Tag: Fantasy

New Moon — Stephenie Meyer

Posted on by Neal Asher

I have my fingers in my ears ready for the howls of derision. Very much enjoyed this book and hope she can keep the story telling and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion at the end of the series – I’ve got Eclipse and I’ll get the one after when it’s out in paperback. These books are also very successful and selling well so I want to know why. Apart from their targeted demographic, they have exactly the same quality as the Harry Potter books, which I also enjoyed: transparency. The author isn’t getting in the way of the story. Of course these won’t make it to many people’s top tens – I don’t mean the ‘what I really enjoyed reading’ top tens, but the ‘what I want people to think I enjoy reading’ top tens. 

Who Reads My Books? Paul Schofield.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Hi, my name’s Paul Schofield and I’m 46. I’ve been  married, to Gill, for the past 20 years. I’ve lived on the Fylde Coast in Lancashire for all my life. We have no kids. We do have three boisterous cats; two Siamese and a tabby.

We love America and spend as much time there as we can. New York and Vegas are our current favourites. I’ve enclosed a picture of the wife taken in Quark’s Bar in the Hilton Las Vegas at The Experience Tour. He did offer me 3 bars of gold pressed latinum for her, but how could I accept? Have you seen the price of gold these days? Doh!

I’ve been a big fan of Sci-Fi since reading the Day of The Triffids and The Tripods at school. I’m a big fan of Arthur C Clarke, Greg Bear, Stephen Baxter, Peter Hamilton and Greg Bear, among many others.

I work for Jobcentre Plus, in a Contact Centre, in Blackpool. It was once the home of ERNIE, the Premium Bonds number generator. I’ve worked for The Man for the last 29 years, and probably will for the next 29 too. It pays the bills…and that’s really all I can say about it. God that’s depressing!

Last March I had a second heart attack and spent 3 months at home recovering. I discovered Neal’s book Gridlinked on Amazon one day, ordered it and couldn’t put it down. I quickly ordered the other Cormac books in the series and they got me through my rehabilitation, and saved me from daytime TV!
 
 

Who Reads My Books? Caleb Young.

Posted on by Neal Asher
Here is my Bio

I’m 29 years old, grew up on a Cattle Ranch in South Texas.  I attended Texas A&M University.  I’ve read all my life, started with Jurassic Park, Congo type novels around 2-3rd grade.  Kept reading all the time.  I got addicted to SCI FI in college when I found a little resale book shop that had two complete walls dedicated to SCI FI, I started reading every work done by Sir Arthur C Clark, devoured his works.  I was averaging about one novel every two days.  Once I graduated I worked and still read on and off over the next few years.  Eventually I went to work in the Oil Field, I work on the big platforms that are out in the Gulf of Mexico drilling for oil.  Well when you get off of work, you have a lot of time to read, no grass to mow, no garden to tend, so I read, and read and read, I would average 15 books in a 21 day period.  Well when the world changing Hurricane Katrina came into the gulf and set its sites on New Orleans, our rig was evacuated, during the evacuation we spent 5 days in a hotel with no power, I had run out of books, so I found a little book store and picked up Peter F Hamilton’s “Fallen Dragon” and thats how I found the “Space Opera” Genre.  While searching for his books on Amazon UK, it recommended some of your books, I started with Gridlinked, and then Line of Polity, well while waiting for my next few Asher’s i have been reading the Max Brook’s fiction “World War Z”.  I have all of your Cormac novels, and Brass man is in queue after my current read of “Zombie Survival Guide”.  I love you style of writing, it reminds me of Louis Lamour, he wrote westerns here in the states.  Well thats my reading history, heres my bio stuff.  I have a wife who reads as much as I do, and love video games, a 2.5 year old daughter who loves to be read to.  I’m working my way through the compilation of ACC short stories and she really enjoys them.  I have two dogs a Chihuahua that reminds me of Shuriken, and a laborador mix.  Please find attached some pictures of myself.  I will send one more email tommorrow with a picture of my Asher Books lined up.  Thanks for being a down to earth guy.

Cheers,

Caleb Young

Conflicts

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s the cover for Ian Whates upcoming ‘Conflicts’ anthology:

Update:  

Just to notify you that, as of late yesterday, the anthology has its own page on the NewCon Press website and is available for prepurchase (indeed, the first copy sold this morning!)
The eagle-eyed among you may note a small error in that the ‘buy’ button claims both editions are ‘signed and limited’ whereas only the hardback will be (signing sheets are doing the rounds at this moment).  The webmaster has been notified and that should be corrected soon.

— Ian.

L is for Lee and LeGuin.

Posted on by Neal Asher
STEPHEN LAWHEAD
EMPHYRION
TANITH LEE
HERE IN COLD HELL 
HEARTBEAST 
ELEPHANTASM 
NIGHTSHADES 
THE STORM LORD 
VIVIA 
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT 
VOLKHAVAAR 
THE ELECTRIC FOREST 
THE BOOK OF THE BEAST 
KILL THE DEAD 
EAST OF MIDNIGHT 
LYCANTHIA 
GOLD UNICORN 
THE BIRTHGRAVE 
SILVER METAL LOVER 
CAST A BRIGHT SHADOW 
DELIRIUM’S MISTRESE
URSULA K LEGUIN
PLANET OF EXILE 
CITY OF ILLUSIONS 
EYE OF THE HERON 
ROCANNON’S WORLD
BARRY M LONGYEAR
MANIFEST DESTINY
RICHARD A LUPOFF
FOOL’S HILL

Who Reads My Books? Bob Lock.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Hi, my name’s Bob Lock and I’m an alcoholic… oh wait, wrong forum!
Umm… hi, my name’s Bob Lock and I’m an Asherholic…
I first stumbled onto SF in the mid 60s when I was fifteen and left school to work as an office boy in Wm.Hancock & Sons in Swansea, a brewery. One of the guys in the office was an avid fan and he loaned me a copy of Alfred Bester’s ‘The Stars My Destination’ I read it in one go, and so, a new SF fan was born.
I worked for the brewery until meeting my wife Anna, who is Italian, and once married we decided to go over to Italy and try and make a life for ourselves there. I taught English as a second language in two private schools and then was offered a job by a large foundry as an assistant to the director, translator and general dog’s body. About four years later, with all our savings spent, we decided to return to the UK (holidaying in Italy is vastly different from trying to make a living out there with a wife and two kids!) Back in the UK I managed to return to the brewery (which was now Bass) and worked my way up to technician in both the beer and soft drinks side.
I retired early some years ago and started writing in earnest (in English would have been better, but whatcha gonna do?) Some of my short stories were taken up by a few online e-zines. A couple of text adventure games I wrote were fairly successful and finally I had a short of mine published in a horror anthology called Cold Cuts which was edited and put together by Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis, two Welsh writers who’ve had numerous works published including some Dr Who stuff.
In 2007 my debut dark SF/F/Horror novel ‘Flames of Herakleitos’ was published by Screamingdreams Publishing and I was fortunate enough to have Neal read a copy and he allowed me to use some of his comments on the back cover (I only used the ones where he praised the story and left out the rest…)
2008 saw a short of mine in Nemonymous 8 – Cone Zero, called The Cone Zero Ultimatum, receive a lot of praise and I have to admit it’s one of my favourite stories.
2009 I was also published in Nemomymous 9 – Cern Zoo (I can’t say which story is mine yet as all Nemomymous authors remain anonymous until the next edition is released.) This is a ground-breaking idea put into practise by the publisher D.F.Lewis (who is also well known for his own novels and stories)
2009 also saw a SF novella of mine called A Cloud Of Madness published and this is available through Amazon.Com only, at the moment.
2009 I surprised myself by writing a zombie novella called ‘They Feed On Flesh’ for the NaNoWriMo competition to write 50,000 + words in a month. I’m a very slow writer so 50,893 words in 30 days is a big deal for me!
2010 will see the publication of an Urban Fantasy novella of mine by Screamingdreams and that will be called ‘The Empathy Effect’
2010 I hope to finish the sequel to ‘Flames of Herakleitos’ (working on it now) and that will be called ‘They Made Monsters.’
Neal’s writing ticks all the boxes for me, even his blog is a delight to read and I don’t think any fan could find a more helpful and accessible writer than him.
And , that’s all folks!
http://bob-lock.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/bob_lock
www.celt.org.uk
www.flamesofherakleitos.com

Terry Pratchett

Posted on by Neal Asher

Anybody watch the Dimbleby lecture from Terry Pratchett ‘Shaking Hands with Death’? Or rather the Pratchett lecture delivered by Tony Robinson because this brilliant and wise writer is too buggered up by Alzheimers to deliver something like that. Here’s a bit about it, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find more if you do a search. He’s feels the terminally ill should be allowed to kill themselves, that the means should be made available – assisted by medical practitioners if necessary – and I thoroughly agree. The government doesn’t own our bodies (though of course it would like to) and it is our choice to make. In fact I’ve always agreed with this, but it’s even more plain to me after seeing both my father and my brother on their death beds. I want the option Pratchett is after for himself: sitting in a chair in his garden with a glass of brandy and exit potion of choice. No damned way do I want to end up dribbling and pissing my pyjamas in some stinking old people’s home, or tubed up in a hospital with those supposedly looking after me afraid to give me enough painkillers for fear of being accused of killing me. In fact that will not happen to me; I intend to ensure it won’t happen.

What do you think?

Ebook Thoughts.

Posted on by Neal Asher

I’m just thinking about this; throwing a few ideas about. I don’t know, so don’t assume I really know what I’m talking about, though I’m pretty sure that many in the industry don’t know what’s going to happen either.
I’ve been reading up on this row between Macmillan and Amazon about ebooks, but now want to step back and consider what it all means. The ebook market is going to grow, every time someone buys a Kindle or an Ipad or any other the other readers out there, that’s a dead tree customer gone. This is not like the fight between Betamax and VHS, since with them the information, the entertainment, was a physical product that wasn’t interchangeable. The makers of these readers will try (using stuff like DRM), initially, to corner the market for their e-reader, but it is a losing battle. The more restrictions put on ebooks sold or what e-readers will accept, the more piracy and the more likely people will buy product with less restrictions. By making restrictions publishers and e-book manufacturers will lose market share. The eventual winners will be the e-readers that will accept any ebook and the ebooks that can be loaded to any e-reader. Piracy will be easy and rife. Publishers will have to accept that to sell ebooks they’ll need to reduce the price, because high prices will push customers towards piracy. So what does all this mean to me, the writer?
Things are going to change, and drastically. The market for paper books will continue to survive, hopefully until I’ve shuffled off my mortal coil, but it’s going to get smaller and smaller. Hopefully people will still want to read my books. This is what I must think. Books as we know them are just the medium through which the story I tell goes from my mind to yours. Even if that medium changes, I have to presume that you still want that story.
I wonder about the shape of a future market. Maybe the book publisher as we know it is going to die. Maybe a writer will publish his book on the Internet, without much in the way of middlemen, incidentally taking a larger cut of the cover price than present paltry royalties, which will be necessary to cover the losses through piracy. After a book has sold well on the Internet, has been proven as a product, that’s where the dead tree publishers step in. People will read many ebooks, and some they will decide are keepers.
Maybe.
Another scenario I see is the end of writers being able to make a living through writing books. If the main source of books is the Internet, without the middle men, where is the guarantee of quality? How is anyone going to be able to sort the wheat from the truckloads of chaff? A dead tree book you pick up in a bookshop has gone through a process, the first part being people in the publishing industry looking at the typescript and deciding they are prepared to risk spending thousands of pounds to get that book into print. (For those who say that publishers produce a lot of crap, let me give you a wake-up call: for every Daniel Steel or Jeffrey Archer book you sneer at, please remember that the publisher has rejected skiploads of the most appalling drivel you can imagine.) There’s your guarantee.
Perhaps the guarantee will be simply through sales, electronic bestseller lists, trusted reviewing. Even publishers admit that word-of-mouth is the best advertising available and, once the middlemen are out of the way, this would be the ultimate in word-of-mouth. Let’s face it, despite the ‘is this going to make us money guarantee’ publishers still quite often get it very wrong. How many publishers rejected the Harry Potter books?
What do you think?

Macmillan/Amazon Row

Posted on by Neal Asher

I think this concerns Amazon.com only, since my books are still available through Amazon.co.uk. You can find more about it over on John Scalzi’s Whatever.

To: All Macmillan authors/illustrators and the literary agent community
From: John Sargent

This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.

I regret that we have reached this impasse. Amazon has been a valuable customer for a long time, and it is my great hope that they will continue to be in the very near future. They have been a great innovator in our industry, and I suspect they will continue to be for decades to come.

It is those decades that concern me now, as I am sure they concern you. In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated.

Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.

The agency model would allow Amazon to make more money selling our books, not less. We would make less money in our dealings with Amazon under the new model. Our disagreement is not about short-term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market.

Amazon and Macmillan both want a healthy and vibrant future for books. We clearly do not agree on how to get there. Meanwhile, the action they chose to take last night clearly defines the importance they attribute to their view. We hold our view equally strongly. I hope you agree with us.

You are a vast and wonderful crew. It is impossible to reach you all in the very limited timeframe we are working under, so I have sent this message in unorthodox form. I hope it reaches you all, and quickly. Monday morning I will fully brief all of our editors, and they will be able to answer your questions. I hope to speak to many of you over the coming days.

Thanks for all the support you have shown in the last few hours; it is much appreciated.

All best,
John

We’re going to see more of this sort of stuff as companies try to corner the Ebook market, but the amusing thing is that there won’t be any cornering, or at least not for long, since this is not a fight between the producers of Betamax and VHS. That aside, again, US book buyers, you can get my books through The Book Depository. They ship for free and are offering some big discounts on there. I just bought New Moon & Eclipse for a total of £6.90.
 

Twilight — Stephenie Meyer.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, putting myself in danger here of undermining my tough guy SFnal street cred, I have to say I really enjoyed this book. I polished it off in one day (having completed American Gods that morning) and it wasn’t boring, my attention didn’t wander, I didn’t skip anything and I became thoroughly absorbed, so much so it felt like I was watching the film again. This is because Meyer’s writing is transparent and allowed the characters and story to shine through – what you’ll find in many popular best selling books (ones that very often get sneered at by the literarti). No writerly ego here trying to display ‘literary brilliance’ and jostle the story into second place  Another thing to note is how true to the book was the film. Everything in the book seemed to be up there on the screen. That transparency again – I’m guessing that writing the film script was just an exercise in precis. Thoroughly recommended.