Coming to Town: Robert Beatty for Serafina and the Black Cloak at Quail Ridge Books and Triangle Reads Moveable Feast

Posted on 2015-09-15 at 19:10 by montsamu

Asheville author Robert Beatty has a problem we might wish on all of our favorite authors: his Disney-Hyperion debut novel Serafina and the Black Cloak is selling more quickly than it can be restocked, even by online behemoths Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Historically-set at the end of the 19th century, the novel opens with the eponymous Serafina skulking through the shadows of the recently-completely Biltmore House, hunting rats. Before long, however, she's stumbled onto something far worse: a mysterious stranger has just caused a terrified girl to disappear into the swirling darkness of his black cloak, and now his attention is fully on Serafina herself.

A champion fencer, author Beatty has plenty of experience with lightning-quick reflexes, and as a fan of Tolkien, T.H. White, and Gene Wolf, he's certainly well-versed in both Old and New World fantasy storytelling. Debuting at #3 in The New York Times bestseller list upon release, both readers and critics (Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and the Historical Novel Society, among others) agree the technology entrepreneur-turned-author's synthesis of these influences is a compelling, spooky read for both young readers and grown-ups alike.

This weekend, Beatty is one of the guests at the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance trade show at the Hilton North Raleigh/Midtown, where he'll be taking part in SIBA/Triangle Reads Moveable Feast of Authors on Sunday afternoon, before which he'll be in Raleigh for a (fantastically well-attended, if the Facebook event RSVP count is to be believed!) reading and signing at Quail Ridge Books on Saturday at 6 pm. I'm grateful to Mr. Beatty for his time via email for this "Coming to Town" interview, and hope you enjoy his answers about his success, his goals in writing the book, the short-film quality book trailer, and what's coming up next. Enjoy!

Q: I suppose it's a good problem to have when even Barnes & Noble and Amazon literally can't stock your book fast enough. Have you been surprised at the overwhelming response to Serafina's story?

I put my heart and soul into writing Serafina and the Black Cloak, so I was hoping people would enjoy it, but, yes, I’ve been very pleased by how deeply people love the character and the story.

Q: The Chapter 1 excerpt nearly had my head spinning: is Serafina a cat? No, but wait, why is she living in the basement? And how can she see in the dark? Who (and what!) is this incredibly creepy man in the black cloak, and will Serafina get away? It's not a first chapter where I tell my daughter, "OK, now, good night, sweet dreams!"

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged quail ridge books, robert beatty

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Sunset Mantle by Alter S. Reiss

Posted on 2015-09-15 at 15:01 by angelablackwell

Review of Sunset Mantle by Alter S. Reiss (Tor.com September 15, 2015)

This is the story of the warrior Cete and the seamtress with whom he fell in love. He was attracted to her shop by a beautiful mantle which he is told was paid for but not bought . Marelle lives in Reach Antach and Cete joins the Antach Army in order to buy a work from her.

Things don’t go so well for Cete after the army musters out. His relationship with Marelle had advanced to him visiting her shop almost daily before the army went into battle. She ends up taking him to her house after he receives a beating but he gets upset because they aren’t married and she could be shamed by his presence. Ever the practical woman, Marelle promptly returns with a priest to marry them! She links her fate to Cete’s by marrying him. They both must help save the Reach from traitorous army officers who hate Cete because he exposed their plans.

Cete and Marelle have a wonderful relationship and they are left with opportunities at the end of the novella, so hopefully we will see them again!

This novella looks at the issues of lawful orders versus ethical orders. Should an officer follow someone’s orders if he knows they are a traitor? Anyone who loves low tech military battles, or military fantasy will appreciate the well-done ones here. Also, the cost of the war to the people of both sides is quite clear and is not glossed over at all.

Affliliate buy links which support both Bull Spec and your local independent bookstore: IndieBound [paperback, $9.99] and Kobo [ebook, $2.99]

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Dawnbreaker, His Father's Eyes, Waterborne Exile, and The End of All Things

Posted on 2015-09-15 at 02:03 by angelablackwell

Review of Dawnbreaker: Legends of the Duskwalker Book Three by Jay Posey (Angry Robot Books, August  4, 2015)

This is the third volume of Cass and Wren’s story. This time they spend much of the story apart, so we have separate narratives. Wren leaves Greenstone with Three’s training brother Haiku and goes off to the tower where they live in order to be trained. He learns a great deal from Three’s teacher but most of what he learns is about himself. He becomes more confident and secure in himself and much more independent. After the decisions he must make in the final battle, Wren is no longer a child, but a small size man.

Cass is fighting to stay alive because Asher can track her. She and Gamble’s group get attacked several times and once Cass realizes she is being tracked she sends Gamble off to Wren (or where she thinks Wren is). Gamble’s group go to Greenstone and they and all the local bigwigs help form a plan for defense since the city guard refuse to believe an attack is imminent. Cass and Wren head to Greenstone for the final confrontation with Asher.

The two viewpoint characters in the book, Cass and Wren, have grown and changed over the course of the series, and both are vastly different at the end of this volume than they were at the beginning of it. Because Wren is a child, showing the changes he goes through without sacrificing his childlike qualities is a difficult stunt to pull off. The author does a good job of making him more responsible and able to strategize and do some things above his age because of the training, but shows that Wren still wants to be a child at the end of the day, and this shows in the choices Wren makes. Cass has to be able to let Wren go in order to protect him and in the end this allows her to learn more about herself as well since Wren isn’t there to do some tasks for her.

This is a post-apocalyptic science fiction story which feels sort of like an urban fantasy. There is fighting in amongst buildings and the characters explore urban areas. There is hidden tech which the bad guys use and the good guys want to destroy. There is extensive use of guns and even little Wren fires one in this book.  If you like urban fantasy or low-tech science fiction then this would suit you. It is a character story, primarily focused on a mother and the fight between her two sons, one of whom has gone completely into the digital world and in order to get his little brother threatens their entire known universe.  You really want to root for Cass and Wren and hope they can save the last remnants of civilization. It will be interesting to see if both mother and son enter the training tower of Three’s teacher in another book.

Review of His Father’s Eyes (Case Files of Justis Fearsson) by David B. Coe (Baen, August 4, 2015)

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship | Tagged david b coe, jay posey, john scalzi

Friday Quick Updates: F. Hampton Carmine's Kindle Scout campaign; the Monster Mash 24-hour Flash Fiction Contest; the Bookmarks Festival in Winston-Salem; a news, interviews, and reviews roundup; upcoming events; and more

Posted on 2015-09-11 at 18:52 by montsamu

Friday, September 11, 2015: As of this writing, there are 23 days left (October 5) to nominate F. Hampton Carmine's Kindle Scout submission of Destiny's Handmaiden for publication: "Their birth began a time of endings and beginnings in Destiny's prophesy for The Dragon Isles. Many would become her tools, all would be transformed, but none more than Aislin. She suckled at the same breast, crawled and walked in the same nursery, studied with the same tutors, and felt like a twin. Languages, academics, courtly manners and intrigues were learned together, but Caitrin was the Princess and Aislin was her handmaiden until Liadan reappeared in her life, exposing their true destiny." While quite a few of us certainly have "it's complicated" feelings about Amazon as a bookseller, this would be a huge thing for Hampton, as he'd get an advance, an editor, and marketing help that would be a big boost to his career. So! Please, go click and vote!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="205"] F. Hampton Carmine[/caption]

Meanwhile, the Charlotte Geeks are hosting their first ever 24-Hour Flash Fiction (1000 words or less) storywriting contest, starting this morning, so... get typing: "We will post the topic on Friday morning and then once posted give all participants 24 hours to write and submit their entry. The winning entry will be read aloud on our podcast Guardians of the Geekery and posted our website (www.charlottegeeks.com). The winner will also receive one free ticket to this year's Geek Gala on Saturday, October 24th." The deadline is set at 9:15 AM on Saturday, September 12. Good luck!

Posted in Friday Quick Updates

The Exploding Spaceship Special Earth Girl Universe Review Column!

Posted on 2015-09-09 at 19:47 by angelablackwell

Special Janet Edwards' Earth Girl Three Part Review: Earth 2788 (July 4, 2015 by the author), Earth and Fire (July 31, 2015 by the author), and Earth Flight (US release by Pyr, September 8, 2015)

In order to prepare new US readers for the release of the third part of the trilogy and to give UK readers some new material, Janet Edwards has been posting short stories about the characters we see in Earth Girl, the first volume of the series. These were originally on her website, but this made them difficult to read offline as the formatting was not intended for e-readers. The novel sticks to the viewpoint of Jarra, so we only get information about other characters when they share it with her. Now the short stories are available on Amazon as a volume called Earth 2788. They all tell a small piece of the background stories of the characters in Earth Girl. Only one story features Jarra; the rest are about her classmates, relatives, and bosses. The stories really add to the complexity of the Earth Girl universe and give some viewpoints and insights which could never be seen through Jarra’s eyes. They are all excellent stories with a great deal of emotional content. If you like science fiction with “feels” then this is an excellent volume for you. This volume is also a good way to get into the Earth Girl universe, and particularly since the price point is low ($.99) you can gift it to someone else you think would like it (appropriate for anyone over 12).

In Earth Girl it is clear that Jarra starts her college field experience with many skills which other students lack, including the operation of the machines used for the dig and having a license to fly a plane. Since Jarra is eighteen years old at the beginning of the novel, it is clear that the pilot’s license must have been a recent acquisition from the summer before college. How she gets it is described in the novella Earth and Fire. The first two chapters in the novella are the short story from the Earth 2788 volume but it has 15 new chapters. Jarra learns to fly a plane and helps fight a forest fire that threatens the ruins of Athens. It is an exciting and dangerous adventure set mostly in the skies above New York and Athens.

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

The Exploding Spaceship Release Day Edition: Review of Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell

Posted on 2015-09-09 at 05:21 by angelablackwell

Review of Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell (Tor.com Sept 8, 2015)

This is the story of the inhabitants of a small English village and how they kept some unscrupulous big box executives from conning the town into allowing them to move into the town center. The story has several viewpoint characters: Judith, the elderly witch with the not completely gone dead husband; Lizzie, the town vicar who grew up here and only recently returned; and Lizzie’s childhood friend Autumn, the owner of the magic shop who is not quite sure whether she believes in magic. Lizzie and Autumn both had traumatic experiences while away from each other and both felt that the other wasn’t there when they needed someone to listen. They discover over the course of the story that it was neither one’s fault; life was just throwing them unfortunate circumstances.

The good guys have to pull together in order to defeat the bad guys, of course, but how this is done and who has the magical knowledge needed to do it is quite a surprise. Everyone steps up their game in their own way, but the results are unexpected in many ways. Hopefully Paul Cornell will use this interesting magical village for more stories and we can see everyone again. This modern village fantasy has a different feel than his fiction set in London, it has some urban fantasy concepts but the setting feels more comforting and quaint with a tinge of darkness around the edges rather than the crowded, dark, scary feel of most urban fantasy.

Affiliate links that help support both Bull Spec and your local independent bookstore: Kobo [e-book, $2.99]

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

Coming to Town: Christopher Moore for Secondhand Souls at Quail Ridge Books

Posted on 2015-09-02 at 12:00 by montsamu

New York Times bestselling comic fantasy author Christopher Moore was last in town the May before last in support of The Serpent of Venice, the second of his novels after Fool to feature "Pocket", Moore's expanded and hilarious reinvention of The Fool from King Lear. He's also the author of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal and Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art in which the apparent suicide of one Vincent van Gogh is investigated by a baker with whom van Gogh happens to have attended art school. But! Before you get the wrong idea -- as I foolishly did -- that Moore has a flair merely for things European and ancient, let me go back to the beginning.

Ohio-born San Francisco author Christopher Moore's 1992 debut novel Practical Demonkeeping introduced readers both to Moore's wit and to his soon-to-be interconnected novels set in and around a supernatural-infused California, replete with demons, vampires (Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story), gods of various pantheons (Coyote Blue), and Death incarnate, along with recurring characters and cameo appearances from detectives to shopkeepers and even Rastafari. It's a richly textured world, though there's absolutely no required reading order, other than the strong recommendation to read actual series in order. Which brings us to...

Moore returns to town this Saturday (September 5, at Quail Ridge Books at 7 pm) for his just-released 15th novel Secondhand Souls, a direct sequel to his 2008 Quill Award winning bestseller A Dirty Job, in which acknowledged "beta-male" Charlie Asher stumbles from minivan-driving secondhand store proprietor to a new career as a death merchant, one of several such colorful characters collecting the souls of San Francisco's departed and ushering them safely onto their next lives, against the gathering forces of the underworld. Meanwhile, Asher is trying to raise his daughter Sophie, in whom Death Incarnate also has a significant interest.

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged christopher moore, quail ridge books

September newsletter: Kim Harrison, Christopher Moore, the SFWA Southeast Reading Series at Duke, Robert Beatty, Adam Morgan's Wild Piedmont, and more

Posted on 2015-09-01 at 19:58 by montsamu

Vol 5 No 6. Friday, September 4, 2015: September kicks off readings from a pair of NY Times bestselling authors, as Quail Ridge Books welcomes Kim Harrison (today, Friday) and Christopher Moore (tomorrow, Saturday) this Dragon Con weekend, and we're just two weeks away from the second Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Southeast Reading Series event at Duke University on Thursday, September 17. So! Let's start with the details of these September events highlights:

• 4 (Friday) 7 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts Kim Harrison – ‘The Drafter’. “Folks loved the Hollows series. Now Kim Harrison returns on Friday, September 4, at 7 pm with The Drafter.  ThinkThe Bourne Identity meets Minority Report in this first highly-anticipated installment of Harrison’s sexy new suspense trilogy, featuring a brilliant special task agent at the top of her field and set in a futuristic Detroit.”
• 5 (Saturday) 7 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts Christopher Moore – ‘Secondhand Souls’. “How do we describe Christopher Moore’s work? Just… go with the flow and be prepared to snort with laughter.  The author of Lamb, The Serpent of Venice and more joins us on Saturday, September 5, at 7 pm with Secondhand Souls. In this delightfully weird and funny sequel to the NY Timesbestseller A Dirty Job, the souls of the dead are mysteriously disappearing – and you know that can’t be good.”
• 17 (Thursday) 4 pm — Duke University Libraries hosts the SFWA Southeast Reading Series for “Storytelling and Migration” with authors Gail Z. Martin, Alyssa Wong, Ursula Vernon, Delilah S. Dawson, and Monica Byrne, cosponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute’s Story Lab at the FHI Garage at Duke’s Smith Warehouse. Refreshments at 4 pm, with the program to start at 4:30 pm.

Posted in newsletter

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson

Posted on 2015-09-01 at 15:01 by angelablackwell

Review of The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com Sept 1)

This story centers around a caravan, and all the various beings associated with it. The setting has an African feel, with desert, oasis, plain, city and forest features at various points of the journey. It is sort of a strange travelogue focused on Demane and his boyfriend Isa, who is the Captain of the caravan workers. Some beings in the setting are of partially alien ancestry and so have skills and abilities outside the human norm. Isa and Demane both fall into this category. Isa has augmented physical skills and Demane has magical skills. He is called Sorcerer by the members of the caravan. Isa’s “hair” gathers energy from the sun, but looks very much outside normal hair range so he keeps it wrapped unless he is alone with Demane. Through flashbacks the tale of how Demane met Isa and they fell in love is interspersed with the ongoing caravan travel to the Wildeeps, and it turns out Demane left a good job in order to travel with the love of his life. The two men have an interesting relationship while traveling with the caravan because Isa is technically Demane’s boss and the boss can’t be seen obviously playing favorites. The astute members of course realize the truth. The ending is rather tragic and not at all what a reader would expect.

The world and characters in this novella are very rich, detailed and diverse (both racially and culturally). Characters who look similar but hail from different geographical locations show a wide variation in habits, knowledge and customs. The world feels real and the reader can’t help but feel the pain of these two lovers struggling to stay together while working their way across the world. Kai Ashante Wilson has only published short fiction previously so this is his debut longer work and what a wonderful debut. We will be looking for more of his work in the future. What a wonderful start to Tor.com’s novellas program!

Affiliate links that help support both Bull Spec and your local independent bookstore: Kobo [e-book, $2.99]

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

The Exploding Spaceship Visits Sasquan - Worldcon 2015

Posted on 2015-08-31 at 17:41 by angelablackwell

This year's Worldcon was held in the Spokane Convention Center and numerous hotels surrounding it. The convention center was clean, well-maintained, accessible, and had sufficient restrooms and food locations. Food was pricey as it is in all convention centers, but the convention had a con suite in an adjacent hotel and in the evenings there were parties in a hotel several blocks away. There were also some restaurants just a block or two away which were very reasonably priced. The convention center parking was reasonable but there was not enough of it so many had to use the lot across the street which was $15.00 a day. None of the convention hotels were of a price level most fans can afford for a five day stay. It was possible to find cheaper hotels in the area, but most of them were run down and in bad repair. In fact, many parts of Spokane away from the convention center could be described as old and run down in comparison to similar areas in Seattle and Portland.

Spokane has a very nice park with an antique carousel and a giant red Radio Flyer wagon with a slide for a wagon tongue. The Spokane Falls are at the back of the park and there was a ski-lift type ride which took you out over the falls. Unfortunately due to the fires in the surrounding areas the air quality was very bad and there were health alerts which warned everyone to stay inside, so the parks and outdoor eating places could not be enjoyed. Plus it was exceptionally hot, often above 85 °F, so being outside was a nasty chore, not something pleasant. This made the parking situation worse because you choked half to death while walking to your car. Due to the health alerts there should have been better provisions for people with breathing difficulties who do not normally need a Disabled placard.

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship