adelaidesean | Entries tagged with releases

(Castle of the Zombies and Planet of the Cyborgs are out now. Curse of the Vampire and Invasion of the Freaks are due in the new year.)

The fun: Who wouldn’t to read a series containing zombies, world-eating castles, psychic typewriters, spaceships, vampires, uplifted cats, wormholes, cyborg pirates, telepathic TVs, alternate universes, wicked widgets, and doppelgangers?

The creative: This series has been a long time in the making. It combines ideas from no less than five other books that I couldn’t get to work in their original forms, and it taps into experiences of alienation and loss I experienced as a child, when uprooted from a home I loved perfectly well and plonked down somewhere else. It was also inspired by a real-life event. Honest!

The illustrations: Nial O’Connor totally gets the energy of the story, capturing everything from the most kinetic action sequence to Ollie’s moments of mournful introspection. I’ve posted a couple below the cut. More of my favourites are on my FaceBook page.

The mercenary: It’s designed for all kinds of kids, but particularly the male, 7-10 variety, who are always looking for quick, fun books (even if they don’t always admit it). Plus, it’s Christmas, and we all need stocking-fillers. :-)

And if that’s not enough, here’s what other people have said about it:

“...a fast-paced and inventive ride. Williams keeps the story moving expertly, and Nial O’Connor’s energetic illustrations add to the fun and lighthearted feel. This is a quick and exciting read for primary school readers.” (Australian Bookseller & Publisher)

"...a thrilling, imaginative read, perfect for ages seven and up. Paired with comic-book-style illustrations from the brilliant Nial O’Connor, this first book in the Fixers series is sure to be a hit with younger readers who like their adventures with a bit of a fantastic bent." (Readings, where you’ll also find blurbs for both books)

Please consider giving them a go. I've loved writing them and would love to write more. The more they sell, the more likely that will be!

( preety peectures )

From my signing session for The Fixers at Angust & Robertson Edwardstown on Saturday:

And yes, that's a copy of Castle of the Zombies he's reading. This, and Planet of the Cyborgs, are out now!

Here's the final draft of my zoo poem, which was launched last week as part of the inaugural Adelaide Water Forum. To get the full experience, you'd have to go to the zoo itself to hear the soundscape in all its glory, but this is a start. It was a marvellous project to be part of, and an immense honour to be invited. Enjoy!

(Note: the formatting seems to be a little screwy. Am I the only person who can't make LJ tabs work properly?)

( "Reflections on Water" )

Tomorrow sees the launch of "Reflections on Water", a poem commissioned from me by the Adelaide Zoo and the Environmental Institute at Adelaide University on the theme of "water is life", which (performed by multiple voices and combined with numerous sound-effects) will form the backbone of a soundscape that everyone will hear every time they go to visit the pandas (or any of the other marvellous critters living beyond the zoo's awesome new entrance).

I'll post a link to the finished text once it goes live, but here, to whet (ha ha) your appetite, is my first stab at it. This is nothing like the final product, nothing at all: for one, it's a villanelle, whereas the finished piece has no formal structure; for two, this is far too didactic. But it was an enjoyable warm-up, and I'd hate it to disappear forever (ah, vanity).

( Think of this next time it rains... )

For all my whining about viruses, September was good to me:

From bottom to top: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (out now!), Macabre: A Journey Through Australia's Darkest Fears, Australis Imaginarium, Blutschuld, Castle of the Zombies and Planet of the Cyborgs (coming soon!), Sprawl, and The Shrieking Pit.

Behind: Writers of the Future: the First 25 Years.

Somewhere, a forest has died.

Well, The Force Unleashed hit the stores in the US today, and I'm excited by that, even though it might be a while before I see it on the shelves here. I half-joke that it's the book that gave me RSI--true, I had to write it in four weeks, and true also that I'd written at that speed in the past to no ill effect--but we sometimes make similarly rebukes of our children, and that doesn't mean we love them any less. I really enjoyed writing TFU II and I hope readers will enjoy it too. It definitely wasn't something I knocked off for the money. I thought there was some value to it, otherwise I would've saved my time, and my wrist. That's all.

I've been posting interviews to Twitter and Facebook but have saved a few for here, just to mark the occasion. So:

"Anything that broadens people's experiences, makes them aware of what goes on outside the little boxes they live in, opens their eyes to the fact that there may actually BE something outside their little boxes, is automatically a good thing, I think. A story doesn't have to be true to be effective in this regard; it just has to be convincing, to have an impact, to leave an impression. When someone manages that, the world has become a better place." (Angus & Robertson Edwardstown)

"It would have been easy to write TFU as a by-the-numbers slash-and-hack adventure, but I think it deserved more than that. As to how I do it…? There’s no specific technique. One tries to put oneself in another’s shoes, to feel compassion for them no matter how monstrous they behave. This works for real life as well as novels. When you’re in, you know it, and you start writing." (EUCantina)

"Sometimes I get into trouble with my editors for being too obscure, but I figure it’s a risk worth taking. And always, among the millions of fans of the EU, there’s at least one who appreciates the effort." (Literary Clutter part one)

"I have been offered other franchises that would have been fun and high profile, but always it’s a juggle between original work and tie-ins. I don’t want to do one at the expense of the other. I want to have my cake and eat someone else’s too." (Literary Clutter part two)

And now, enough typing. Time to eat some celebratory cake!

I am slow in posting links to some interviews recorded while at Comic-Con a couple of weeks ago: with Darth Hater, and with Club Jade, and here's a little snip of video of me on stage in the Star Wars pavilion. Below is a shot of me looking slightly stunned at the Lucas Books stand, where I signed dozens of copies of Fatal Alliance, scores of The Force Unleashed, and countless posters.

RSI be damned! It was totally worth it.

Fatal Alliance debuted at #12 on the New York Times hardback bestseller list and #11 over at Publisher's Weekly. I'm sure this had very little to do with me and my small efforts, but it was great to be part of.

(That's about as much of a con report as you'll ever get from me. It was too huge to put into words!

The two novellas I have out this year are not only substantial (>20k) and therefore great bang for your buck, but two of the best things I’ve ever written. As if that weren’t enough, they also connect to existing stories--so if you want to know what finally happens to Ros and Adi, the two most famous lovers in the world of the Change, or if you want to learn more about the world of “A Map of the Mines of Barnath” and “Inevitable”*, then these stories are for you. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, never fear: they also completely stand alone.)

They are “The Spark (A Romance in Four Acts)” now out in Legends of Australian Fantasy and “A Glimpse of the Marvellous Structure (& the Threat it Entails)” from Godlike Machines, long-delayed but scheduled to be out in time for Worldcon.

The novella is such a wonderful length to write to in sf&f, and wonderful to read, too. I hope you enjoy these two, if you get the opportuity.

* From the Locus Award-winning anthology The New Space Opera 2. Yay, Jonathan Strahan! (Without whom neither of these novellas would have existed.)

A very quick but excited note to say that The Tangled Bank, Chris Lynch's awesome tribute to Charles Darwin's masterwork, is out at last.

It contains my poetry sequence "The Origin of Haiku by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Renga in the Struggle for Meaning"--a summary of Origin constructed by remixing of Darwin's own words into different sorts of haiku--and many, many excellent riffs on the great man and his great idea.

Fifty contributors! International line-up! Brian Stableford, Patricia Russo, and more! You can get it from Lulu by following the link above, or you can download a freebie from the anthology, "Darwin's Daughter" by Christopher Green. Enjoy!

The official announcement came and went without me noticing (whoops) so I am unintentionally tardy in confirming that I am indeed writing Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance, the first novel tie-in to the LucasArts/Bioware MMORG due next year: Both game and the book are set “more than 3,500 years in the past of the far-away galaxy...when the Jedi and the Galactic Republic clashed with the Sith Empire.” Sound like fun? It was. The book is epic, hardback, and due in July 2010.

I say "probably" in the subject line, btw, because the first two titles in The Fixers series (Castle of Zombies and Planet of Cyborgs) are due the same month. It's anyone's guess at this stage which one will actually come out first.

I’m very excited to be holding a copy of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, a collection of essays edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk featuring such luminaries as Michael Shermer, James Randi, A. C. Grayling, Joe Haldeman, Jack Dann, Susan Blackmore, Gregs Benford & Egan, and many, many more. Including me. Woohoo!

I posted a while back about my piece “Doctor Who and the Legacy of Rationalism” (Rassilon/Rationalism--geddit?) in which I dissect several old stories to demonstrate how watching them led me away from the idea of god, rather than towards it as several recent evangelists suggested it ought to go. Researching it gave me a great excuse to go back and read some of the novelisations mouldering away on my top shelf. They remain as fun as ever.

The essay and the book are out now. Paperback is listed at US$29.95, which is a bargain compared to the hardback (US$89.95) and money well spent at any price. It’s published by the very respectable Wiley-Blackwell. The gorgeous cover is below. Tell your godless heathen friends!

The German trailer for The Crooked Letter (re-titled The Mirror Twins for this market) is now up on YouTube. Despite my Germanic blood (I'm a distant relation of the famous Schiller) I can't understand a word of the blurb--except for a word that looks a lot like "bestsellerator". I want that on all my book covers from now on!

If you liked my story "A Map of the Mines of Barnath", then you might also like "Inevitable", which has just come out in the Strahan/Dozois collection New Space Opera 2. It's the first glimpse into the world of the Structure since "Barnath" was published, way back in 1994. It's the last until a much larger novella in Godlike Machines, hopefully this year. The collection as a whole is awesome, with people like Garth Nix, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Moon and many, many others crowding out little old me. Here's the cover:

I had a lot of fun writing the story, which features two whole new space opera empires (the Guild of the Great Ships and the nasty Decretians) and has none of that real-physics nonsense of the Astropolis books. Here, when the characters want to go from one side of the galaxy to the other, they just go. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Maybe one day I'll get around to writing the novel.

Seven reasons I'm proud of The Grand Conjunction:

It contains the biggest kick-arse space battle I could imagine.
There's more than a hint of film noir.
I had fun dicking around with structure. For instance: the "Previously in Astropolis" intro contains an important hint as to both the identity of the series narrator and the ultimate fate of our hero.
All the important questions (why Imre was reborn female in book one; what his other self has been doing all this time; etc) are answered at the end, so no one's going to be left scratching their heads. I hope.
The Gothic text I chose for inspiration was Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Predictable, but still a wonderful text to work with.
The main characters literally go through a wringer. Literally. (Not really.)
It's dedicated to Gary Numan.

Oh, and the last line is possibly my favourite from all my novels to date.

(Okay, that's eight, but I liked the alliteration of the subject line. So sue me!)

If this doesn't call for a celebratory chocolate (or two) I don't know what does!

(Should be in stores any day now.)

If you're looking for a read, here are some things I have out at the moment:

The Scarecrow - the final book in my first kids' series, set in the same world as the Books of the Change/Cataclysm.
The Hanging Mountains - the third book in the Cataclysm series, now out in a delicious tpb from Pyr in the US.

(Despite being separated in time from The Scarecrow by several hundred years, these two books do share an important character, someone who may or may not be a dragon.)

"Signs of Death" - seed story for The Crooked Letter (the First Book of the Cataclysm) as reprinted in Australian Dark Fantasy + Horror Volume Three, edited by Angela Challis.
"The Haunted Earth" - in the bushfire benefit e-zine Hope.
"A Longing for the Dark" - set in the Geodesica universe and podcast-only from Terra Incognita, as read by yours truly.

Coming up real soon is The Grand Conjunction - the finale of Astropolis, which I received in the mail on Friday. It looks awesome! More on that later.

Thanks to the awesome efforts of

angriest, Hope #2, the fundraiser fanzine helping the victims of the Victorian bushfires, is now out. It contains (among many other excellent things) my story "The Haunted Earth", which was inspired by a dream Shane Dix's son, Sam, had when he was a wee lad. The story was written in June, 1993, and has never been published before. I was reminded of it while teaching Clarion in January, when a story submitted for critique by Mac North turned out to have a very similar premise, as happens sometimes. I dug it out, found it surprisingly readable, and submitted it to Hope in the, well, hope that it would find a home. I'm very pleased it has.

This is my second story this year, and neither of them has appeared in print, per se. Hope is being distributed electronically at the moment (iirc) and "A Longing for the Dark" is only available as a reading by yours truly at Terra Incognita. Future releases, however, will be more traditionally distributed.

They are, for the record:
The Scarecrow (Broken Land, book 3, out now!)
The Grand Conjunction (Astropolis, book 3)
"A Glimpse of the Magnificent Structure (and the Threat it Entails)" (Godlike Machines)
"The Inevitable" (The New Space Opera 2)
"Ungentle Fire" (The Dragon Book: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy)
"The Spark (A Romance in Four Acts)" (Australian Legends of Fantasy)

Long-term readers will remember the noirish novella I wrote in 1994 called "The Perfect Gun", which used the lyrics of the still-awesome band MC 900ft Jesus as a plot-point. Some might even remember talk of turning it into a novel, Widow of Opportunity, about a PI unravelling a science fictional plot in a far-future city dressed-up to look like the twentieth century.

Well, that title has fallen by the wayside, but the impetus to pursue that story has never faded. And finally it's going to see print.

Here's an excerpt. At the end of the excerpt is the name of the book. Why am I being so coy? Because the connection between this story and the one it's now part of might seem a little unlikely. But when you take out MC 900ft Jesus and insert a certain early-80s electro pioneer, it starts to make sense...

"The sky changed no less than three times on the way to the detective's office."

(Here and here are two other excerpts from the same novel.)

For lovers of our winged buddies, here's another beaut cover featuring a dragon:

The book is out in November, and I'm honoured to be in it.

ETA: the UK edition has a website. Content coming soon!

Also, happy 1234567890 day!

Ain't it beautiful?

(The book, not my receding hairline.)

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Sean Williams

Entries tagged with releases

five reasons to buy the fixers series

best photo ever

splishy splashy

wet

booty

unleashed again

fatal alliance update

novel novellas

charles darwin is in the air (along with love and plagiarism)

my next book (probably)

the legacy of doctor who

meet "the bestsellerator"

this stop: the structure

seven on sunday

a conjunction of conjunctions

a brief word from the plugmeister

haunted hope

widow of opportunity

valentine dragons

another reason to feel good about friday 13