By François Marius Granet, 1806.
Green Dragon Inn
If I had to create the perfect tavern in a fantasy or historical novel, it’d probably look a lot like the Green Dragon Inn. This is the sort of place I could just stay in for days, reading old books and not minding that I’ve lost all contact with the world. (Photo via Vintage Red.)
Telescope
“The year is 2183. Earth is dead. With all evidence of organic life lost, a cosmic archaeologist travels faster than light into deep space to capture images of the once vibrant planet. When his vessel is damaged he must take matters into his own hands, risking his life to witness humanity’s lost home”
Phaedra and Hippolytus
By Pierre-Narcisse Guerin.
World Fantasy Con Schedule
If you’re there, I’ll be here:
THURSDAY – 03:00-04:00 pm – Living in the Past: Writing Historical Fantasy (Oxford)
When writing historical fantasy, how important is it to stick to the facts, or is the past fair game for authors of fantastic fiction to manipulate how they wish?
Aidan Harte, Helen Marshall (mod.), Sophia McDougall, Mark Charan Newton, Tim Powers, Kari Sperring.
SATURDAY 4:00-5:00 pm (Hall 8)
Tor UK double-launch of HOUSE OF SMALL SHADOWS by Adam Nevill, and DRAKENFELD by me.
Other than that, I’ll be around and about. Give me a tweet if you want to say hello.
Review in the Independent on Sunday
There was a big round-up of SF and Fantasy titles this weekend in the Independent on Sunday, and Drakenfeld was among them:
Drakenfeld is a flawed yet appealing hero and Newton has wrought a fast-paced fantasy thriller which should appeal to readers of C J Sansom.
Which is cover-quote gold if you ask me. Read the rest of the genre review section.
Lake District Time-lapse
Sigh. It’s been a busy year, and it’s a busy month in particular, so I’m looking rather longingly at places like this.
Bookshops
Book Shops: How to Run Them by Ruth Brown Park. Doubleday Doran Book Shops, 1929.
In which I interview my editor
Over at Fantasy Faction. We talk about editing, books and general genre stuff:
Yes, in part the post had been to point out that we weren’t getting much in the way of submissions from women, in any category of genre, although SF and horror were the worst, and to say ‘hi, we’re here, we’re women and we’re looking for good SF’. It was supposed to act as a shout out for any female writers who may have thought that publishing was a patriarchal establishment, to disabuse them of the notion that they wouldn’t be taken seriously and to let them know that the majority of SFF editors are women, actively looking for female writers. I got a lot of replies from women saying that they’d submit and over the next few weeks we did see an increase in direct submissions from women – so for that alone I’m glad for that post.
Paxman vs Brand
This is worth watching all the way through. I like how Brand deals with Paxman here – a nice combination of humour to disable Paxman’s initial gravitas; and then the overwhelming sincerity that undermined any remaining seriousness Paxman hoped to lord over him. It’s also curious that Brand’s pretty typical radical ideals no longer seem as wild with a broad audience as they might have done a few years ago, though maybe that’s my imagination. I guess that’s the impact of things like the Occupy movement.