It’s been a long time since I’ve done a book giveaway or indeed said much at all here. November was eaten by NaNoWriMo and December was eaten by The Silver Kings and copy-editing The Splintered Gods and editing Empires and and and . . . and mostly by the looming spectre of having to go back to having a day-job. But that’s all behind now. The Silver Kings is sitting at about 120k words and will grow to about 220k. The tentative schedule for 2014 is this:

March: Sekkrit project comes out. I think. Who can say? I have no idea. I haven’t seen the proofs yet so who knows…

April: Dragon Queen comes out in mass-market paperback and you’re ALL GOING TO BUY IT, RIGHT?

June: The Splintered Gods comes out and The Silver Kings is supposed to be delivered

August: Sometime around here the novella Bulldog Drummond: Dead Man’s Gate might happen.

November: The Royalist comes out. Maybe Empires comes out. Who can say…?

So this week’s freebie is Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins which I still think is awesome and yes, i know I’ve already given it a couple of airings on the blog but it deserves another. If you haven’t heard me say it before, this is a wonderfully atmospheric espinonagey politically thrillery thing but what really sets it apart is the setting that feels so like an alternate inter-war Russia that you don’t really notice that it never actually says so and yet has giants, space-angels (I think), sentient rain and sentient forests. And it’s gloomy and broody and rains all the time and I like that sort of thing. Something Graham Greene might have written except after the first draft he got smacked round the head by a sentient walking hut and it was rewritten in a Siberian forest by Baba Yaga. There’s a bit of an undercurrent of quantum uncertainty and the overlapping of many worlds too. And then just when you’re really getting into it, some bastard (and I think I have to point a finger at the author here) shows up with a garotte and practically executes the novel mid-sentence, calls that an ending and we all have to wait until Spring next year for the next installment. Nevertheless, this is SF that sits beside Dune for me. It was wonderful. You can visit Peter’s site here.

Usual deal – comment on this post before February 3rd  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. No game this week since it’s the first time back for a while, simply comment to enter.

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. Recent winners, I have cleared my backlog – they’re all in the post!

Yargh! Ugrosh smash secondary school selection system. Horrible horrible. Local selective school for geniuses: won’t get in. Distant selective school for almost-geniuses: too far away. Local good comprehensive: Not in catchment area. Local not-so-good comprehensive actually the only straightforward option. WHY DO YOU GIVE ME THIS ILLUSION OF CHOICE? RAGEMONKEY FURRYCHIMP KICKHOLEINTHEUNIVERSE NYAAARRRGH!!!!

Yes, yet another week in which not a lot got done. My second Bulldog Drummond novella got reworked and the first one got edited.

This week’s giveaway is Among Others by Jo Walton, maybe a love it/hate it book, not quite my personal cup of tea but exquisite in its own way. A book about books and fairies and magic and the real world too. Won some awards as well.

Fifteen-year-old Morwenna lives in Wales with her twin sister and a mother who spins dark magic for ill. One day, Mori and her mother fight a powerful, magical battle that kills her sister and leaves Mori crippled. Devastated, Mori flees to her long-lost father in England. Adrift, outcast at boarding school, Mori retreats into the worlds she knows best: her magic and her books. She works a spell to meet kindred souls and continues to devour every fantasy and science fiction novel she can lay her hands on. But danger lurks… She knows her mother is looking for her and that when she finds her, there will be no escape.

Usual deal – comment on this post before November 3rd and I’ll randomly select a lucky victims for a free copy of the book. This week we’re playing Fairy Supermarket so each comment (to enter)  needs to be in alphabetical order and be fairy-related shopping items. Like  A is for Ankou; B is for Brittany where Ankous come from; C is for Cee how easy it is…? Extra points if you tell me about a faery or a fairytale or something fey I’ve never heard of[1].

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. Recent winners, I have cleared my backlog.

[1] Extra points not guaranteed to actually mean anything.

Another week in which not a lot got done. My second Bulldog Drummond novella for Piqwiq got drafted and I’m just about recovered from the great iPhone-rain interface disaster. A lot of the last two weeks and a good chunk of this week is going to be filled with trying to choose a secondary school. I suspect I speak for a lot of parents when I say that I don’t really want all this choice – I just want the local school to be a damn good one and for that to be all there is to it. It also occurs to me that there is surely a viable commercial venture in a website for people to whinge about really dumbass drivers. Had some peaches yesterday, people jumping the queue at temporary traffic lights into a single-file stretch of road only to then find the lights were red, jump those too and then end up blocking the one lane through the roadworks. And I guess that one dick per day is tolerable random background noise but several people did this. So if you were in Stratford on Sunday and waiting for ages and ages at a set of temporary lights, I’m sorry about the dickheads.

This week’s giveaway is the Orcish War-Fighting Manual by Den Patrick. My last regular gaming character was an orc so i have a soft spot for this.

Usual deal – comment on this post before October 28th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victims for a free copy of the book. This week, your challenge is to either vent some spleen about bad drivers, expound an Orcish approach to dealing with some of life’s problems or, for extra points[1], both at once.

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. Recent winners, I have a backlog again.

[1] Extra points not guaranteed to actually mean anything.

Last week was a desperately lazy week in which not a lot got done. News? Nah. Still waiting on a couple of announcements for new projects that are already in their editing stage, though – the Sekkrit Projekt and a piece of historical crime fiction. I was supposed to write another Bulldog Drummond novella for Piqwiq last week and then this week being a lazy sod, so I guess that’s now this week. Ho Hum. Also not at all helped by the great iPhone-rain interface disaster. Yes, folks, iPhones do not like being used in heavy rain. Given that I took my previous phone swimming by accident, maybe I just shouldn’t be allowed to have one. Meanwhile the topic of authors reading and commenting on reviews of their work keep bugging me because I keep seeing and being shown things in Dragon Queen that I hadn’t consciously realised were there. I may write something about that once I get this novella out of the way.

Anyway, this week’s giveaway is a double-header, meaning there will be two winners. Yay! Cheer, damn you! I have two old Adam Roberts novels: Swiftly and Land of the Headless up for grabs. Adam’s one of these authors who quietly gets around quite a bit and he finally won some award recognition this year for Jack Glass. I haven’t read Jack Glass but Yellow Blue Tibia was one of my favourite books of the year a few years back.

Usual deal – comment on this post before October 21st  and I’ll randomly select two lucky victims for a free copy of the books (one each). Now if you don’t follow Adam on Twitter then you won’t know this, but he has quite a fondness for puns. Frequently very bad puns. So this week, your challenge is to come up with a pun. The gods of random will judge the two best puns. If you want some inspiration, go follow @arrroberts on Twitter. You won’t have to wait long.

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. Recent winners,my backlog is cleared and they’re all in the post.

I shall be at World Fantasy Con at the end of the month, a long established intention and a fact of great excitement to at least one person. As things stand I won’t be doing any panels, despite last-ditch efforts to establish a panel on why author should regularly interact via the internet with those who comment on their work and damn well comment on any review they damn well please. Fortunately this means propping up the bar for longer hours and probably having exactly the same discussion only with beer and thus louder.

However, I can announce that I’ll also be appearing in a slightly more useful and written form as part of the BFS anthology Unexpected Journeys and in the form of a short story, The Sin Eater, a brief vignette of revenge and wickedness and redemption and in which dragons are not mentioned even once. See, I can if I try…

The other stories are:

A Thief in the Night by Anne Lyle
Seeds by Benjamin Tate
Steer a Pale Course by Gail Z Martin
The Groppler’s Harvest by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Oak, Broom and Meadowsweet by Liz Williams
King Harvest Has Surely Come by Chaz Brenchley
The Queen’s Garden by Kate Elliott

The anthology is edited by Juliet McKenna and rather than have me waffle about it any more, you might fancy reading her thoughts and observing how I totally stole that list. You can also see the cover artwork there.

The anthology is only available (I think) to BFS members and WFC attendees (that may be a redundant statement). The BFS have a few months of exclusive rights to the story before it revert, after which I reckon there’s a fair chance it’ll show up here as a freebie.

So this week’s freebie is Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins which was one of my personal favorite reads from last year. I’ve already given it one airing on the blog but it deserves another. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric espinonagey politically thrillery thing but what really sets it apart is the setting that feels so like an alternate inter-war Russia that you don’t really notice that it never actually says so and yet has giants, space-angels (I think), sentient rain and sentient forests. And it’s gloomy and broody and rains all the time and I like that sort of thing. Something Graham Greene might have written except after the first draft he got smacked round the head by a sentient walking hut and it was rewritten in a Siberian forest by Baba Yaga. There’s a bit of an undercurrent of quantum uncertainty and the overlapping of many worlds too. And then just when you’re really getting into it, some bastard (and I think I have to point a finger at the author here) shows up with a garotte and practically executes the novel mid-sentence, calls that an ending and we all have to wait until Spring next year for the next installment. Nevertheless, this is SF that sits beside Dune for me. It was wonderful. You can visit Peter’s site here.

News. I have news but I’m waiting on contracts. Separate post when it comes. In the meantime it’s been edits, edits, edits, getting The Splintered Gods all sorted out and Sekkrit Projekt too.

Usual deal – comment on this post before October 5th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Last week’s game was fun – this week I want to hear about either weird shit or something vaguely to do with Russia

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. Recent winners, I have cleared my backlog – they’re all in the post!

There’s a new review up for Dragon Queen at Fantasybookrevirew

I didn’t go a giveaway last week because Reasons. I’ve been working on the edits for The Splintered Gods for a couple of weeks now and likely will be working on them for a couple more. And then there was the whole thing about authors commenting on websites that talk about their books. I say *thing* because I’d like to say debate, but what it actually turned out to be was people posting their opinions, throwing insults and accusations, oozing snide but slyly unspecific  contempt and apparently culminating in threats of sexual violence against at least two bloggers who posted their own personal (and quite different) opinions. Which is something to not keep quite about and between the two things I never got around to giving away any books last week and have also been pretty crap at getting things posted (sorry Paul – it’s good to go now…)

This week’s giveaway is a complete copy of the Gallow series by Nathan Hawke (i.e. me with the letters rearranged). No words, no title, no name, just Angry Man With Axe, which is pretty much how I feel about the internet right now.

Cold Redemption Cover

The Last Bastion cover

Usual deal – comment on this post before September 28th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy.

This week I’d like to hear your stories about crappy behavior on the internet. No names, please, and to enter the competition, you don’t have to tell a story, you can just say hi; but if you want to get something off your chest, here’s a safe place to do it (Note – Vent anything you like but I’ll not tolerate any comments on comments that attempt, in my arbitrary and biased view, to start a debate, nor the explicit naming of anyone for being a jerk. My intolerance will manifest as deleting or editing comments. This week is about having a bit of a rant, not debates or potential libel. Thought if you just want to get it off your chest about, say THE LIVING DISASTER OF JACKASS LANE-DISCIPLINE AT THE MIAMI ROUNCDABOUT IN CHELMSFORD, then you should be fine).

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 I’ve still got the Angry Dragons mug if you make me laugh, smirk or otherwise amuse me.

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:

“If you love a book that has fantasy elements, political double dealing and proceeds to give manipulate the reader then you really have to read Stephen’s work. The story is dark, it has a cracking pace and when you add into this an author who knows how to manipulate not only the reader but also the characters to showcase both their strengths and their weaknesses all round makes this compulsive reading.”

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.

It’s been an odd week. Back from holiday is always a weird feeling. Then one of our cats was missing when we got back and didn’t show up for a week ( by the end we were assuming he’d been hit by a car and died in a hedge – in actual fact, he’d taken to loitering around the back of the local steak restaurant where he was being fed scraps of steak and premium salmon, then been taken in by the restaurant owner, whose partner is a veterinary nurse and works at a pet spa. So while we were imagining him dying by the roadside, cold and in pain and alone, actually he was being bathed, cleaned, brushed, pampered and living on food I largely can’t afford to eat myself . You really couldn’t make this shit up. He’s not entirely pleased to be back). And in the midst of that, there was the final death-rattle of my stupid pleurisy thing from earlier in the summer, which largely consisted of “you’re fine, go away, there categorically never was anything to this more than random infection and your chances of randomly dropping dead are not severely inflated as was initially posited but in fact exactly the same as they ever were,” which turned out more of a relief than I’d expected.

In the middle of that, some writing happened, some of which involved getting stroppy with my Empires co-writer on account of me being stressed about lots of other things. If we’re still talking to each other by the end of this, we really should do a panel on co-operative writing. Anyway, there’s another draft of Empires: Extraction now and this one doesn’t turn into an 18-rated version of Transformers in the middle. And I polished off the first of two Bulldog Drummond novellas, of which I’ll say more later.

This week’s book giveaway is a mystery. I have a number of books available but I’m not going to tell you what they are. Comment here saying what book you’d like to get and I’ll pick someone at random and see if either I have it or Gollancz can spare a copy (hint – pick a Gollancz title…). You can enter as may times as you like but I’ll count the first and if everyone asks for the Republic of Thieves, I’d point out that IT’S NOT OUT YET. And I’ll sulk.

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.

Last week I was on holiday and did like ALMOST NO WORK AT ALL. Almost. I’ll put some photos up and maybe some words at some point about our time in Jordan but it’s too soon right now except to say that the country is lovely, the people are friendly and it’s basically the Switzerland of the Middle East. It might be surrounded by Bad Shit right now but there’s no sign of it crossing the borders that I could see. Maybe it’s because they don’t have any oil to fight over.

This week’s book giveaway is Terra by Mitch Benn. First reviews off google are here and here. I haven’t read it myself (comic SF not really my thing – I tried to read Hitchhiker again recently and it ^h^h I’ll just not say anything).

Anyway, I have a signed copy to give away courtesy of Gollancz. Usual deal – comment on this post before August 24th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series.

Cold Redemption (Gallow book 2) comes out on Thursday. Dragon Queen comes out in less than two weeks now and I have a few copies, a tiny precious few. Dragon Queen is my attempt to keep all the good stuff from the first series but with vastly more world building and character depth (hopefully sort of like The Black Mausoleum).  So it’s not going to be quite the relentlessly fast roller-coaster of The Adamantine Palace but on the other hand you do get an entire last act that should read like Call of Duty: Dragon Warfare if I’ve done it right. There are some tasters here and here and I’ll put up another one on Thursday – and here it is. . .

You wanted to know more about the Taiytakei: here they are. And possibly they just made a very big mistake.

I have two copies to give away. One here and one on Twitter. Usual deal – comment on this post before August 10th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series.

What do Charlemagne, Catherine de Medici, Benjamin Franklin, Mahatma Ghandi, Rudolph Valentino and I all have in common? Pleurisy. Which was and still is like being knifed in the kidney every time you take a deep breath and so not much got done last week except a great deal of practice in controlled breathing. I’d like to mark it down as research but to be honest, any character who has this shit is pretty much going to lie very still taking very shallow breaths and whimpering until they either get better or die. And if they absolutely have to do something, it’s going to come with an extremely bad temper and a great deal of shouting and roaring in pain. Maybe they could function if they have access to something like morphine. A lot of morphine.

Also included in last week’s research was the discovery that A&E will indeed turf you out in your knickers and a dressing gown at 5:30am on a Sunday to “make your way home.”

I’m back to working on SF stuff. Empires: Extraction (working title). The whole of Europa has been turned into a neutrino detector, American special forces have come face to face with an alien in the Libyan desert and I think I’m about to break Docklands. Also, lasers, in the vacuum of space, are INVISIBLE.

INVISIBLE!

You know who you are.

Dragon Queen comes out in less than four weeks. Have I mentioned that one of the major characters is a cross-over from the Thief-Taker series? Have I? Here’s the opening of Dragon Queen is case I haven’t.

The King’s Assassin came out in mass-market form a couple of weeks back. Kind of over-shadowed by some other stuff, sadly, but week’s giveaway is a complete Thief-Taker set. All three books, signed and lined by me.

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 27th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the series.

This week we’re playing Thief Supermarket. So you need your comment to come up with something to do with thiefly characters in fantasy, SF or real history and the comments have to be in alphabetical order. So for example, “A is for Always keep your caltrops handy,” “B is for Buried Treasure,” “C is for Cutpurse.” etc. etc.

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, not that extra points actually translates into anything useful :-p

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.

So the last week has largely been about polishing up my contribution to a novel coming out next year that I still can’t talk about. As far as I know, everyone that needs to has now signed contracts and so maybe there’s going to be an announcement by Gollancz next week. Or maybe now. Who knows.

Any other news I might have had for the week is answered by this question: What do Charlemagne, Catherine de Medici, Benjamin Franklin, Mahatma Ghandi and Rudolph Valentino have in common?

Anyway, I promised Charm by Sarah Pinborough for the giveaway this week. Since the Poison ARC was so popular, Sarah’s editor has kindly offered three signed copies. You’re going to have to earn them though: we’re going to plat smut supermarket this week and each time you get through the alphabet, I release another book until all three are in play.

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 20th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book.

In keeping with Sarah’s Twitter feed and the general thrust of this series, this week we’re playing Rude Supermarket, or Smutty Supermarket, however you want to call it. So A is for “Anal Sex: A Beginners Guide, B is for Butt plug and so on and so forth. All those things Tescos and Sainsburys sell in the curtained-off over-18s only section… Wait, y’all do know about that right…?

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, not that extra points actually translates into anything useful :-p

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.

I thought I had a dead cert for the giveaway lined up for this week – a signed copy of Sarah Pinborough’s Charm, but apparently I have wait until next week when it actually comes out. BOO.

So if it has to be a book that comes out this week, then, as I discovered to my surprised, *I* have one of those. Yes, the King’s Assassin is now out in paperback. However, I’ve been offered a signed copy of The Crimson Shield. I was thinking of putting them both in the pot and letting people choose but then I was thinking I might not much like how that panned out… So: This week’s giveaway is a signed copy of the Crimson Shield by Nathan Hawke. Next week Charm (hopefully). Then maybe a set of the whole thief-taker trilogy.

According to the Goodreads description, Nathan Hawke doesn’t really exist and is actually me. I figured I’d best promote him then so here’s a link to the only review I can find.

I don’t really have any other news this week, at least not that I can share. Some more words. They happened.

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 13th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Given that The Crimson Shield is (apparently) largely a book about blokes hitting each other with swords and axes, we’ll play Weapon Supermarket this week (first commenter has to come up with a weapon beginning with A (axe would seem a good start), second commenter has to point out a weapon beginning with B, etc). For Charm, next week (if I get it), we can play Rude Supermarket…

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.

I have this feeling of being on a roll now. The last three choices for these giveaways seem to have gone down well and so I’m going for a banker this week: Saladin Ahmed’s Thrown of the Crescent Moon.

Here’s a link to the SFX review and the Kirkus Review. It’s had a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and I do believe it might have won an award just recently (Locus Best First Novel

I don’t really have any news this week. Some words. They happened.

Usual deal – comment on this post before July 6th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Since it’s one of mine, I’ll sign and line it of you like. Since I’m on time with getting this one up and since there were SEVERAL complaints last week when I didn’t make life difficult, we’re going to play Fantasy Supermarket again (first commenter has to point out something fantasy-related beginning with A, second commenter has to point out something fantasy-related beginning with B, etc). I’ll vary it, before anyone complains, just not this week.

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.

Another week, another novel, another collaboration project with the ever-patient Mr Smith although I can’t really talk about this one yet (again! Arrgh! Because I really want to and this has been in the pipeline for months. But no contract, no talk. Mrmph). I have spent much of last week being a short female bounty hunter from the thirty fourth century, which turned out to be rather more fun than being a grumpy SAS sergeant who thinks he’s Rees from Person of Interest but so far utterly lacks any of the charm or charisma. I am also discovering a penchant for smug sarcastic spaceships.

So this week’s freebie is Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins which was one of my personal favorite reads from last year. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric espinonagey politically thrillery thing but what really sets it apart is the setting that feels so like an alternate inter-war Russia that you don’t really notice that it never actually says so and yet has giants, space-angels (I think), sentient rain and sentient forests. And it’s gloomy and broody and rains all the time and I like that sort of thing. Something Graham Greene might have written except after the first draft he got smacked round the head by a sentient walking hut and it was rewritten in a Siberian forest by Baba Yaga. There’s a bit of an undercurrent of quantum uncertainty and the overlapping of many worlds too. And then just when you’re really getting into it, some bastard (and I think I have to point a finger at the author here) shows up with a garotte and practically executes the novel mid-sentence, calls that an ending and we all have to wait until Spring next year for the next installment. Nevertheless, this is SF that sits beside Dune for me. It was wonderful. You can visit Peter’s site here.

Usual deal – comment on this post before June 29th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Last week’s game was fun but I’ll just take comments this week since I’m late in putting it up. I’m not entirely sure about the edition I’m offering here since it will come direct from Gollancz – it may be a US ARC. The story inside is the same.

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. Recent winners, I have cleared my backlog – they’re all in the post!

The Crimson Shield went down a bit better than Hostage to Pleasure. Nathan Hawke has a website now, which he didn’t when the giveaway started. It has this interactive map thing that makes me kind of envious and want to stop working on paid stuff and put up an interactive map of the dragon realms. But hey ho . . . Mortgage, kids to feed, etc., etc. This week, meanwhile, has been spent writing scenes for the SF collaboration with Gavin Smith; except it’s been one of those weeks where every single word sucks and what I seem to have produced is 15000 words of rancid cat barf. <le sigh>

So this week’s freebie – back to one of my own: The Black Mausoleum: Gone are the political machinations and the wheels within wheels (don’t worry, they come back in Dragon Queen) – this is much more about survival and a rag-tag band of characters who really can’t stand each other. Probably the best cover in the series too. Signed and lined to the luck winner, of course.If you read it and like it, please tell people about it, post an amazon review or on Goodreads. Something like that.

Usual deal – comment on this post before June 24th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Since it’s one of mine, I’ll sign and line it of you like.

This week we’re going to play Fantasy Supermarket. First commenter has to point out something fantasy-related beginning with A, second commenter has to point out something fantasy-related beginning with B, etc.

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. Recent winners, I owe you a particular apology – I have stack of parcels due to go to the post office. Later today, I promise!

News? What news? I’m still mucking about with some historical fiction and for a while I am no longer a fantasy author – no more of that until after the summer holidays. Turns out that neither I nor Lord Grimdark made it into Glamour magazine’s “If you like Game of Thrones. . . ” article possibly on account of being too much like Game of Thrones and not enough like . . . Well, like Hostage to Pleasure, I suppose. Oh, and the Black Mausoleum and subsequent dragon books apparently won’t be coming out in the US via Roc but via Trafalgar (whoever they are) but when I have a clue what that means I guess I’ll elaborate.

So, poor old Hostage to Pleasure possibly wins the prize for least loved giveaway I’ve ever done. I hereby try to redeem myself. I have for you an ARC (not often I get hold of those any more) for the first of Nathan Hawke’s Gallow trilogy coming out this summer. I hope this is more to your liking out there because I gather it’s really f**king rare. You’ll have to put up with the possibility of it having a slightly pre-read look but I’ll be as careful with it as I can before I give it up (he says, looking at the chocolate fudge smear on the screen here…)

So yes: An ARC: The Crimson Shield by Nathan Hawke, not out until 7th July. If it’s popular I’ll see if I can get a couple from the first print run to give away. If it’s *not* popular then I’m going to sulk and give away nothing but copies of Hostage to Pleasure until July :-p

Usual deal – comment on this post before June 16th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. I’ll even let you off playing the Supermarket game for another week.

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.

I’m still quite taken with The Blood Juggler. I feel a short story coming on for which I don’t have time to actually write.

Meh. An entire week spent on stuff about which I cannot yet talk. I have been talking to a games company, proofing some other stuff… meh. Oh and rewriting the historical fiction thing. More of that this week and some SF about which I cannot speak and it’s about time to knock the short story for World Fantasy on the head. Meanwhile, this week’s free book is a little bit of a departure from my normal offering – you can blame one of the editors at Gollancz for that who appears to want to experiment on me. So we’ll see what happens. I actually have three copies to give away so expect them to come up again if they’re popular.

Usual deal – comment on this post before June 8th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. No challenge this week but now that I’ve been introduced to Rude Supermarket, there may be a more interesting one coming up. Maybe Lord of the Rings Supermarket (A is for Angmar, B is for Boromir, C is for Celador, etc…)

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.

I’m still quite taken with The Blood Juggler.

The proof for Dragon Queen is back with Gollancz. That was about 36 hours work 241443 words for any who care. So about twice as long as The Adamantine Palace and not much more than half the length of A Storm of Swords. Every book I write feels like it’s the best book I ever did and absolutely marvelous when I send it back after editing. Come the proofs, when to more books have gone in since, the shine has gone. Every time it’s the same – the book I’m just about finished writing is always the best one yet. I suppose it has to be that way but it’s happened enough times that the pattern’s pretty obvious. So, yeah… Dragon Queen… Best Stephen Deas book evaaar… maybe… Oh just go form your own opinion and never mind me.

Just for fun I’ve sent in an SF novel too – a bit of space opera, a good dash of cyberpunk nostalgia, plenty of sex and an severe attack of Tourette’s. The next couple of weeks are back to the historical novel and something else that I can’t talk about yet but REALLY REALLY WANT TO. Also we need to talk about Rude Supermarket.

This week’s free book needs little introduction, I suspect…

Usual deal – comment on this post before June 1st  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy. No challenge this week but now that I’ve been introduced to Rude Supermarket, there may be a more interesting one coming up…

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.

So this week is being spent slaughtering all the spurious commas in Dragon Queen and discovering that, when you let a seven-year-old read your proofs, you a) discover that you wish you hadn’t let him read the opening battle scene or that it didn’t have quite so many entrails scattered about it and b) you might have thought you had a character called the Bloody Judge (remember him, King’s Assassin readers?) but actually you’ve got one called The Blood Juggler. I’m quite taken with The Blood Juggler . . .

Apparently the Adamantine Palace gets a mention in Glamour magazine in July. Yes, that bewildered laughter is mine. Yes, I’ll post a scan of it if/when I track it down once it’s out. And the short story for WFC suddenly behaved itself after I changed the gender of one protagonist and merged two secondary characters into one. Editing 6k words you can do these things…

So this week’s freebie, The Black Mausoleum: Gone are the political machinations and the wheels within wheels (don’t worry, they come back in Dragon Queen) – this is much more about survival and a rag-tag band of characters who really can’t stand each other. Probably the best cover in the series too. Signed and lined to the luck winner, of course.If you read it and like it, please tell people about it, post an amazon review or on Goodreads. Something like that.

Usual deal – comment on this post before May 18th  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. Since it’s one of mine, I’ll sign and line it of you like.I’ll set a voluntary challenge this week, after my trials at historical fiction last week: the best or most memorable or simply favourite anachronism you’ve come across in film or book?

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.

I have a couple of collaborations in the pipeline with SF author Gavin Smith coming up, one of which I can’t talk about yet and the other one of which I can but have been systematically too lazy/busy to actually get on and do anything about. Anyway, since he’s a great guy and hugely fun and also my writing partner, here’s a book wot he wrote going begging. I haven’t read this one (too new ) but if the rest of what I’ve seen is anything to go by then it’s an adrenaline-fueled action-fest.

So to enter this time you have to help me resolve an argument – what’s the best SF spaceship ever. Is it really the Millennium Falcon? I’m looking for more than the coolest design – I’ll looking for spaceships with personality. So yes, the Falcon counts as it does have a prone-to-break-down-at-inconvenient-moment personality, just about. To enter the competition you have to comment on this post with a suggested spaceship before the end of Friday 26th. Please be prepared to be patient with the delivery and if it’s to an address to outside the UK then I’ll have to ask for a phone number as well as an address. But they do all get there eventually (I think).