Coming to Town: Mary Robinette Kowal for Valour and Vanity at Quail Ridge Books

Posted on 2014-05-10 at 17:29 by montsamu

Raleigh native Mary Robinette Kowal has not been a stranger: she launched her debut novel (and with it her Glamourist Histories series), Shades of Milk and Honey in August 2010 at NASFIC in Raleigh; a year ago today she returned for book 3, Without a Summer; in January this year she was co-guest-of-honor at illogiCon; and! on Monday (May 12) at 7:30 pm, she's back again, this time to close her tour for book 4, Valour and Vanity, at Quail Ridge Books. Her events are always fantastic: Regency attire, a puppetry show (Kowal is a professional puppeteer), a performance -- not just a reading! -- of her book (Kowal is also an accomplished narrator and voice actor, including on her own novels), a no-holds-barred Q&A... these are just some of the possibilities in store. So! Get your calendars cleared, invite your friends, and enjoy this short interview with Kowal, ahead of the last three stops on her tour: today (Saturday May 10) at Mysterious Galaxy in Sand Diego; tomorrow (Sunday May 11) at the fantastic Borderlands Books in San Francisco; and of course, Monday night at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books. See you there!

Does it get old, where "it" is seeing your new book on shelves, promoting a new book, touring?

Not yet and I really hope it never does. I actually enjoy touring, but then I started out as a touring puppeteer so traveling feels like second nature. Plus, I don't have to haul in 50 pound speakers and a full set.

Every novel takes work, a lot of work, but was "Jane Austen writes Ocean's Eleven with magic" at least a little bit of fun to write?

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged mary robinette kowal, quail ridge books

Paul Kincaid's From the Other Side, April 2014: Eastercon, awards news, Lagoon, Claire North, The Brick Moon, and Call and Response

Posted on 2014-04-29 at 20:6 by montsamu

From the Other Side, April 2014

By Paul Kincaid

Easter in Britain is traditionally the time for the gathering of the clans, otherwise known as Eastercon. This year it was held in Glasgow, and despite the fact that the Worldcon is in the UK this year, generally resulting in a smaller than usual Eastercon, it was by all accounts both well attended and very successful.

Of course, this year it was all about awards. For a start, there was the ‘Not the Clarke Award’ panel, by now a fixture at Eastercons. If we are to believe the panellists, their choice for the award would be Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, though they expect that the actual jury will choose The Machine by James Smythe. Of course, if past experience is anything to go by, the fact that the panel mentioned these two books probably means that they’ll come nowhere near the prize.

Then there was the announcement of the BSFA Awards. Jeff VanderMeer’s win for Wonderbook is probably the closest thing to a shoo-in in these awards, though Joey Hi-Fi’s artwork has proved consistently popular, and Nina Allan’s Spin is not only a superb piece of work but also generated quite a buzz so the puzzle here is why, in the year of a British Worldcon, this didn’t make the Hugo list. The surprise, however, is that the award for Best Novel was shared by Ann Leckie for Ancillary Justice and Gareth L. Powell for Ack-Ack Macaque, the first time in the entire 45-year history of the award that there has been a tie in any category.

Posted in From the Other Side | Tagged claire north, eastercon, lagoon, paul kincaid, the brick moon, wonderbook

Release Day: Morningside Fall by Jay Posey (Legends of the Duskwalker, Book Two)

Posted on 2014-04-29 at 14:21 by montsamu

Last summer, Durham narrative designer, author, and screenwriter Jay Posey’s debut novel Three was published by Angry Robot Books, introducing the titular Three: a lone gunman in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of isolated towns walled against the Weir, a horrifying nocturnal menace of hunting creatures. Three is “The Duskwalker”, a man who can travel at night unseen by the Weir and who (against his better judgement) finds himself the guardian of a woman and her gifted young son, Wren, on the run from a more mundane — yet just as deadly — foe: her estranged, violent lover and his gang of brain-hackers. With no other safe harbor in sight, Three endeavors to guide the pair to Morningside in search of Wren’s father. Years later we pick up with the events in Morningside Fall, published today in original paperback and e-book. “The lone gunman Three is gone. Wren is the new governor of the devastated settlement of Morningside, but there is turmoil in the city. When his life is put in danger, Wren is forced to flee Morningside until he and his retinue can determine who can be trusted. They arrive at a border outpost to find it has been infested with Weir in greater numbers than anyone has ever seen. These lost, dangerous creatures are harbouring a terrible secret – one that will have consequences not just for Wren and his comrades, but for the future of what remains of the world. New threats need new heroes…”

Congratulations, Jay, on the release of book 2! (And a note: I really enjoyed the audio edition of Three, read by Luke Daniels for Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio. Via Twitter, it looks like an audiobook edition for Morningside Fall may yet be in the works. Stay tuned!)

RELATED EVENT

May 3 (Saturday) 1 pm — B&N of Southpoint hosts Jay Posey for a reading and signing of Morningside Fall. More info: http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/4684887

May 5 (Monday) 10 am — Carolina Book Beat interviews Jay Posey about Morningside Fall. More info: http://carolinabookbeat.com/

Posted in local-author-release-day | Tagged jay posey, legends of the duskwalker, morningside fall

Carolina Book Beat preview: Gray Rinehart, Lex Wilson, and Jen McConnel

Posted on 2014-04-28 at 12:18 by montsamu

Monday, April 28, 2014: Today’s speculative fiction focus on Carolina Book Beat (WCOM 103.5 FM and online, 10 AM Eastern Time) is a special 2-hour episode! I’m very excited about this one as we really have a fantastic show planned.

Gray Rinehart is an editor, author, and musician — and if everything goes as planned he’ll be performing live in the studio from his new album Truth and Lies and Make-Believe. We’ll also talk about some of his short stories (such as “Therapeutic Mathematics and the Physics of Curveballs”) and some “deeclassified” stories from his work as “Slushmaster General” for Baen Books, where he is a contract editor reading unsolicited novel manuscript submissions.

Lex Wilson is a writer and actor, award-winning in both comic book scripting (an Eagle Award for “The Time of Reflection”) and short fiction (a Writers of the Future winner for “Vestigial Girl”) with TV roles including “Revolution” and (along with Gray and myself, who have bit parts) in Baen Books’ forthcoming radioplay adaptation (by Tony Daniel) of Eric Flint’s novella “Islands”.

And Jen McConnel is an author of the new adult novel The Secret of Isobel Key (out from Bloomsbury Spark) and most recently of Daughter of Chaos, a young adult novel just released from Month9Books.

I’m looking forward to it!

UPDATE: The episode podcast is now live!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged carolina book beat, gray rinehart, jen mcconnel, lex wilson

Coming to Town: Alena Graedon for The Word Exchange at The Regulator Bookshop, Flyleaf Books, and McIntyre's Books

Posted on 2014-04-27 at 14:4 by montsamu

Durham native Alena Graedon's debut novel The Word Exchange was released in early April, and she's bringing the book "home" from Brooklyn for three events this week in the Triangle area: Tuesday April 29 at The Regulator Bookshop (7 pm), Thursday May 1 at Flyleaf Books (7 pm), and Saturday May 3 at McIntyre's Books (11 am). Called "a dystopian novel for the digital age", The Word Exchange offers an inventive, suspenseful, and decidedly original vision of the dangers of technology and of the enduring power of the printed word. "In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted 'death of print' has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are things of the past, and we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but also have become so intuitive that they hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange." Written from the first person perspective of "twentysomething" Anana Johnson, The Word Exchange shifts from paean to the printed word to a twist-by-turn mystery cum techno-thriller -- though that undercurrent of what we give up when we lose control over our own language cuts throughout. Here, Graedon took the time to answer a few questions about technological dystopias, the voice of her protagonist, and what it feels like to "come home" with a Doubleday-published first novel in hand.

We've seen a lot of Orwellian dystopias lately: surveillance, ruthless authority. But The Word Exchange seems a bit more on the Huxley side of things: we've met the enemy and they are us: our lifestyles and technology own us rather than the other way around. Is that a fair way of looking at it?

That’s really insightful. The answer to the question of who bears responsibility when things start going wrong with technology is a little hazy. The characters in the book have become so habituated to letting their devices serve as sort of proxy selves that their own memories, cognitive capacities, and even their abilities to use words have started to corrode. Once dependency has reached that stage, it’s hard to say who—or what—is to blame. If a device misfires, and in a way that even its user doesn’t recognize, where does the fault lie? With the corporation that knowingly manufactured a potentially dangerous device? With the government that didn’t regulate it? With the person who bought and used it? Or with the machine itself? It’s hard to say.

I haven’t necessarily tried to answer those questions in the novel, but I have tried to create the opportunity for readers to think, if they choose, about their own agency, and how they’d ideally like for technologies and devices to enhance their lives, but also in which ways they might like to maintain autonomy over their realities. Most of all, though, I’ve just tried to create a good story that I hope people will enjoy reading.

It's also a time where the YA dystopia is all the rage: The Hunger Games, Divergent. What made an adult voice the right one for The Word Exchange?

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged alena graedon, flyleaf books, mcintyres books, the regulator bookshop, the word exchange

Friday Quick Updates: Spirits to Enforce, The Festival of Legends, Alena Graedon, Jen McConnel, and Clay and Susan Griffith

Posted on 2014-04-25 at 14:59 by montsamu

Friday, April 25, 2014: There's a packed weekend and week ahead for the Triangle area, with plays, festivals and jousting, book events, new books, and more. While quite a few locals are heading up to RavenCon in Richmond, Virginia this weekend, quite a few more will be at Chapel Hill's Storybook Farm on Saturday and Sunday for the third annual Festival of Legends, featuring jousting and other fighting demonstrations, live music and other entertainment, Paperhand Puppet Intervention, and more. (Including Starrlight Mead and Mystery Brewing Company.)

Meanwhile, opening last night and continuing through May 10 is Spirits to Enforce at Durham's Manbites Dog Theater Company. "In a secret submarine lair, 12 superheroes - the Fathom Town Enforcers - face their greatest challenge: a telemarketing fundraiser for their long-dreamed-of production of The Tempest." Featuring many local and regional performers and directed by Duke's Jeff Storer.

And next week we get a pair of book readings (Alena Graedon's The Word Exchange on Tuesday and Jen McConnel's Daughter of Chaos on Wednesday) both at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, along with a 4-author event at Lady Jane's Salon RDU on Wednesday featuring Raleigh authors Clay and Susan Griffith (The Vampire Empire series) as well as Jennifer Delamere and Reese Ryan.

Also, on Monday April 28, I'm hosting a special 2-hour episode of Carolina Book Beat on WCOM-FM, with writer, editor, and musician Gray Rinehart, writer and actor Alex Wilson, and author and teacher Jen McConnel. It's going to be fantastic! So tune in on 103.5 FM or online, starting at 10 AM; the next week, Monday May 5, my guest is Durham author Jay Posey, as his second "Legends of the Duskwalker" novel, Morningside Fall, comes out this coming Tuesday. The sequel to his post-apocalyptic debut Three, I'm looking forward to getting a chance to talk with him about the book's influences as well as his work for Red Storm.

Meanwhile! I picked up a flyer for round two of a really neat event which sold out last year: on Wednesday, June 4 at 7:30 pm, at Raleigh's Meymandi Concert Hall, the North Carolina Symphony presents "Video Games Live: Bonus Round", a new show building off the success of last year's inaugural "Video Games Live". This one features MegaMan, Silent Hill 2, Metroid, Shadow of the Colossus, Journey, God of War, Mass Effect, StarCraft II, Dota 2, Beyond Good & Evil, Destiny, Final Fantasy, and Warcraft. "Call 919.733.2750 and mention the promo code PLAYNOW to buy your tickets for $48 (regularly $65)."

So! See you out and about? And for those heading to RavenCon or particularly The Festival of Legends, I could use some help getting upcoming event flyers out there. See the end of the post for the latest.

-Sam

UPCOMING EVENTS, APRIL 2014

Posted in Friday Quick Updates | Tagged alena graedon, festival of legends, jen mcconnel, ravencon

2014 East Coast Game Conference, Day 1

Posted on 2014-04-23 at 20:4 by montsamu

April 23, 2014, Durham, NC: Thanks to a generous last-minute press pass, I had a chance to stop by day one of ECGC - the East Coast Game Conference - this morning at the Raleigh Convention Center. I've been to a half-dozen? conventions of various kinds (science fiction, health and fitness, anime, etc.) at this venue and each has taken advantage of the space in different ways. Here, the ECGC is well-laid-out, with branding stickers on the (many!) glass-surfaced entrances into the convention space and plenty of room and people to handle registration without fuss or backups.

After registering I headed straight for the Expo, which starts as an in-hallway affair before expanding into the Expo Hall Proper. Here, schools pitch their programs and specialties and game companies pitch both their projects and open positions as well as their engines and platforms. In the hall, the two which most caught my eye -- though "swag of the day" goes to the Magic 8-ball from Insomniac Games -- were Wake Tech's Simulation and Game Development program as well as a "Goat Simulator" game showcasing Epic Games' Unreal Engine. Getting hands-on with the goat simulator, I was encouraged to perform a backflip, but instead got carried away with running my goat forward for a hard stop to force a pretty nice "skid stop" animation; this eventually led to darting my goat out of an alley and into a street just in time to be killed and thump-thump-thump run-over by a very large truck. (I think I earned some bonus points, somehow, for this spectacular method of demise.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged anna maynard, ecgc, epic games, raleigh convention center, red storm, richard dansky, wayne godwin, will hindmarch

Coming to Town: Ann VanderMeer for The Time Traveler's Almanac at Flyleaf Books on Monday April 21 at 7 pm

Posted on 2014-04-18 at 16:14 by montsamu

Multiple award-winning editor Ann VanderMeer has been a frequent visitor to the Carolinas, both as an instructor at the SharedWorlds teen summer writing camp at Wofford College and multiple events both at Asheville's Malaprop's Bookstore and in the Triangle. In her 3rd appearance in the Triangle in the past 4 years, she will be at Chapel Hill's Flyleaf Books on Monday, April 21, as part of a tour for The Time Traveler's Almanac, a definitive, nearly 1000 page anthology of time travel stories. The tour continues on Wednesday, April 23 at Lexington's Joseph-Beth Booksellers and on Thursday, April 24 at Malaprop's. VanderMeer took the time to talk about anthologies, editing for Tor.com, teaching, and why she keeps coming back to the Carolinas.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="199"] The Time Traveler's Almanac, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer (Tor Books)[/caption]

Your reprint anthologies have taken quite a shift in size: after The New Weird and three moderate-sized Steampunk anthologies, both The Weird and The Time Traveler's Almanac push (or in the case of The Weird) exceed 1000 pages -- and come from larger publishers. Did the scope of the project necessitate finding a bigger publisher, or did having the support of a larger publisher allow for the scope?

Each of these projects was different in theme, scope, approach and philosophy.  With both The Weird and The Time Traveler’s Almanac, the goal was to provide as inclusive as possible an overview of over 100 years of fiction in those select areas.  The New Weird was designed to capture a moment in time and illustrate through the fiction and non-fiction selections just what this literary movement was all about; from its precursors to current examples.  And each of the three Steampunk anthologies focused on different goals yet again; starting off with the early days in the first, the modern development across the globe in the second and then, with the third in the series, seeing Steampunk fiction as a revolutionary act.

You've been asked about your (many!) favorites from The Time Traveler's Almanac, but I wonder about some of the stories that you couldn't quite fit into the book -- whether they were too similar to other stories, or cases where reprint rights couldn't be managed. Do any stories stick out from that perspective?

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged ann vandermeer, flyleaf books, malaprops bookstore

Friday Quick Updates: Elizabeth Langston, Chris Giarrusso, Atomic Comedy, Powerful Women in YA Lit, Mary Roach, and more

Posted on 2014-04-12 at 12:57 by montsamu

Saturday, April 12, 2014: Yeah, it’s Saturday, but I didn’t get these out yesterday and there’s a big weekend ahead. Er. Upon us.

First up, covering Saturday means 3 events to tell you about:

• 10:30 am to 4 pm -- Ultimate Comics hosts G-Man & Mini-Marvel Creator Chris Giarrusso "for a signing of epic proportions! There will be FREE food, drinks, LIVE ART, and plenty of good times! This will be be a fun, all-ages event, so bring the whole family and don't forget to ask for a FREE SKETCH! If the weather is nice we will break out the grill and cook up some hotdogs!"
• 3 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts Elizabeth Langston – ‘A Whisper in Time’.
• 9 pm -- Durham's Atomic Empire hosts "Atomic Comedy" in a regular geeky comedy series. Show starts at 9:30 pm.

In other local writerly news, Raleigh author Betty Cross is a regular at area conventions, and her new novel Mistress of Land and Sea has just been released by Double Dragon eBooks. It’s a “YA epic fantasy” and is her third novel.

-Sam

UPCOMING EVENTS, APRIL 2014

12 (Saturday) — 10:30 am to 4 pm — Ultimate Comics hosts G-Man & Mini-Marvel Creator Chris Giarrusso “for a signing of epic proportions! There will be FREE food, drinks, LIVE ART, and plenty of good times! This will be be a fun, all-ages event, so bring the whole family and don’t forget to ask for a FREE SKETCH! If the weather is nice we will break out the grill and cook up some hotdogs!“

12 (Saturday) 3 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts Elizabeth Langston – ‘A Whisper in Time’.

12 (Saturday) 9 pm — Durham’s Atomic Empire hosts “Atomic Comedy” in a regular geeky comedy series. Show starts at 9:30 pm.

13 (Sunday) 2 pm — Flyleaf Books hosts Girl Power!: A Panel on Powerful Women in Young Adult Literature featuring Jessica Spotswood, Nathan Kotecki, Meagan Spooner, and Alexandra Duncan.

13 (Sunday) 7 to 9 pm — As part of the NC Science Festival, best-selling non-fiction author Mary Roach will be in conversation with Frank Stasio at The Carolina Theatre of Durham.

15 (Tuesday) 7 pm — RTSFS book group discusses Jo Walton’s Among Others at the Southpoint B&N. More info: http://www.rtsfs.com/

15 (Tuesday) 7:30 pm — The Carrack Modern Art (111 W Parrish St, Durham) hosts “a night of readings featuring kathryn l. pringle, Brian Howe, Scott Daughtridge, and Gina Myers.” More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/828808007132930/

17 (Thursday) 6:30 pm — Launch party at downtown Durham pub 106 Main for Eryk Pruitt’s southern-fried neo-noir crime novel Dirtbags. “We’ll have copies to sell, or you can bring your own for a signature. Mike is slinging $3 well drinks all night long. Invite all your friends, bring some plus-ones or plus-twos. Let’s pack this place out and have a good time.” More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/282781161888049/

17 (Thursday) 7 pm — The Barnes & Noble of Brier Creek hosts Mur Lafferty for a signing of Ghost Train to New Orleans. More info: http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/83303

19 (Saturday) 8 pm until late — The Clockwork Ball: A Steampunk Party at the Haw River Ballroom, hosted by The Davenport Sisters. More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1388306014723527/?ref_notif_type=plan_user_invited&source=1

NEW: 21 (Monday) 7 pm — Flyleaf Books hosts award-winning editor Ann VanderMeer for a discussion of her just-released anthology The Time Traveler’s Almanac. More info: http://flyleafbooks.com/event/2014/04/21/day

NEW: 23-24 (Wed-Thu) — ECGC — East Coast Game Conference — at the Raleigh Convention Center, with keynote speakers Mary DeMarle (Eidos) and Ken Rolston (The Elder Scrolls) and narrative track panelists Will Hindmarch, Mur Lafferty, and more. More info: http://www.ecgconf.com/

NEW-NEW: 24 (Thu) 7:30 pm — Author Teju Cole to give the Kenan Distinguished Lecture in Ethics at Duke University, with the title “Here Comes Everybody: The Crisis of Equality in the Age of Social Media”. Held at the Schiciano Auditorium at the Fitzpatrick Center with a reception to follow. More info: http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/blog/kenan-distinguished-lecture-with-teju-cole-apr-24/

[for full events listings see the most recent newsletter]

Posted in Friday Quick Updates

Coming to Town: Alexandra Duncan for Salvage, as part of Sunday's panel on powerful women in YA literature at Flyleaf Books

Posted on 2014-04-11 at 20:47 by montsamu

A week ago, Asheville author Alexandra Duncan contributed a “Hardest Part” guest post. Now she’s back as a “Coming to Town” interviewee ahead of her appearance this Sunday at 2 pm as part of Flyleaf Books’ Girl Power!: A Panel on Powerful Women in Young Adult Literature featuring Jessica Spotswood, Nathan Kotecki, Meagan Spooner, and Alexandra Duncan. We talked briefly about, well, the obvious: powerful women in YA lit, how the event was put together, and her just-released debut novel Salvage.

When you think of “Powerful Women in Young Adult Literature” who are the characters and authors who come to mind?

I definitely think of Kristin Cashore’s characters in Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue. Katsa, from Graceling, seems like an obvious answer, since she’s a trained fighter, but I think all of her primary female characters are excellent examples of different types of strength. I also think of the Robin McKinley’s Aerin and Harry in The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword.

Who came up with the panel idea and how did you get involved?

Fellow Y.A. author Megan Spooner invited me to join the panel, which she organized with Nathan Kotecki and Jessica Spotswood. They were interested in having a librarian on the panel, and since I’m both a librarian and author, I was happy to join in.

Your novel Salvage certainly features a “powerful woman in YA literature”. What has the early response to her story been?

The responses that have moved me the most have been the ones where readers said they felt like the book was written just for them. I can’t imagine a better compliment.

I know Malaprop’s is a fantastic bookstore for events, but do you ever come to the Triangle area for readings or conventions?

I’m always looking for a good excuse to come to the Triangle area. I’ll be in Chapel Hill this Sunday, April 13 at 2 p.m. at Flyleaf Books for the Girl Power! Panel. I hope I have a chance to come back soon.

Any other events coming up?

I’ll be doing a Goodreads Q&A from 3 to 8 p.m. Monday, April 14^th, and I’ll be at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 6:30 p.m. May 31^st for a reading. You can check the events page on my web site for information about future events.

If you’re so inclined, you can help spread the word about the event in any number of ways, including via this Facebook event.

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged alexandra duncan, flyleaf books