It’s been a while, but this week I have a copy of The Protector to give away. It’s already picked up a couple of nice reviews here and here

ALl you have to do to enter is comment on this post before the end of 8th August. The Gods of Random will randomly select a random winner through means of randomness onm the following day.

No one has complained (so far) about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, but 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. Am currently up to date with posting things.

New for the last couple of weeks? Not much. The final edits for The Silver Kings have gone in. Copyediting over Christmas at a guess. Nathan Hawke polished off the Gallow short Dragon’s Reach and some extra-secret bonus material. Gavin Deas attended the Elite:Dangerous premiere and headlined the event, if by headlined I mean was the last person on stage before the night ended, which I do. There have been other developments about which I shall not speak, but which are going to mean quite some reduction in writing time next year.

Also Empires came out. There are some early reviews and articles for the truly committed over on the Empires page:

The Silver Kings has gone to my agent. Yay. Irritation of the week still gets to be shared between the Achilles tendon that still refuses to stop hurting and the willy-waving reviews. Speaking of which there’s a review of Barricade over here what I writ and what’s full of typos.

Well I thought so…

This week it’s back to various alter-egos. Nathan Hawke is writing a short story. Then SJ gets to work on the second William Falkland novel, which will mean nothing to any of you since the first one isn’t out yet. Cover reveal coming soon though.

This week, by special request, the giveaway is a little different. This week I’m giving away a Dragon Queen T-shirt, to be ordered and printed after the competition closes. I’ll be in touch with the winner about what size it should be.

Usual deal – comment on this post before the end of July 5th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim. If you want to enter the competition for the shirt, tell me a T-shirt slogan, real or imagined, that amuses you.

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. I am currently up to date with posting things.

By the end of this week I should have a submission-ready draft of The Silver Kings. After that I get to talk with my editor about what comes next. Irritation of the week gets to be shared between the Achilles tendon that refuses to stop hurting and the review for the Black Mausoleum that describes it as having “rape-as-plot-device” when no such thing occurs, plot device or not, at any point. Balancing that is a new review of Dragon Queen at Fixed on Fantasy, “a masterpiece of fantasy and easily Deas’ best work to date.”

Well I thought so…

There’s some World Cup silliness over here (but I’m grumpy about that now), and I’ve also finished reading Barricade and might possibly write up a review of it if I have the time.

This week’s giveaway is The Splintered Gods (finally). I have nothing much to say about it except that it;s the sequel to Dragon Queen, is a bit shorter, and started off trying to be a murder mystery but largely failed.

Usual deal – comment on this post before the end of June 28th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim. This week I can’t think of any clever things to ask for in the comments, so just wave and say hi and you’ll get entered as long as you’re not spam offering NFL jerseys.

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. I am currently up to date with posting things.

I am grumpy this week. My foot hurts. My foot hurt last week. It’s not suppose to hurt and it’s definitely not supposed to hurt for so long. Walking is distinctly uncomfortable, and running and leaping and bounding and jumping and cavorting and other circus skills are all right out, which pisses me off, because while I’m pretty luke-warm about running, I’m generally right up for some leaping and cavorting.

The structural rewrites for Fragile Hope are done, so that’s the news. Back to the last rewrite (I hope) of The Silver Kings this week. Ah Zafir, I shall miss your unholy combination of pathos and ruthless brutality. Anyway. This week’s giveaway. I was going to go with Jon Wallace’s Barricade, but I’m currently reading it and it’s rather good and I don’t know that I want to part with it. So no Barricade for . . .  oh go on then. Here’s the blurb. I’m about a third of the way through it, it’s a fast sharp and darkly witty English version of Mad Max, so far. Imagine a pissed-off Roy Batty instead of Mel Gibson.

“Kenstibec was genetically engineered to build a new world, but the apocalypse forced a career change. These days he drives a taxi instead.

A fast-paced, droll and disturbing novel, BARRICADE is a savage road trip across the dystopian landscape of post-apocalypse Britain; narrated by the cold-blooded yet magnetic antihero, Kenstibec.

Kenstibec is a member of the ‘Ficial’ race, a breed of merciless super-humans. Their war on humanity has left Britain a wasteland, where Ficials hide in barricaded cities, besieged by tribes of human survivors. Originally optimised for construction, Kenstibec earns his keep as a taxi driver, running any Ficial who will pay from one surrounded city to another.

The trips are always eventful, but this will be his toughest yet. His fare is a narcissistic journalist who’s touchy about her luggage. His human guide is constantly plotting to kill him. And that’s just the start of his troubles.”

There’s a couple of sample chapters up on the Gollancz blog, and some reviews and shit by people whose opinions matter more than mine. If you like it, go for Echo Rising by Danie Ware too, or Veteran by Gavin Smith. If the Gods of Random fail you, it’s available as an e-book for the knock-down price of £1.99 for the next few weeks.

Usual deal – comment on this post before the end of June 14th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim. This week, who would YOU like to see go on a road-trip through a post-apocalyptic landscape.

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. I am currently up to date with posting things, although whoever won the Incorruptibles competition, I haven’t had an address to send it to, so check your spam or I’ll send it to someone else.

Apologies to the few of you who saw the previous version of this post; I appear to have suffered a moment of Wordpress incompetence. So let’s try this again . . .

Not much news this week. I’m on break from The Silver Kings and working on the second William Falkland mystery, which won’t mean anything much to any of you on account of the first one not being out yet. There is a cover I hope to reveal shortly.

Moving on: this week’s giveaway is Stephen Hunt’s In Dark Service, Stephen’s first novel for Gollancz.I haven’t read this one, though I’ve read some of his previous series. Here’s the condensed blurb.

Usual deal – comment on this post before the end of June and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim. This week, with the World Cup coming up, I encourage any soccer enthusiasts to offer up a well-known SFF character and what position they’d play (Gollum: substitute striker. Never features in the starting eleven but has a record of coming on for the last 10-15 minutes and scoring the winning goal). For those already rolling their eyes, you may blow elegant raspberries instead

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. I am currently somewhat behind.

The last major reworking of The Silver Kings is done and I have what feels like a finished book ready now. The spit-and-polish and editing and so forth will now begin. I both love and hate this time in a book’s life. It comes with a great sense of achievement that it’s basically done and with a sense of loss, because now I say goodbye to some characters I’ve grown very fond of, and a (stupid) sense of fear that I’ll never be able to write again.

This week’s giveaway is The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs. It’s not out yet, so you might have to wait a but, but I’ve read an unproofed ARC and it’s a marvelous. Somewhere across between Deadwood and Rome with demon-powered six-shooters. Here’s the blurb:

“In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way up stream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it – from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do.

In the boat the drunk governor of the territories and his sons and daughters make merry. They believe that their status makes them untouchable. They are wrong. And with them is a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who is the key to peace between warring nations and survival for the Empire. When a callow mercenary saves the life of the Governor on an ill-fated hunting party, the two groups are thrown together.

For Fisk and Shoe – two tough, honourable mercenaries surrounded by corruption, who know they can always and only rely on each other – their young companion appears to be playing with fire. The nobles have the power, and crossing them is always risky. And although love is a wonderful thing, sometimes the best decision is to walk away. Because no matter how untouchable or deadly you may be, the stretchers have other plans.”

It’s short and sharp and I liked it. It’s officially out in August, but if you’re lucky you might get an early copy – depends whether our mutual editor is feeling in a good mood or not. Also, if the Gods of Random don’t happen to favour you this time, it’s ridiculously cheap (£1.99) as a pre-order e-book for a limited period.

Usual deal – comment on this post before the end of June and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim.This week you have to help me out, and if you don’t then I’ll know you didn’t read to the bottom of the post and your comment won’t count :-p

I have proposals to submit for something new. Tell me which one most grabs your attention. My editor and agent will probably choose something entirely different and we’ll all fail to agree, but you never know. Am curious to see if a strong favourite emerges:

1: Fantasy. City-based. A misfit gang of thieves accidentally get themselves caught up in an empire-spanning conspiracy and really wish they hadn’t. With occasional zombies and silly hats.

2: A handful of secret and not-so-secret magicians find themselves pulled into the first world war. With arcane tanks, sentient bears, djinn and Rasputin.

3. San Francisco. 1972. Surfers. Hippies. Dope. Aliens. A surreal cold-war conspiracy thriller with an extra-terrestrial prize.

4. A misfit bunch of space-cops in a backwater future world find themselves investigating odd crimes which aren’t as unrelated as they first appear.

5. Baroque Space Opera I struggle to describe better than “Dune meets Game of Thrones”

Comment to tell me which one you like best and you’re in. 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. I am currently a couple of weeks behind.

Still rewriting The Silver Kings. If I ever try to write a character as vexingly complicated as Zafir again, someone please shoot me.

Anyway, this week there is some good news for any Gallow and Nathan Hawke fans out there. To keep things smouldering along a bit while we all work out whether enough people want to see more Gallow for anyone to want to publish any more novels, I’ve agreed with Gollancz to write three shortish stories. No firm dates for publication as yet since they haven’t been written, but I imagine it’ll be as soon as reasonably possible. There’s also an e-book omnibus of the original novels available here.

That being the case I think I’ll give away another couple of Nathan Hawke books this week, Cold Redemption and The Last Bastion. The Last Bastion picks up from where Cold Redemption leaves off, so they’re pretty much a couple.

Usual deal – comment on this post before May 25th  and I’ll randomly select lucky victims. This week I want to know WHY HAVEN’T YOU READ DRAGON QUEEN YET… No, this week I want you to vote, if you’re eligible. Just vote. I mean in the elections, not for which book you like best (yes, Mike, I’m looking at YOU).

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.

Ziva rammed the throttle wide open and threw the Fer-de-Lance into a tight spin, spitting out countermeasures in a classic tesseract pattern. Her wingman, a second Fer-de-Lance, shot between the incoming missiles and her countermeasure bloom, adding to the confusion, but it didn’t make a difference. The Cobra Mk. III was still coming at her. Somehow it had shot all four of her missiles before they’d burst and scattered their warheads and now the Cobra was firing steadily at her with frightening accuracy. Whatever software it was running was unreal and she wanted it.

The second Fer-de-Lance twisted away. He always did that. ‘Turn and take him head on you weasel,’ she muttered.

A lucky shot from the Cobra punched a hole through the crystal titanium skin over the Fer-de-Lance’s port engine. Several cubic centimetres of ablative armour vaporised and took most of the laser’s sting, but not quite enough. Even at this range, the beam of the Cobra’s military laser was still needle thin. The last vestiges stabbed into the engine’s heart and wrecked a power relay no bigger than a thumbnail. A magnetic containment field, already strained to breaking point by Ziva’s frantic manoeuvring, collapsed and raw plasma at eight million Kelvin erupted through the port engine, scouring everything. Damage control cut in at once, raising a magnetic shield and deflecting the plasma outward. The starboard engine started adjusting to compensate but it wasn’t fast enough. The rogue plasma burst out of the ship, kicking it sideways, rupturing the port engine cowling as it went. The kick was hard, hard enough that it almost knocked Ziva out. The ship started to tumble, frantically dumping heat from the engines and ruining Ziva’s perfect countermeasure tesseract.

Before she could do a thing about it, the two chasing missiles arrived milliseconds apart. Their proximity fuses triggered and both warheads burst around her into a scatter of pinhead-sized anti-hydrogen mines. Invisible and lethal. Two seconds later, the first mine hit and the Fer-de-Lance bloomed in a blaze of energy. Overwhelmed shields collapsed and the ship, missiles and mines exploded together with the gamma-flash of a dying star. That was the thing about the Fer-de-Lance: it was a true thoroughbred of a ship but with so much performance crammed into such a tight envelope that it didn’t have the backups and built-in redundancy of the more robust Cobra. Too many single points of failure.

The other Fer-de-Lance frantically ejected countermeasures of its own and darted behind the radiation burst that had once been Ziva’s ship. Its fusion plume flared as the pilot floored the throttle to get away. He turned and ran. The follow-up salvo of missiles from the pursuing Cobra fuzed on the decoys.

Ziva crashed out of the simulation and slammed the flight panel of the Dragon Queen in disgust. ‘Fuck! Again!’

- o O o -

More beating The Silver Kings into shape this week. On Thursday Elite:Wanted comes out in e-book, but only in e-book so I can’t give a copy of it away until it comes out in paper form later in the year. So since I can’t, this week’s giveaway is a choice between a paper copy of the Elite book if you don’t mind waiting or else a copy of Dragon Queen, whihc came out in paperback a few weeks ago and after which Ziva’s ship is named. You choose!

Usual deal – comment on this post before May 18th and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of whichever book you choose. Give me a comment with either a cool name for a dragon or a cool name for a spaceship (just for fun – I won’t be using them) and we’ll have a popularity contest: dragons vs. spaceships.

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 am currently very behind so if you’re waiting for a book from a previous giveaway they’re all in the post.

Dragon Queen came out in paperback last weeks and I have a few copies, a tiny precious few. For anyone who hasn’t already listened to be go on about it, 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 here. There are a few reviews about the place on Goodreads and Amazon and so forth of you care about such things. I wouldn’t say no to a few more. HINT HINT.

You wanted to know more about the Taiytakei: here they are. And possibly they just made a very big mistake. Efforts continue to write the last volume in this sequence.

I have two copies to give away. One here and one on Twitter. Usual deal – comment on this post before April 21st  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy.

ELITE!!!!! (at this point please picture a hyperkinetic author running about in wide circles waving his arms in the air). So there’s an announcement about Elite: Dangerous tie-in novels. Meanwhile the  proofs for The Splintered Gods are done, the proofs for Elite: Wanted are well on their way and hurrah, that’s the end of page proofs for a while and I can get back to The Silver Kings.

Anyhow, if you read the Elite news, you’ll know that Gollancz SF author Gavin Smith and I have turned into some hideous chimera EVEN WORSE THAN EITHER ONE OF US ALONE to write Elite: Wanted. So this week I’m giving away some of Gavin’s books to deny him a few pennies in sales and generally be cruel in a petty kind of way.

Usual deal – comment on this post before April 14th and I’ll randomly select lucky victims. This week I want to know WHY HAVEN’T YOU READ DRAGON QUEEN YET spaceship names. Ones that you’d like to see in print, not ones already there. Who knows…

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. I’m off to the post office RIGHT NOW to clear the Big Book Bonanza. And Blood of Elves (sorry, Blood of Elves winner).

The past week has been spent on page proofs and more page proofs. The proofs for The Royalist are done, the proofs for The Splintered Gods are well on their way to being finished. Last week was also a curiously positive week for a couple of other projects. Firstly there’s going to be a third Bulldog Drummond novella, which will be a laugh. Secondly, Gollancz have asked for three Gallow mini-stories (details when there are details to be had). So this week’s giveaway is going to be pairs of Gallow books, Cold Redemption and The Last Bastion. The Last Bastion pretty much picks up from where Cold Redemption leaves off, so they’re pretty much a couple. Normally it would only be one pair, but I’ve been persuaded to give away as many copies as goals Liverpool put past Sunderland later this week. Go reds!

Usual deal – comment on this post before March 31st  and I’ll randomly select lucky victims. This week I want to know WHY HAVEN’T YOU READ DRAGON QUEEN YET which one you’d choose if you were offered – sword, axe or spear. Context free, no implied purpose, make up your own use, 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. I will try to clear the Big Book Bonanza this week. And Blood of Elves (sorry, Blood of Elves winner).

I just have to point this out again

Things that happen when you have more than one publisher: Two page proofs arrive at one (for those of you who don’t know, the page proofs are the last stage of the process where the last proof-reading occurs and at this point there’s an actual deadline for getting shit done, and generally pretty tight ones too).

I spent yesterday at a small literary festival. This involved showing up with a box of books. I have, I discover, quite a lot of books. Probably more than I have a use for. So this week I’m going to give away all kinds of stuff. There will be some Nathan Hawke. There will be some Stephen Deas. I have Adam Roberts, Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson, Stephen Baxter and numerous other. The gods of random will pick one entry for every four comments until I run out of books. Aaaaaad….. GO.

Usual deal – comment on this post before March 24th  and I’ll randomly select lucky victims. This week I want to know your must-read books.

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 (just about) cleared my backlog again – they’re all in the post!

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!

Last week: polishing off the penultimate rewrite of Bulldog Drummond and the Faceless; editing Empires: Extraction; going to World Fantasy Con. I’ll put up another extract from Empires later this week. This week I’m working on the sequel to The Royalist as a NaNoWriMo project. To follow my progress and/or find out what the hell that even means, you need to hop over to the Fantasy Faction site. Here’s the starter.

This week’s giveaway is a bit different. One of the nice things about conventions is that you get to see all sorts of people when they’re a bit tipsy and more pliable than usual to be tapped up for favours. If you follow the acquisitions news from Gollancz, you’ll already know that when the Kickstarter funding drive for Elite: Dangerous was launched, Gollancz bought the rights to publish three tie-in novel titles. In theory, then, there are three Gollancz novels coming out next year set in the Elite universe. If you’ve been following with *particular* interest (say because you happen to be a Gollancz author who pitch in to the Kickstarter, not that that actually narrows us down all that much, it turns out), you might have noticed that there haven’t been any announcements as to who will  be writing them and when they’ll be coming out.

Naturally, from my position of privilege, I shall not be sharing the INSIDE INFORMATION I have on the subject. What I will share, however, is the opportunity, acquired during the World Fantasy Convention for one of you to name a spaceship in one of the elite tie-in novels. Any thing you like provided is doesn’t break some other copyright and isn’t likely to cause offense (both Gollancz and Frontier would have to be OK with it). The ship is currently a Diamondback called the Sword of Alexander and exists in the narrative as something for the protagonist to ostentatiously have a fight with (I believe it puts in a good show for itself before it goes down). There is the possibility that the name might make its way back into the game database for the Elite universe, but I absolutely can’t say anything definite one way or the other about that.

To enter, you have to comment on this post before November 10th AND you have to finish this sentence: “Officer, I crashed into the space-station because…” The author who’ll be using your ship name will choose a winner by some opaque process not subject to any scrutiny next weekend. Enjoy.

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.

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

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.

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.