Mark Charan Newton

Americans! Feast your eyes on this. Fresh from the offices of Bantam Spectra, we have the advance reading copies of the US debut of Nights of Villjamur. Always exciting to share a picture or two.

Incidentally, the typewriter in the background is purely ornamental, and I couldn’t actually find a free space to pile the [...]

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Esteemed South African newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, cracks open Nights of Villjamur:
Nights of Villjamur is as much about the city of Villjamur — its squares, cafés and quartiers — as it is about situation or characters. Newton’s distinctive voice evokes a claustrophobic sense of place, as powerful as that of Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris, and [...]

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Seems as though I’m late to my own party. Whilst the interwebs was busy fluttering with this news, I was getting my haircut and buying new shoes, and then I’ve got to cook dinner for four tonight. But anyway:
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PRESS RELEASE – 28th January 2010
SECOND TWO-BOOK DEAL WITH TOR UK FOR MARK CHARAN NEWTON
Julie Crisp, Senior [...]

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The mighty Adam Roberts has gone to town on – or more specifically to – Villjamur over on his Punkadiddle blog.
At its best, though, this novel is doing something really quite interesting, stylistically speaking. Where Fat-Fantasy convention requires clear, kinetic bright-colour satisfactions, he is aiming for something more alienated, snowed-in and bare. Take this description [...]

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Between Two Books gives a lovely review of Nights of Villjamur:
I don’t want to get into discussing things like New Weird or Old Peculiar, and I’m not going to pretend that I can do a good job at it. All that I know is that Newton has created an amazing story that dances among various [...]

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SF Crowsnest magazine this month contains a rather lovely and lengthy review of Nights of Villjamur.
It kicks off with:
I will now admit that this was great. A great novel, hear that?
And ends with:
The whole book accomplishes the task of setting up the series in a promising and rewarding way. The characters are genuine, the [...]

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And there’s more Nights of Villjamur year-end-best-of-round-up-awards-quite-liked-of-the-year shenanigans.
Sci-Fi London puts Nights in the top ten:
Nights of Villjamur is a terrific debut, it starts with a bang and keeps on going, building action upon action with terrific pace and plenty surprises before relenting and letting you catch your breath until it starts up again.
As does Dark [...]

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A little indulgence, if you please. Nights of Villjamur has made it onto a few best-of-the-year lists published so far.
Speculative Horizons’ made it a top five read:
This was easily one of the most hyped books of the year, which as we all know is not always a good thing – whether or not that is [...]

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I know you horrible lot like looking at these things.
A while ago, John Scalzi encouraged writers to post their one-star Amazon reviews, so in the spirit of that, and for your entertainment, I thought I’d show my first one-star offering, by Mr Eric Edwards.
I am amazed and not a little perplexed, to see any [...]

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Twelve months ago, I was practically unknown online, and I had this weird little novel that no one could pronounce properly. Now, people still can’t pronounce it right, but at least I’ve got a bit of a name for myself. This blog has gone from having a several hundred hits a month, to nearly ten [...]

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Here we go. I think this is good to go. (Found here first.) I can no longer look at covers without thinking things like “How will this look as a thumbnail on Amazon?” and “Will it catch my eye from the corner of the bookstore?” and so on. Thoughts?

Share: [...]

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I’ve had several emails about an ebook version of Nights of Villjamur, whether or not there would be one, so I thought I’d mention what was going on.
Yes, there is going to be a ebook version. Two, in fact. They’ll both be available around the same time, one from Pan Macmillan (Tor UK) when [...]

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