Book Giveaway: War in Heaven by Gavin Smith (2/9/2013)
It’s been a summer of SF. I spent last week polishing up my half of my second collaboration with SF author Gavin Smith (the first being something we finished earlier in the summer but of which I cannot yet speak). I could say a lot about the pains and pitfalls of collaboration but I think we’re still talking to each other. The up-side is a whole different perspective, imagination and way of writing. I think we did a good job on the one we submitted in early August and that ought to be the hard one since we’re both writing one novel between us. We did that by setting up the structure between, alternating chapters (occasionally bits of chapters) and then swapping them back and forth. That seemed to work out OK. Our other collaboration, Empires, which we started last year but got overtaken by that-about-which-I-cannot-speak, being two separate novels that show the same events from different perspectives, should have been easier. In the end, I’m not sure whether it was or it wasn’t. There are certainly things we could have planned better. Like choreographing the destruction of Docklands before either one of us set down to write it. But we’re there now. I have a submission-ready draft waiting for Gavin’s comments, Gav’s close to finished and so it’s pretty much back to dragons for me in the next few days.
Speaking of dragons, Dragon Queen has a first review from Falcatta Times:
Anyway, none of you came here to hear about that, so on to business. This week’s book giveaway War In Heaven by Gavin.
Usual deal – comment on this post before September 7th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series. This week we’re playing SF Supermarket again, so you need your comment to come up with something to do with SF and the comments have to be in alphabetical order. So for example, A is for Android, B is for Bloody Hell, Lasers Are Not Visible In A Vacuum, etc… You get the picture. If you don’t play the game, your entry is VOID. HAHAHAHAHAAAAA. However, I’ll spice it up a bit this week: Not only do you get to win a copy of War in Heaven, you get a brief cameo appearance in Empires: Extraction. Just be warned that there’s a good chance of being either shot or eaten by aliens.
Anyway, to enter the competition, you have to play the game. You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll count the first two entries – the rest are just for fun and showing off. Extra points for humour and originality and just for once I’ll throw in an Angry Dragons mug if you make me laugh, smirk or otherwise amuse me.
Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far.
September 2nd, 2013 at 11: 33 am
A is for Andromoda
September 2nd, 2013 at 11: 35 am
A, for A.M., the super computer from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
September 2nd, 2013 at 1: 07 pm
B is for Battlestar Galactica, the second series of course ( so say we all)
September 2nd, 2013 at 1: 22 pm
C is for the film Capricorn One (1977)
September 2nd, 2013 at 3: 10 pm
D is for Data, Lt. Commander from Enterprise
September 2nd, 2013 at 3: 12 pm
D is for doesn’t everyone know that lasers are f***ing red! (There’s an easy way to tell this. It’s by the colour of the bloody lasers! Except for the blue and green ones.)
September 2nd, 2013 at 3: 45 pm
E is for Event Horizon, wonderful with a guy holding his eyeballs in his hands while speaking Latin. Honestly, every movie would be improved by that.
September 2nd, 2013 at 4: 22 pm
F is for Farscape! How I miss that show
September 2nd, 2013 at 4: 25 pm
G is for Gavin as in Smith – a bloody good SF writer from what I hear, from the voices in the aether.
September 2nd, 2013 at 4: 34 pm
H is for Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Daisy, Daisy…
September 2nd, 2013 at 8: 56 pm
I is for Intergalactic! As in Beastie Boys…….
September 3rd, 2013 at 10: 11 am
J is for Jabba the Hut. Or Jar Jar Binks. Or, less irritatingly, Jedi. Or perhaps John Williams to underscore a battle between all three!
September 3rd, 2013 at 10: 11 am
*or Hutt!
September 3rd, 2013 at 10: 19 am
K is for K-9, a previous trusty companion of the Doctor!
September 3rd, 2013 at 10: 20 am
K is for Kinvig, the short lived TV SF comedy from Nigel “Quatermass” Kneale
September 3rd, 2013 at 11: 24 am
L is for the Lensman series by EE ‘Doc’ Smith.
September 3rd, 2013 at 11: 24 am
L is for Logan’s Run.
September 3rd, 2013 at 12: 54 pm
M is for the meteors large and small headed toward our planet. They provide SF writers and film makers with such wonderful stories and FX. Sorry about the dinosaurs though.
September 3rd, 2013 at 1: 32 pm
N is for nano second , the amount of time you have to scream and not be heard in the vacuum of space, before you explode!
September 3rd, 2013 at 8: 14 pm
O is for Old Man’s War (John Scalzi)
September 4th, 2013 at 7: 50 am
P is for Positronic brain so those pesky robots can understand the three laws of robotics.
September 4th, 2013 at 11: 58 pm
Q is for, well, Q in StarTrek TNG. Counterpoint to the seriousness that is Jean Luc. But I digress. Q also is for the Quiet of the deep. And for all the Queens, Dragon or otherwise. And for the Quests. Can’t have SF&F without the seeking. Are we there yet?
September 6th, 2013 at 1: 03 pm
R is for Robot
September 6th, 2013 at 9: 48 pm
S is for Star Wars of Course, Spaceship Starfighters Speeding Swiftly through Space. Starting Scraps with Skywalkers Sabre with his sidekick Solo.
September 6th, 2013 at 9: 50 pm
T is for the Terrible Movie Teenages From Outer Space. Shame we cant send them back there heehee.
September 9th, 2013 at 8: 06 am
The Gods of Random choose Clay this week, which is sort of cool because one of people with whom I used to play D&D at uni went on to work on the special effects for Event Horizon.