced in writing for an established universe?
It's an established universe, which means it's somebody else's universe, which means I have to find spaces in it that haven't been colonised and use them. Fortunately, Jon Green left me plenty to work with - I've been allowed to pretty much run amok in the Americas - and when I had the realisation that the past and future of his world was open to me to play with as well - within reason - it meant that I could address a question that's been bothering me from the start: what is Steampunk? And how far can you push it before it becomes something else?
* Tell us a bit about Pax Omega and why people should buy it.
It's the big finish of the story I've been telling since I started writing novels. It's got El Sombra's final battle with Hitler in it, for a start, and it's not going to be what you expect. It ranges from prehistoric Earth to the year One Million AD, and tells a coherent story despite that. I can honestly say that in my personal opinion this is the best book I've ever written, so if you already enjoy my stuff I think you'll be in for a good time.
* Tell us a bit about your writing routine.
I wish there was a routine! If I had a routine I could stick to it'd solve all my problems. I think 'having a routine' is number one on the lists of Things To Do To Be A Real Writer that people put up on the internet all the time. Basically, I load up on coffee or sugar-water and sit down and bang at the keys until life gets in the way. Life's been getting in the way a lot lately, to the extent that I feel I need to reevaluate my whole way of working in order to cope with it. It's like time's sped up while I wasn't looking, which probably means that I need to pay a lot more attention to those lists.
* What are your five favourite novels?
Off the top of my head and subject to change:
The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K Dick
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Breakfast Of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut
Breakout, by Richard Stark
The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, Douglas Adams
Although I could fill the whole list with Dick (fnarr) or Vonnegut or Stark, quite frankly.
* What advice would you give to new writers hoping to break into the field?
There is no one way to break into the field. Do what you do best, and hopefully over time people will notice. Be yourself. Try not to be a bad person. If you are a bad person, try to improve. Start small, and finish what you start. Synchonicities are your friend. Don't depend on them, but don't ignore them either. I'm making a list, so I'll stop.
* Pax Omega spans the length of the life of the universe – what could possibly be more epic?
At this level, the market demands non-linear value. We take it down to a novel about a single exchange of pheromones between two dust mites living in a carpet in Spokane. That one will probably take me several years to write.
Pax Omega is out this week in the UK and Ireland, and next week in North America.
