As the year turns, Cheryl and I have decided to offer The Green Man’s Heir for sale at £0.99, US$0.99 and €0.99 until 31st December, and this is not just limited to Kindle UK like the summer offer, but via Kobo, Google, B&N and Amazon US as well. So if you’ve been thinking about reading it – or recommending it – now’s an excellent time.

There’s a full roster of purchase links here or head for your preferred ebook retailer.

In other exciting news, there will be an audiobook version available from 24th January 2019. To preorder from Amazon UK click here.

I’m really thrilled about this as it’ll be my first ever audiobook! Yes, really. Twenty years ago, when I started out and audiobooks were still tied to physical media like cassettes and later CDs, the sales thresholds for a title to qualify were sky-high. Now that we have digital downloads however, it’s a whole different ball game.

Advising on what I was looking for in a narrator’s voice was a completely new challenge for me, as was listening to sample readings and seeing which voice and narrative style was the best fit. I don’t listen to audiobooks myself, so I enlisted my partially-sighted Dad (for whom audiobooks are invaluable) and my musician son, who deals with all sorts of audio material and listens to things in a very different way to me, if that makes any sense at all.

It’s going to be fascinating to see what audiobook fans make of it.

Since this now seems to be a thing to do, and if you’re pondering award nominations, here’s my roster of 2018 publications, for your consideration.

Or if that’s not something you do, you might like some book-buying ideas for yourself or others.

First and foremost, The Green Man’s Heir is my first contemporary fantasy novel that’s proved very popular, to my delight alongside that of Cheryl Morgan of Wizard’s Tower Press, Toby Selwyn as invaluable, eagle-eyed editor, and Ben Baldwin whose artwork is award-worthy in its own right.

In short fiction, I contributed to Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar, from ZNB LLC. I had great fun writing ‘Wanderlust’, which is one of my occasional forays into SF territory, as it’s set on Mars a few hundred years from now.

Most recently, I wrote ‘The Unforeseen Path’, for The Scent of Tears (Tales of the Apt), published by Newcon Press, and the fourth in their novella series continuing Adrian Tchaikovsky’s stories set in the realms of the Apt. I was very honoured to be invited to write a short story set in this fascinating world of his creation, and decided to look more closely at the Ant-kinden. Telepathy in SF&F has always fascinated me, as it’s very much a two-edged sword, especially when Wasp-kinden attack…

I’ve got a fair bit of travelling ahead of me, which means lots of new friends to meet, and plenty of opportunities for folk to say hello.

19th – 21st October, I’ll be at Octocon in Dublin.

My prospective panels will be as follows:

‘Being Human’ and discussing how far can individuals be changed (mutants, cyborgs etc) before they can no longer be considered human.

‘Hand to Hand Combat’, discussing among other things the fantasy of the One Heroic Punch.

Being a Wikipedia Editor

‘Finding the Write Balance’, discussing what we authors do to complement and supplement our writing lives.

27th October, I’ll be at Bristolcon.

I’m running my workshop on Making Every Word Count, on the use of detail in your fiction. For those wondering if they’ve already attended this elsewhere, it’s ‘The Misadventures of Sally’. If that means nothing to you, and you’re keen to take part, sign up via the Bristolcon website.

I’ll also be on a panel discussing ‘Where have all the thin books gone?’ Given the stacks currently in my living room, I think I have at least one answer…

1st – 4th November, I’ll be at the World Fantasy Convention, Baltimore USA.

I’m there first and foremost in my capacity as a judge for this year’s World Fantasy Awards, but I’ll naturally be happy to chat about anything and everything SFFH related.

it’s going to be a busy few weeks 🙂

I’m updating this post to say a huge thank you to everyone who boosted the signal about that deal, and to all those who have rated and/or reviewed The Green Man’s Heir on Amazon and Goodreads before the Daily Deal and subsequently.

All of this support has really helped raise the book’s profile and increased sales – to the point where for a dozen or so frankly implausible hours I was outselling J K Rowling …

It’s a good thing I’ve been working in the book trade long enough to keep this all in proportion.

What this does mean is that a sequel is now definitely planned 🙂

**************************************************************************

If you’ve been thinking about reading The Green Man’s Heir, but the book budget just hasn’t been there, now’s your chance!

It’s a Kindle Daily Deal – today only in the UK – and you can buy it for 99p. Click here.

Amazon US are matching that price so American readers can grab it for $1.26.

Go for it!

And all signal boosting will be very much appreciated 🙂

All fans of ZNB’s fabulous anthologies will be thrilled to learn that this year’s three wonderful projects will now be released on June 15th rather than August as originally scheduled 🙂

For those of you in the US, this means copies will be for sale at the various summer conventions where ZNB are in the Dealers Room (or equivalent), so do check in with them on social media, to find out where they’ll be.

Kickstarter supporters will receive their copies in customary fashion, and everyone else can pre-order the ebooks online, and the trade paperback via ZNB’s online store.

Wondering what on earth I’m on about? Here’s what’s on offer for your reading pleasure –

Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar:

For thousands of years the immortal Gilgamesh has presided over the legendary Ur-Bar, witnessing history unfold from within its walls. Some days it is a rural tavern, others a fashionable wine shop. It may appear as a hidden speakeasy or take on the form of your neighborhood local. For most patrons it is simply a place to quench their thirst, but for a rare few the Ur-Bar is where they will meet their destiny.

Join R.K. Nickel, Rachel Atwood, Kari Sperring, Jean Marie Ward, Gini Koch, Jacey Bedford, William Leisner, Garth Nix, Diana Pharaoh Francis, David Keener, Mike Marcus, Kristine Smith, Aaron M. Roth, and Juliet E. McKenna as they recount all new tales from the Ur-Bar. From humor to horror, from the Roman Empire to Martian Colonies, there’s something to please everyone. Just remember to beware when the mysterious bartender offers you the house special …

Preorder SECOND ROUND here:
Trade Paperback
Kindle US
Kindle UK
Nook
Kickstarter Edition (limited)

The Razor’s Edge:

One man’s insurgent is another man’s freedom fighter…

From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to The Hunger Games, everyone enjoys a good rebellion. There is something compelling about a group (or individual) who throws caution to the wind and rises up in armed defiance against oppression, tyranny, religion, the government—you name it. No matter the cause, or how small the chance, it’s the courage to fight against overwhelming odds that grabs our hearts and has us pumping our fists in the air.

Win or lose, it’s the righteous struggle we cherish, and those who take up arms for a cause must walk The Razor’s Edge between liberator and extremist. With stories by Blake Jessop, William C. Dietz, D.B. Jackson, Gerald Brandt, Sharon P. Goza, Walter H. Hunt, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Kay Kenyon, Steve Perry, Seanan McGuire, Christopher Allenby, Chris Kennedy, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Alex Gideon, Brian Hugenbruch, and Y.M. Pang.

Preorder THE RAZOR’S EDGE here:

Trade Paperback
Kindle US
Kindle UK
Nook
Kickstarter Edition (limited)

Guilds & Glaives

Stop right there!

If you like your fantasy filled with fellowships and noble quests, this anthology is not for you. And if you love lengthy tales of politics and power, then it won’t be to your taste either. But if you like a little intimacy with your evil, and your vengeance short and sweet, with perhaps a pinch of silliness in the witchcraft, then these fourteen delicious sweetmeats of sword and sorcery will prove right up your alley. And it will be a dank, twisting, fetid alley, too.

In this book you will find no high elves (only low), no politics (unless assassination is involved), and certainly no nobility. Join Lawrence Harding, Howard Andrew Jones, Esther Friesner, Jenna Rhodes, Gini Koch, Violette Malan, Leah Webber, David Farland, R.K. Nickel, Ashley McConnell, D.B. Jackson, James Enge, Jason Palmatier, and Amelia Sirina as they explore the perilous streets and clashing blades found in GUILDS & GLAIVES.

Preorder GUILDS & GLAIVES here:

Trade Paperback
Kindle US
Kindle UK
Nook
Kickstarter Edition (limited)

This August/September will see SECOND ROUND: A RETURN TO THE UR-BAR, one of three new anthologies from Zombies Need Brains. As with all ZNB’s anthologies, you’ll find stories by established and best-selling authors alongside new authors who’ve impressed ZNB’s eagle-eyed editors.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Ur-Bar, it’s a time-traveling hostelry where patrons are served by Gilgamesh. The Assyrians invented beer, after all…

(If you’re already intrigued, you can read the first anthology AFTER HOURS: TALES FROM THE UR-BAR, available from DAW Books in mass market paperback and ebook – Amazon US – Amazon UK)

The stories in this new collection are –

“Honorbound” by Russ Nickel

“Forest Law, Wild and True” by Phyllis Irene Radford

“The Wizard King” by Kari Sperring

“A Favor for Lord Bai” by Jean Marie Ward

“A Lawman, an Outlaw, and a Gambler Walk Into a Bar …” by Gini Koch (writing as A.E. Stanton)

“Make Me Immortal With a Kiss” by Jacey Bedford

“Bound By Mortal Chains No More” by William Leisner

“Welcome to the Jungle Bar” by Garth Nix

“But If You Try Sometimes” by Diana Pharaoh Francis

“The Whispering Voice” by David Keener

“Ale for Humanity” by Mike Marcus

“West Side Ghost Story” by Kristine Smith

“Thievery Bar None” by Aaron M. Roth

“Wanderlust” by Juliet E McKenna (…in which we go to Mars…)

Personally, I can’t wait 🙂 If you want to guarantee you’ll be reading these stories as soon as possible, remember this anthology and the year’s two other projects can be ordered direct in advance from ZNB.

Meantime, we can enjoy the fabulous cover art by Justin Adams of Varia Studios.

I’ll be off to Harrogate on Friday morning, to spend the weekend at Follycon aka this year’s Eastercon, where my programme items are interestingly varied and where I’ll also have plenty of time to chat and enjoy the programe myself, so that’s a win-win. If you’d like to say hello, feel free.

Edited to add – I can now confirm paperback copies of The Green Man’s Heir will be for sale in the Dealers Room 🙂 If you’d like me to sign one, or any other book I’ve written (however well read) I’ll be happy to obliged.

I’ll be at the BSFA Awards on Saturday evening, appreciating the honour of being shortlisted for the Non-Fiction Award. Incidentally, for those who are interested, there’s an excerpt from my paper on ‘The Myth of Meritocracy’, discussing gender-related barriers and associated issues in SF&F writing and publishing in the current edition of Books from Scotland, since Luna Press who published that collection of essays are Edinburgh based.

On Sunday morning at 11 am, I’ll be running a masterclass in SF criticism, looking at ‘The Moon Over Red Trees’ by Aliette de Bodard. It’s an excellent story with plenty of layers so there’s lots to discuss. If you’d like to participate, sign up at Registration, where hard copies of the story will be available. You can also read it online here.

On Sunday evening, at 6 pm I’m part of Follycon Fast Forward. This takes as its premise “all the best Eastercons fit into an hour” and offers entirely serious compressed programme items, including the whole of The Empire Strikes Back. Intrigued? I know I am…

On Monday afternoon, at 3 pm, I’m discussing Genre Economics, specifically the role that economics plays, or so frequently doesn’t, in SF&Fantasy. We’ll discuss the implications of not including economics in plots and world-building, and hopefully find some examples of books and screenplays etc actively benefiting from an understanding of economic principles, and how this can be done without boring everyone rigid with explanations of post-neo-classical endogenous growth theory.

At some point, I’ll be in the Games Room, as the Husband and I have just spent this past weekend making up two sets of Suffragetto! The board game which sees martial arts trained suffragists taking on the police in the fight for votes for women. You can find out more about all this here, at the Suffrajitsu website.

Purchase links – ebook edition
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Barnes & Noble – Nook (US only)
Google Play
Kobo

The paper edition is also available, though be prepared for the unaccountable delays that afflict small press books from Amazon that aren’t actually published through them. You should be able to order it from any bookstore and the ISBN is 978-1-908039-69-9. Do remember that ordering physical copies through actual bookshops does encourage them to stock small press books.

Provided we can sort out the logistics, there will be copies available for sale at Follycon, the UK Eastercon 2018. For other sales and availability information, see Wizard’s Tower Press.

In some ways, this book is very different from my previous novels. As I’ve learned from my own experience, and through advice from countless eminent authors, the best way to grow and develop as a novelist is to continually challenge yourself with something new. In other ways, it reflects many of the same interests as my previous writing, even if they’re examined from new angles here. The story also stems from the broad scope of my reading which has always gone well beyond epic, secondary world fantasy, across the whole spectrum of speculative fiction and into thriller, crime and mystery novels.

This is a modern fantasy, set in the readily identifiable Peak District in England, although the towns and villages in this story are all invented. It’s an area I know well, and love, thanks to frequent childhood holidays with relatives living in Chesterfield, and subsequent visits with my own family. The area has a fascinating history reflecting the centuries of change that rural communities have experienced, with impacts that are still being felt, as I know well from living in the Cotswolds. The Peak District also has a wealth of local myths and legends, like so much of the English countryside. I’ve always drawn on myth and history in my writing, so using these sources as the foundation for a story was familiar territory.

Setting events in the everyday world was a wholly new challenge however. I soon realised I had to factor in everything and anything from the Internet and modern media to police procedure and the economics of the contemporary English countryside. Every invented name and place had to be googled, to avoid inadvertent libel or misrepresentation.

Modern, urban fantasy so often explores the interaction of mythical beings with contemporary towns and cities. Since so many excellent writers have already done that, I was drawn to exploring the challenges for a modern mortal human encountering rural mythical creatures and their very different, deep rooted concerns. Meantime, he still has to deal with the everyday demands of work, money and relationships, romantic and otherwise. So in that sense, this story is like my previous novels where I’ve explored the impact and demands of classic high heroic events on ordinary people and their lives rather than focusing on rulers and princes.

On the other hand, exploring the themes and conventions of urban fantasy was a whole new challenge for me, including but by no means limited to surrounding a human man with powerful, sensual female mythical beings, as an alternative to writing about a modern woman interacting with super-masculine supernaturals. Along the way I realised I was reflecting on various aspects of modern ideas of masculinity.

I hope that new readers and existing fans of my work alike will find this a satisfying and exciting read.

I am very pleased and honoured to be shortlisted for this year’s BSFA Non-fiction Award, for my paper on gender related issues and barriers in SF&F writing careers “The Myth of Meritocracy and the Reality of the Leaky Pipe and Other Obstacles in Science Fiction & Fantasy”.

You can find the full shortlists here, for Best Novel, Best Short Fiction, Best Non-fiction and Best Artwork. As you will see, I am shortlisted alongside an array of very fine writers in all these categories, and make sure to check out these talented artists’ work too.

Yes, of course I’d like to win, but it really isn’t just a platitude to say that it’s genuinely an honour to be nominated 🙂

What else have I been doing lately, since I’m self-evidently not doing much blogging? Well, we’ve been getting The Green Man’s Heir ready for publication, and that’ll be happening soon. I’m also busy with a couple of other projects that are still in the sufficiently early stages that it’s not really the right time to be talking about them. Apologies for vagueblogging there.

I’m also doing an inordinate quantity of reading for the World Fantasy Awards, and that’s pretty much the thing that’s stopping me blogging most of all, and not just for lack of time. There are all sorts of posts I could write, exploring ideas sparked by all this reading, but that would be pretty much impossible to do without people identifying the books I was referencing, however obliquely. It would be horribly unfair to raise Author A’s hopes – because many excellent books will not win – as it would be to leave Author B wondering ‘why no mention of my lovely book?’ – because their novel is still on the ‘Pending’ pile, or I simply haven’t chosen it to illustrate a particular point.

I can certainly say I am reading some excellent books, novellas and short stories, and getting an unparalleled overview of the range and strength in depth of speculative fiction at the moment.

This morning’s very gratifying news is the inclusion of my paper on gender related issues and barriers in SF&F writing careers on the long list of nominations for the British Science Fiction Association’s Non-fiction award.

The full lists of nominations in all categories, and other details, can be found here.

For more on the paper itself, “The Myth of Meritocracy and the Reality of the Leaky Pipe and Other Obstacles in Science Fiction & Fantasy” click here.

All told, Luna Press who published this paper in their collection ” Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction” have ten authors nominated across the fiction and non-fiction categories. For a small press in its third year of publishing that’s a commendable achievement!