Archive for September, 2010
Now Available from iBooks
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If you’re an iPad/iPod/iPhone user, you can now download our first 8 titles through the iBookstore.
Titles available this month are:
Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon
The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon
Slights by Kaaron Warren
Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett
The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe and
Winter Song by Colin Harvey
We’re still waiting for Moxyland to go through the Apple approval process. Another batch of titles will be made available, soon.
And remember – these titles are already available from a number of eBook outlets, including Amazon US and Ca, Barnes & Noble, and our own eBook store (see top, right).
Batmaaaaan, Batmaaaaan, Batmaaaan
Posted by: | CommentsOK, this is nothing to do with Angry Robot, but it made me laugh. A lot.
Watch the first video, first (it’s only 8 seconds long). Then see what someone made with it in video number 2. Don’t eat anything at the time – you’ll snort it out of your nose. (With thanks to Alasdair Stuart for telling me about this).
Salon Futura
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There are plenty of good online SF magazines around, and more appear on a regular basis. Most of them disappear again, pretty quickly, but we have high hopes for the latest one to launch – Salon Futura.
Why is this one different? Well, it’s been created by (multi Hugo Award-winning) Cheryl Morgan. Cheryl knows pretty much everyone in the field of literary SF, and as well as being a very respected SF critic and fan, she has a superb track record. Not only will Cheryl be able to attract the big names of SF, she’ll also be able to attract the interesting ones (though of course, there is overlap).
There are plenty of interesting articles and interviews in Issue 1, which is presented as a mix of written and video features.
Read it here, and don’t forget to bookmark it, or add it to your RSS feed.
Another win for Slights
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We all knew this book was something special, and in the year since it was published in the UK, Slights has received multiple award nominations. Earlier in the year, it won the Shadow Award for best novel, and we learned less than half an hour ago that it has just won the Ditmar Award for Best Novel.
On hearing the news (live from Australia – thanks to the incomparable Cheryl Morgan) we immediately opened the bottle of champagne that was lying in our fridge, and toasted Kaaron, all those thousands of miles away.
We did take a photo, and we Twittered it, but really, it’s not a pleasant sight, so I’m not posting it here. Seek it out on Twitter if you really must.
But, CONGRATULATIONS to Kaaron! (Again!)
Slights is out in all good bookstores across the US and Canada (from Tuesday this week – how great is that timing), as well as in eBook format from various eBook retailers, as well as us (see the link, top right).
UK readers will be able to order Slights again, in about a month – or order from UK stores, or buy the eBook.
Lauren, Gav, Kaaron, and Mike
Posted by: | CommentsThe Angry Robot plans for world domination continue apace. Over at Dark Fiction Review, as part of the Angry Robot Special, there’s a special guest blog by Mike Shevdon (author of Sixty-One Nails and The Road to Bedlam) in which Mike talks about the state of the genre, Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City is reviewed, and Kaaron Warren (Slights and Walking the Tree) is interviewed.
First up, Mike Shevdon, on why fantasy makes such great TV:
Because urban fantasy is set in current reality, it becomes possible to adapt it into current time. That’s why True Blood and The Dresden Files (and Buffy) could make TV, and consequently reach a whole new audience. After the show is over that audience naturally wants more, and the sudden explosion of vampire romances and supernatural detectives is the result.
Next up, the Zoo City is as fantastical or as ordinary as you want it to be… it’s exactly the kind of book that should get her on late night US chat shows as it is carried up the New York Times Bestseller list. Yes, it’s that good. Zoo City is major league writing. It is effortless, easy and, quite frankly, astonishing.
And, although Kaaron wrote the award-winning horror Slights, nothing will prepare you for the (frankly disturbing) image that accompanies her interview.
I love that moment of original spark and will often take pages of notes before even thinking about writing the story. It can be just a title, like Cage Life, used to describe the life of Mustafa 1, who was kept imprisoned for 14 years by his brother.
We’re having a pretty good time of it in the dead-tree magazine, too. As well as last week’s superb review of Zoo City in SFX, this week, SciFi Now tells us:
Lauren Beukes stuns with a richly textured venture into a pseudo-fantastical Johannesburg of the future… this is a fine novel that will wrap itself around your imagination like a sloth on your own shoulders.
4**** – Must Read Now
and SFX also covered Gav Thorpe’s epic The Crown of the Blood:
there’s plenty to keep you turning the pages… An intriguing ending promises something different for book two
And finally (for now) at Falcata Times, Mike Shevdon is interviewed.
FT: It is often said that if you can write a short story you can write anything. How true do you think this is and what have you written that either proves or disproves this POV?
MS: My first work of fiction was over 150,000 words and I really struggle to write anything under 5,000 words. I don’t know whether an accomplished short story writes can write everything, but I suspect not – the two forms are quite different. It’s a bit like saying a good pastry chef can cook anything, which is fine until you have to eat their mushroom and banana risotto.
Send us a photo of you in B&N and Win!
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See the display in the photo? Angry Robot displays are in Barnes and Noble stores across the USA. This one was taken in a B&N store in Springfield, New Jersey.
What we’d like you to do is to take a photograph of you, holding one of our books, standing next to one of our displays in a Barnes and Noble*. The display should be clearly in shot with you. It’s probably a good idea to get permission from the store before you start taking snaps, though.
Send your photo to us at: INCOMING @ ANGRYROBOTBOOKS.COM
We’ll blog some of our favourite photos (so by entering you’re giving us permission to use the photo in this way). And one lucky winner will receive some random Angry Robot stuff from the Angry Robot Cupboard of Win. We’ll get one of our authors to choose the outright winner, so we don’t get the blame. The prizes won’t be books this time around, though – they’ll be something… else.
Competition closes midnight Saturday 4th September (that’s midnight, wherever you are). No purchase necessary to enter (though we’d obviously like you to).
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*Thinking about it a little more logically, it might be easier to get someone else to take a photo of you, standing next to the display. If either Mr Fantastic or Elastic Man happen to be reading this, you can obviously make your own arrangements.
The Genesis of Slights
Posted by: | Commentsby Kaaron Warren.
Kaaron Warren’s critically-acclaimed – and award-winning – debut novel Slights is arguably the best horror novel of the year. Here, Kaaron tells us about how it all started…
Slights is the story of a young woman who sees the afterlife as a place where anyone she’s ever slighted is waiting in a dark room to take a piece of her.
I wrote it as a short story first but was frustrated trying to cram all I wanted to say into 3000 words. The more I wrote, the stronger Stevie became as a character and the more she wanted to say. Once I started telling the stories of the people she slights, the novel grew and grew. I wanted to tell those stories, though. I knew that every body in the room had a voice. Read More→
Today’s tidbits
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday was a bit of an epic blog-fest for us, so I’ll be cutting down today’s entries to just two, though it was extremely gratifying to see so much enthusiasm around the internet for our US/Canada launch yesterday.
Dark Fiction Review continues their epic Angry Robot special, with an interview with Colin Harvey:
I’m actually quite an optimist, most of the time I think that we’ll muddle through somehow, but it will be despite – rather than because of – our efforts. I have the feeling that there are going to be less of us in a hundred years. A lot of whether the human race survives the century depends on how we cope with the end of cheap oil. If we can find an alternative to oil, or deal with the scarcity equably, then we stand a chance.
and a review of Andy Remic’s blood-soaked, clockwork vampire epic, Kell’s Legend:
The vachine are an absolutely incredible concept: fascinating, slightly appalling and something I would never have expected. I loved the way they worked and found their society fascinating, although clearly unpleasant… It’s a fast and brutal fantasy adventure with some fun characters and some fantastic ideas. I am really excited to see the series develop.
Completely Booked also loves Andy’s novel:
it’s a fine start to a heart-pounding action tale, complete with quests and durance vile. Oh, and a bad guy you can really hate. I like it!
If you entered last week’s competition over at io9, the winners have been revealed.
Meanwhile, Gav Thorpe’s The Crown of the Blood gets the review treatment at Daniel’s Thoughts:
The Crown of the Blood is a very well-plotted and well-constructed book; the politics and military elements meld well together and the character-driven plot is exceedingly well-paced, pushing ahead without overlooking the more dull elements of military campaign (there’s a nice bit about waiting being the worst part, done in a fresh enough way to not be clichéd!) and moving slowly enough to let us get to know the characters and get attached to them… this is an absolutely fantastic novel; I recommend it.
That’s all for now – enjoy your day.
