Tag: Books

To Kindle or not to Kindle

Posted on by Neal Asher

I just received this email from ‘Xanares’, which is interesting and certainly food for a lot of thought:

Hey there Neal,

Thought you might be interested in this one. It’s about (an) independent writer’s success publishing novels on Amazon Kindle. It’s of course Vampire fiction (I know I know sigh), but it goes to tell that at least some parts of the writing industry are on their way towards the same business-idea that parts of the gaming industry have been playing with for a while now:

“Welcome to disruption. 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling “indie” writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn’t have a publishing deal, Novelr says.

And she shouldn’t. She gets to keep 70% of her book sales — and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it’s usually thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.”

Admittedly she’s selling some of her books for just $1 to $3 each but, if you average that then consider that percentage above, she gets more than I get on a damned paperback or even hardback. I will have to carefully consider any future contracts I sign, I think.

Xanares concludes his email with: For us old romantic book-sniffers it’s odd, but hey… science fiction is here.

Before They Are Hanged — Joe Abercrombie

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, Joe Abercrombie has got me. I’ll keep buying his books so long as he keeps producing excellent tales like this. Before They Are Hanged is easy reading full of enjoyable characters that change in ways you like to see them change, throughout a stonking story. The subtext added by the torturer Glokta’s thoughts as he carries out his ‘duties’ raises a chuckle at such (understandable) cynicism. I enjoy Luthar’s climb out of naivety and Logen’s pragmatic wisdom, and I love every one of the other northern ‘named men’ who have already crept up into the region of legend in my mind: Black Dow, Dogman, Harding Grim, Threetrees and Tul Duru Thunderhead. Honestly, reading this book has made me realize that I didn’t go off fantasy over the last couple of decades, I just wasn’t getting hold of any of the good stuff.

This is the good stuff.

Incidentally, his blog is worth a look too.

My Hidden Shallows

Posted on by Neal Asher

Huan Tan put me onto a discussion about me over on this bulletin board. There are some nice things being said about my stuff there but also some of the usual ‘it’s not literature’ and ‘it’s not high-brow’ and ‘it’s a bit pulpy’. In a general sense I don’t particularly have a problem with these descriptions, since ‘literature’ and ‘high-brow’ are usually defined by literary snobs and ‘a bit pulpy’, from what I know about the pulps, is something of an accolade. However, I do get bugged by their condescension and that attitude of, ‘I enjoy reading them but don’t want to be seen reading them’.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to change any time soon. I don’t want one of you reading this to one day pick up one of my books, ready to relax into some sensawunda, weapons porn, weird monsters and high-tech violence, and end up scratching your head because I’ve decided to explore the deep social implications of cock-transplant technology – as seen by a miserable can’t-get-laid psychology student living in a garret.

But I do wonder if I’d started out claiming to write deeply meaningful socially relevant stuff about the effect of technology on identity, the meaning of death when its borders are blurred and the drawbacks of immortality, if the memes about me would have been different. Perhaps, for example, in interview and so forth, I should have focused on how with the Prador I was exploring the implications of a social structure based on utterly alien biology, rather than on their tendency to eat people and blow stuff up? Perhaps I should have pontificated about the subjective contraction of time in the mind of an immortal, rather than on how an old captain can rip off your head?

Now, removing my tongue from my cheek, I wonder if perhaps it is the case that if I fob people off with, ‘Nah, I’m just about the explosions, mate,’ many of them won’t explore my hidden shallows any further?

What do you think?

Poor Overworked Old Man, Enslaved and Oppressed.

Posted on by Neal Asher

So here we have Disco Stu’s blog where he displays my last two video clips and posts:

Only notice the date! 10 days have elapsed and this author still wears the same nondescipt t-shirt – no doubt not even being allowed to leave the room! His bleary eyes watery and aching from constant work. His legs wasting away and back deformed as he hunches interminably over his desk of confinement.

So now we see the truth of publishing! 10 days later and what was ostensibly a video blog can be seen for what it really is – a cry for help!

Can you not hear the clink of the manacles hidden below sight while I slave away at my desk – manacles that are tight around my swollen sledgehammer-broken ankles?
 
Bloody hell, I didn’t know it was a fashion show. I’ve now got to check which shirt I was wearing in the previous video clip when I do a new one. Or, alternatively, being me, perhaps from now on I should ensure I always wear the same T-shirt in future clips!

Pre-Order The Departure.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Thanks to whoever it was that let me know about this. The Departure (hardback) is now available for pre-order on Amazon. And on The Book Depository, which is does free world-wide shipping (that for US fans annoyed at how much they’re being charged elsewhere).

Like Wellsian war machines the shepherds stride into riots to grab up the ringleaders and drag them off to Inspectorate HQ for adjustment, unless they are in shredding mode, in which case their captives visit community digesters, or rather whatever of them has not been washed down the street drains.

Pain inducers are used for adjustment, and soon the Committee will have the power to edit human minds, but not yet, twelve billion human being need to die before Earth can be stabilized, but by turning large portions of Earth into concentration camps this is achievable, especially when the Argus satellite laser network comes fully online…

Alan Saul has taken a different route to disposal, waking as he does inside a crate on the conveyor into the Calais incinerator. How he got there he does not know, but he does remember the pain and the face of his interrogator. Janus speaks to Saul through the hardware implanted in his skull, sketching the nightmare world for him. And Saul decides to bring it all crashing down…

5 Desert Island Reads – Disco Stu.

Posted on by Neal Asher

I suggested a few posts back that maybe you reading this would like to send me a picture and a little narrative about your favourite 5 SFF books. In fact I’ll widen that to include any book. Also, please remember that all the other ‘get people involved’ stuff is still open. I still want a biography plus picture from people to go in the ‘Who Reads My Books’ posts, I still want pictures of your book collections, and pictures from local bookshops of displays of my books. My email is at the bottom of the biog to the right here.

Here are Disco Stu’s five books:

Revelation Space – One of my “fed up with fantasy” first buys a few years ago. A real slow burner. Reynolds draws the story together in a way that just drew me in. Its a pleasure to read and I savor his breadth of vision. I’ve found it splits opinion like marmite – people either love it or hate it.

Downbelow Station – I think my first space opera type read as a teenager. Devoured it. Picked up secondhand from a market in Nottingham. Never met anyone else that has read it – if you haven’t I highly recommend BUT, not read it since then so remembered through teen eyes. On my ‘to read’ pile now.

Forever War – (book pictured is the omnibus) – First military scifi that I read. LOVE the time travel nature of it. Remember being anxious (at about 13 years of age) whether Mandela would actually meet up again with his bint. (Watched ‘Somewhere in Time’ about then so I was exploring unrequited time travel romance it seems…8)…)

Nightwinds – A novel I obsessed about through my teen years! I was a big role-player (D&D, Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, MERP etc, etc) and here was a novel that brought to life perfectly that kind of world. Wagner can be klunky in some of his work but I think this is the best of it for me. ‘Undertow’ STILL gives me goosebumps. Ah…happy days.

The Skinner – This book along with Revelation Space changed my reading direction. After them, I must have bored people silly by my repeated plea for them to ‘start reading some of these UK authors publishing NOW- and stop telling me you once read ‘I, Robot’ or the Foundation series years-ago whenever I talk about scifi!!!’…..ok, I’m calm.

This book made me keep saying ‘wow!’ every few pages. Good money spent at Ottakars in my opinion.

These books are my five ‘Desert Island Reads’.

Z is for Zelazny, Mostly.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s the last of my general SFF collection. I may yet put up something about the collectible books I’ve obtained since entering the publishing world too. But how about something from you? My brother suggested something along the lines of the first favourite five (alliteration there for those waiting for another ‘On Writing’). Send me a photograph along with some explanation of why you like the books, or maybe some history of your acquaintance with them.

GEORGE ZEBROWSKI:
THE OMEGA POINT

ROGER ZELAZNY:
JACK OF SHADOWS
ISLE OF THE DEAD
TO DIE IN ITALBAR
DEUS IRAE
LORD OF LIGHT
A DARK TRAVELLING
DAMNATION ALLEY
CREATURES OF LIGHT & DARKNESS
NINE PRINCES IN AMBER
THE GUNS OF AVALON
SIGN OF THE UNICORN
THE HAND OF OBERON
THE COURTS OF CHAOS
KNIGHT OF SHADOWS
PRINCE OF CHAOS
BLOOD OF AMBER
SIGN OF CHAOS
TRUMPS OF DOOM
MY NAME IS LEGION
DOORS OF HIS FACE THE LAMPS OF HIS MOUTH

Old Man's War Movie

Posted on by Neal Asher

Well this should be pretty damned cool!

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has acquired screen rights to the John Scalzi novel series Old Man’s War, with Wolfgang Petersen attached to direct and David Self adapting the tale into a large-scale science fiction project. Scott Stuber will produce through his Stuber Pictures banner, with Petersen also producing. The hero is a 75-year old man who, having lost the love of his life, is amenable to trading his old carcass for a younger, genetically enhanced body so that he can combine the experience of age with the strength of youth and join an outer space military coalition sent to protect human colonies in outer space. Inductees agree to leave their past lives on earth behind, and are promised land on distant human colonies if they live. Injured in battle, he’s rescued by a special-forces officer who seems to be a younger version of his wife. She doesn’t recognize him, but he’s so convinced he has another chance with her that he abandons his unit and risks everything to be with her. Kim Miller will be exec producer and Alexa Faigen is associate producer. Scalzi is a two-time Hugo Award winner who was most recently creative consultant on the TV series Stargate: Universe. Old Man’s War is the first title in a bestselling series that spans four books.